Wagner's Law

The 2021 rookie class is an outlier. It’ll have multi-time All-Stars, All-NBAers, and maybe even a couple Hall of Famers. But one of the reasons it's so good has been decidedly overlooked. It’s true, Cade Cunningham and Jalen Green are exciting, though overrated, prospects. And it’s also true, Evan Mobley is a generational talent, the quality of top overall pick that we only get every few years . What if I told you that if your goal was to win NBA basketball games right now, the best rookie this season has been none of those players?

Those of you familiar with Gödel, Escher, Bach[1] will know Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Today I present to you Wagner’s Law: No matter how highly you rate Franz Wagner, you will always underrate him, even when you take into account Wagner’s Law.

It’s relatively hard to figure out what wins basketball games. We have some reasonable ideas, but such a large portion of the game takes place without the ball. And this is where Franz is so good: moving into threatening space on offense, keeping the opponent out of it on defense. He’s already an incredible cutter, despite playing on a team without a positive passer at any position (except himself!).

One way to be threatening on offense is to move with the level of the ball and make the defenses' eyes be in two places at once.

And though his best skill is team defense, individually he snuffs out everything before it happens, and has the lateral quickness to stay with just about anyone

The video clips of Franz trying to pull a quarter point out of thin air or saving a tenth of a point with his footwork or gapping are nice, but the only way to truly approximate value for an NBA player is with a large sample. So for trying to figure out how good Franz has been, I looked around at a few one number metrics to get a better idea of the best rookies this year.

EPM is reliable one number metric that includes shot luck. There are only 3 rookies who are positive in this metric: Franz +1.2 (80th percentile), Evan Mobley +1, and Herb Jones at +0.5.

I don't usually agree with 538's basketball coverage, but they have access to the Second Spectrum tracking data. RAPTOR seems like their most referenced one number metric. Among all rookies, Franz is behind only Herb Jones.

And it’s reasonable to think that you don’t need black box sorcery to understand why he's been so good. His team is almost 10 points better with him on the court, playing something like league average defense luck adjusted. If that doesn’t sound impressive to you, you haven’t looked at the Magic roster lately.

Go looking for more stats, and you’ll be more surprised: He got to the free throw line better than Cade, despite less usage. And he’s one of the best free throw shooters in the league, shooting a hair better than Jayson Tatum from the line at 86.3%. How do you think that bodes for his future from behind the arc?[2]

If you scouted Franz, you knew he’d be this type of player. A connector. But what I wasn’t ready for is the versatility of his shot, his finishing footwork, and how good the passing already is at this level.

He's an exceptional passer who should've been tasked with even more creation responsibility for the Magic.

But this is the kind of stuff that'll make him an All Star, the footwork and patience to create shots near the rim (he shot a high volume from floater range per CleaningTheGlass, with above league average efficiency).

And here's The Full Franz Experience: starting with how ready he is in the gap, and finishing with a nifty pass.

His strength lies in his processing speed, the angles he takes, the efficiency he plays with. For those reasons, he will never be overrated. Among the included benefits to this are a discount on his next contract (see: Anunoby, OG; Bridges, Mikal).

With a little more on court time, Evan Mobley will be the far superior NBA player. When Cade Cunningham learns to dribble, or Jalen Suggs learns to shoot, or Jalen Green grows 3 inches and gains 25 pounds, lookout.[3] But by any reliable metric Franz Wagner is a league average starter right now. He's one of the top 100 or so basketball players in the world, at age 20.6, on a roster that isn’t doing him any favors.

I don’t blame you for not watching the Magic, you shouldn’t watch the Magic. They’re an awful team owned by a not particularly great bunch of people (even for owners) in a crappy city who likely chose the wrong head coach. But one day many years from now they’ll be in the Play-In, and on that day you’ll remember Wagner’s Law.

[1] Of course I haven’t read Gödel, Escher, Bach, but I’m cool enough to know people who have.

[2] I don't feel the need to say more about his shooting; at present you can't leave him open, in the future it may be a five alarm fire if you do.

[3]There are a lot of Raptors slappies out there, so I have to at least mention Scottie Barnes: Offensive rebounds don’t scale particularly well, and Scottie’s numbers are all buoyed by the Raptors sending more people to the offensive glass than any team in the modern era. The Raptors are four points better with Scottie off the floor, some of that is capable backups, a lot of that is bad footwork and his constant insistence on impersonating a traffic cone on defense. But I digress.