What value does Brad Wanamaker have in Boston?
It seems that the 2018 NBA free agency period will mark another year in the growing trend of international basketball players making their way to the NBA. A trend kicked off by players like Joe Ingles and Nick Calathes, who both found their way to NBA playoff rotations after stints in Europe, exploded last summer, with maybe the biggest influx of European talent since Arvydas Sabonis, Drazen Petrovic, and Sarunas Marciulionis crossed the Atlantic long ago. NBA teams are finding that Europe is a great place to find skilled, disciplined veterans for cheap in a market hamstrung by the leveling of the salary cap. This year appears to have another crop coming, as the first player to cross from Euroleague to the NBA has already been announced: Brad Wanamaker is signing with the Boston Celtics.
Wanamaker wound his way to the NBA by a similar path to that taken by Malcolm Delaney of the Atlanta Hawks. After a perfectly average college career at Pittsburgh, the Philadelphia native played in the 2011 Las Vegas Summer League with the Atlanta Hawks, and a season with the Austin Spurs in the G-League. Midway through that season, he left Austin for Italy, signing with Banca Tercas Teramo. He then did a one-year pit stop in France at Limoges, then jumped back to Italy to play for Pistoia. It was here that he had his breakout campaign, averaging 16.2 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 4.7 assists per game in the Italian first division.
That earned him a spot in the Euroleague, and he’s spent the past four years there, with Brose Bamberg in Germany, and then in Turkey with Darussafaka, and Fenerbahce this past year. Wanamaker has become one of Euroleague’s best scoring guards, and the 28-year old peaked in 2016-2017, averaging 16.7 points per game on 44.8 percent shooting and 38.6 percent from 3-point territory with Darussafaka, helping to drag them to the playoffs. He opted to go to Fenerbahce after potential deals with Oklahoma City and Philadelphia fell apart, and helped them get to the Euroleague title game for the third consecutive year.
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Now, Wanamaker heads to a new challenge, jumping from Euroleague immediately to a team that should be contending for an NBA title next season. He follows the path of Shane Larkin, who migrated to Boston from Baskonia last summer. Wanamaker is likely a hedge against losing Terry Rozier, who is a free agent this summer and might present one of the toughest decisions Boston has to make. Wanamaker presents a shot at replacing some of Rozier’s production with an NBA-ready contract. The Celtics will obviously try to hold onto Rozier, but that has to be some of the reasoning behind this signing.
Whether Wanamaker can do that is another matter — Rozier was extremely good this year, and asking Wanamaker to be ready to fill in as the Celtics’ third guard on a contender is probably too much as a baseline. However, Wanamaker’s game does project well to playing as a backup guard in the NBA.
Wanamaker’s best trait might be his ability to shift gears on the move. He’s a very quick player, which in Euroleague has helped him become a great one-on-one scorer. He’s able to beat most opponents off the dribble there because of his acceleration, and he’s a strong fast break scorer, as well. A fun prospect was always an end of quarter Wanamaker possession because it usually meant him screeching through a half-awake defense and finishing an easy shot at the rim.
Wanamaker combines this speed with a solid handle. He keeps the ball a little high at times, but he’s able to put a big on skates out of the pick-and-roll and adjusts well against contact.
Wanamaker isn’t a fantastic finisher, but he’s fluid enough that he can draw fouls at a pretty reasonable rate. He averaged 5.9 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, which is decent, and he’s a strong free throw shooter, converting 84.8 percent at the line over his last three seasons.
Wanamaker supplements that driving ability with a strong 3-point stroke. He shot 37.4 percent from 3 over his last three seasons, and has a very quick release, especially off the catch.
He also has a strong pull-up game, a pre-requisite for any scoring point guard in the modern NBA.
His passing is probably his swing skill for the NBA. Wanamaker has good vision, but his passing technique is fairly unique and it’ll be interesting to see if he can get it to translate to the NBA. Wanamaker has good upper body strength, and his touch with passes is strong. The interesting part is that he uses his dominant hand on a majority of these passes. One-handed passing isn’t unique for the NBA, but firing passes like this as your primary method of moving the ball is:
How that passing translates probably ultimately sets his role in the NBA. If he can be successful as a passer, it will allow him to take primary point guard minutes, which would be paramount if the goal is for Wanamaker to replace Rozier. If not, he probably has to be used as a volume bench scorer. While that could help Boston, whose offense was fairly mediocre, he’s more useful to them if he can initiate some of those more complex sets that can get looks for the Celtics’ support pieces.
Boston has a lot of players who are best scoring one-on-one trying to fit into a complex offense with Irving, Jayson Tatum, and Marcus Morris, and Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward likely demanding their own pieces of the usage pie. How Wanamaker fits into that calculus is going to be interesting.
One complaint of Wanamaker has been that he is a little too isolation heavy. This was particularly true at Darussafaka, where they relied heavily on Wanamaker and Will Clyburn creating shots and finished dead last in Euroleague in assists. At Fenerbahce, Wanamaker eventually found his place to fit in, but he ran into the same problem he’ll find on the Celtics – he’s just one of many who can create shots now, and he’s going to need to find his role. He eventually did at Fenerbahce, which is how they made the title game. But he struggled over the first third of the season to do this, and he’s not going to be afforded the leash that comes with being one of a European team’s bigger stars.
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Wanamaker has the talent to be an NBA player. He’s essentially a tall combo guard that is an NBA-level scorer, and his shooting will help him stick. But how he fits into a role is the big question. A lot of the European players that have had early success in their NBA transition have been players who were ready to fill a role. While players like Daniel Theis and Royce O’Neale were immediate rotation players on good teams, Europe’s volume scorers, like Larkin and Delaney, have struggled to find a place that’s valuable. He deserves this chance, and there’s a path to him being valuable. It’ll be up to him and Brad Stevens to work out where his place can be in the Celtics’ rotation.