The 2023-24 NBA regular season is coming to a close and among other things, that means that it’s time for voters to make their picks for the end-of-season accolades. Brooklyn Nets guard Cam Thomas is considered to be one of the players in contention for the Most Improved Player of the Year award, but one media member thinks Thomas deserves a different kind of award as well.
In a episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” released on Monday, Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo discussed their annual “Made-Up” awards show. One of the awards that they discussed was the “Freeman Williams” award for the biggest “black hole” in the NBA this season.
As Simmons says, the award is named after Williams because “on the 1980-81 (San Diego) Clippers, he played 24.1 minutes a game, averaged 19.3 points a game and took 16.8 field-goals. 16.8 field goals in 24.1 minutes. If you do the per 36 (minutes), it projects to like 25 shots a game and he was like the seven man.”
Based on this commentary, it sounds like Simmons defines a “black hole” as a player who rarely passes the ball. So, Simmons is nominating Thomas for this award and even described it as “this is Cam Thomas’ award to lose” to indicate that Thomas is the frontrunner in his mind.
For the purpose of this discussion, it should be noted that it is hard for find catch-all numbers that would indicate how likely a player is to shoot or pass the ball in a given scenario. Basketball is very much a game of instinct and that’s not taking into account that every player has a role that influences what he is likely to do on any possession.
Per Basketball Reference, Thomas is attempting 28.7 field-goals per 100 team possessions which ties him with Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox for the fourth-most field-goal attempts in the NBA. Essentially, if Thomas played 100 offensive possessions for the Nets, he would shoot between 28 times and 29 times on average.
Of the 28 players that are averaging at least 24.5 field-goal attempts per 100 possessions, Thomas ranks 25th in assists per game (4.7), but is also just 21st in turnovers per game (3.0) while ranking 13th in points per game (35.5). It should also be noted that Thomas is estimated to have played just 8% of his time at point guard so, as primarily an off-ball guard, when the ball is in his hands, it’s usually to shoot the basketball.
No matter where you stand on the issue of whether Thomas is a “black hole” or not, everyone has to admit that he is one of the better scorers in the NBA. And, at just 22 years old, his scoring has made a difference for a Nets team that is still finding its way following the trades of James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant.
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