What To Expect From C.J. McCollum

Riddle me this:

Player A was a second-year player in the 2014-15 season, while Player B was a second-year player in 2012-13. Player A played in 973 total minutes and Player B played in 967 total minutes. Both young players came off the bench and were given inconsistent playing time, so we’ll default to per36 stats to compare.

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Player A: Averaged 15.7 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 1.6 steals per 36 minutes while knocking down 39.6% of his 139 3-point attempts.

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Player B: Averaged 18.4 points, 3.6 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.0 steals per 36 minutes while knocking down 41.7% of his 156 3-point attempts.

As you might have guessed by the title of this post, one of those players is Portland Trail Blazers’ guard, C.J. McCollum.

Which one? Player A. What you probably did not guess is who Player B is?

Here’s a hint. Both players were drafted 10th overall in the first round of their respective draft.

Do the math yet? If Player B was in his second season during the 2012-13 campaign, that means he was drafted in the 2011 NBA Draft. And the 10th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft was … Jimmer Fredette???

That’s right, folks.

Now, I say all of that not to make the argument that C.J. McCollum is destined to have a Jimmer-like career. I don’t even think it’s a fair comparison. But I do say it to ground some Blazers fans who only remember the last 10 games that C.J. played in last season.

Before those fans get crazy on me though, let’s consider what McCollum does have going for him.

First, McCollum has spent a large portion of his first two seasons injured. McCollum played in only 38 games in his rookie season after breaking his foot before the season began. In his second season, McCollum missed time early in the season again when he was forced to miss the majority of November and December with fractured fingers.

Both injuries happened early in his campaign and both forced him largely out of the rotation for a very good Portland Trail Blazers team.

Secondly, McCollum showed more than just flashes towards the end of last season as he was given more and more responsibility. Over eight games in the month of April last season, McCollum was given the most minutes in his career due to multiple injuries on the Blazers roster.

During those games, McCollum averaged 15.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 2.1 assists, posted a 117 Offensive Rating on a roster that was missing some of its top scorers, and shot better than 40 percent from the 3-point line on more than three attempts per game, all according to Basketball Reference.

Lot of players play well for a few games in April, but the Blazers were still playing meaningful games, and then, maybe even more impressively, McCollum performed even better in five NBA Playoff games.

If the Blazers took any positive away from that first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies where it seemed that injuries finally caught up with them, it was McCollum’s play. He averaged 17.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, and shot 11-for-23 from the 3-point line in that series. That included a 33-point performance in Game 5 on the road that kept the Blazers alive at the time.

Thirdly, the more you hear about C.J., the more it seems like he’s a different cat. He seems like the type of player that is continually trying to learn how to get better. He seems hungry. Damian Lillard has that, and as we learn more and more C.J. seems to as well.

When Grantland’s Zach Lowe profiled McCollum during April of last season, McCollum confessed his adjustment to playing without the ball, and depicted encouraging steps for him to navigate that transition citing J.J. Redick as an influencer:

"“McCollum’s mom, a high school player, warned him he wouldn’t have the ball as much in the NBA, and McCollum watches crazy amounts of film to learn new tricks. He watches himself, point guards he admires (Chris Paul, Jarrett Jack, Lillard), and shooters who do their work away from the ball. ‘I’m more involved with Synergy,’ he says of the video service. ‘I’ve got all the passwords.’“He had a flashbulb NBA moment earlier this season when talking to J.J. Redick about life as an off-ball threat. ‘He told me that my mind-set has to be that every play is being run for me, even when I don’t get the ball,’ McCollum says. ‘He thinks every play is for him. He’s always running around, trying to get the ball.'”"

McCollum also was portrayed as someone who is embracing the statistical revolution, using hard data to help support his development:

"“‘Getting to the rim is the next step in my progression,’ he says, adding that the numbers show he already finishes well when he gets there. (He’s right.)”"

Lastly, there may not be any recent example of a talented player drafted as high as McCollum was on a team as good as the Blazers were the last two seasons combined with the early season injuries he battled in each year.

Combine those specific circumstances with the full roster transformation that the Blazers underwent this offseason and it points to C.J. McCollum getting a much larger opportunity than he’s had for the last two seasons.

Olshey reiterating that CJ McCollum is going to play a lot of point guard this year.
— Blazer Banter (@blazerbanter) July 9, 2015

It’s rare that a player with his talent level would see such an increase in his expectations and role timed perfectly with when you would expect a talented NBA player to begin to blossom naturally.

Because of those four factors, injuries slowing his development, big time performance in a limited but high-stakes situation last season, a clearly positive mindset towards improving, and a huge role to be filled on a new look roster, McCollum is going to face very high expectations heading into this season.

That’s concerning for me. For starters, this all relies on being healthy, and McCollum does not have a great record in that department. As we mentioned he missed time in each of his first two seasons, but he also had some injuries in college.

But beyond that, expectations are likely going to be unrealistic. Take McCollum’s per 36 numbers and boil them down. Fifteen points per game and 40 percent shooting from the outside (there’s no reason to believe Stotts won’t continue to let the Blazers fire from the outside). That seems realistic, doesn’t it?

If McCollum’s role is going to be as large as we expect next season, he’ll see 36 minutes of action on a nightly basis. That might lead you to infer that a reasonable expectation would be for McCollum to average 15 points per game and shoot better than 40 percent from the 3-point line next season.

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Even that says nothing about the question marks around his defense, passing ability, and ability to get to the basket consistently.

And even that may be much higher than it seems. Since 2008-09 only four third-year players have averaged 15 points per game and shot 40 percent from the 3-point line according to Basketball Reference: Kevin Love, Klay Thompson, Andrea Bargnani, and Bradley Beal.

Beal, Love, and Klay were clearly stud players well before their third campaign began. And even Bargnani was averaging double figures as a rookie.

It’s clear that McCollum will have taken a far more circuitous route if he were to become the fifth player since 2008 to achieve that this season. It doesn’t mean he can’t do it, as we examined, he may be a fairly rare case.

But let’s just be clear about what we’re expecting out of him.

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