Daily
Nobody can agree how much Vooch is going to play
ESPN and Yahoo looked at the same depth chart and came to answers ten minutes a night apart. It is the biggest projection split in the top 100.
Nikola Vučević is going home, and the projection industry has quietly split down the middle over what that's worth.
The 35-year-old Montenegrin signed a one-year, $3.9 million deal to go back to the team where he turned into an All-Star. Lovely story. Standing ovation, probably. The trouble is the depth chart he's walking into: Wendell Carter Jr. is already there, Goga Bitadze is already there, and a basketball team has only one center spot to hand out at a time.
ESPN and Yahoo have both looked at exactly that situation. They did not come to the same conclusion. Vooch is now the single biggest projection disagreement between the two of them in the entire top 100.
| PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | TOV | FG% | FT% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESPN | 13.8 | 7.7 | 2.7 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 1.2 | 1.2 | .501 | .812 |
| Yahoo | 8.6 | 4.8 | 1.7 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.8 | .504 | .817 |
Read the last two columns first
ESPN has him shooting 50.1% from the floor. Yahoo says 50.4%. ESPN has him at 81.2% from the line, Yahoo 81.7%.
That is agreement. Not rough agreement — agreement. Two rooms full of people with different data and different models landed within half a percentage point of each other on what kind of player this is.
Now read everything to the left of them.
Yahoo's points are 62% of ESPN's. Rebounds, 62%. Assists, 64%. Shot attempts, 62%. Free throws, 62%. Every single counting stat lands between 58% and 66%, which is not what a disagreement looks like. It's what one number looks like after you've multiplied it by 0.62.
The number is minutes
ESPN says 25.1 a night. Yahoo doesn't publish minutes at all, but you don't need them to — work backwards through that 0.62 and you land somewhere around fifteen.
So this was never an argument about whether Vučević can still hoop. Nobody thinks he's finished. Both sites have him as the same efficient, jump-shooting, slightly allergic-to-rim-protection center he's been for a decade.
It's an argument about whether Orlando is going to play him.
ESPN has him as the starter. Yahoo has him third in a three-man rotation, eating whatever Carter and Bitadze leave behind. Ten minutes a night is the whole gap — and ten minutes a night is the difference between a big man who quietly wins you rebounding weeks and a man you're dropping before Thanksgiving.
What to actually do about it
Both sites already have him going late — ESPN around 113, Yahoo's own rankings put him at 144 — so nobody is asking you to spend a real pick here. That's what makes it interesting rather than scary.
It's a cheap ticket on a coin flip that gets settled in public, in October, by a man in a suit writing five names on a whiteboard.
Watch who starts opening night. Then draft him, or don't.