The Wooden Award committee came out Wednesday with their short list of the 20 players in the country that can win the prestigious Wooden Player of the Year award. Of course, they could likely have just shortened that list to two players.
Those two would be Wisconsin senior center Frank Kaminsky and Duke freshman center Jahlil Okafor, with Ohio State freshman guard D’Angelo Russell and Notre Dame senior guard Jerian Grant peering longingly through the icy windowsill.
Okafor was the juggernaut coming into this season, in the vein of Anthony Davis and Andrew Wiggins. He was the preseason Player of the Year for the AP, NBC Sports, CBS Sports and ESPN as a freshman. He’s considered the most offensively advanced low-post scorer in recent college basketball history and the consensus pick to hear his name called first in the 2015 NBA Draft.
And he hasn’t disappointed this season. He’s averaging 18.0 points per game on 66.5 percent shooting (!) and 9.1 rebounds per game, all superior to fellow center Kaminsky’s 17.3 on 54.0 percent and 8.3. All season, he’s held strong as the Player of the Year frontrunner, with Kaminsky frequently second.
Now, you could say, “Hey, Okafor has the better stats in arguably the three most important basic stats for a center, he should win,” and call it a day. But when you go deeper, you see this isn’t that simple.
For starters, Kaminsky and Okafor could not play more different roles on offense for their teams (defensively, their roles are similar except Kaminsky switches to other players much more often).
Whereas Okafor makes his lunch with his back to the basket, Kaminsky plays like a guard on stilts, driving and shooting from deep as often as he bangs in the low post. This partially explains why Okafor’s field goal percentage is so astronomically high when compared to Kaminsky’s—spoiler alert, it’s harder to make a shot from 15 feet than five (look at DeAndre Jordan of the NBA’s Clippers, who is shooting 72.5 percent thanks to a healthy diet of dunks and set plays).
Using effective field goal percentage, which factors in the extra point awarded to 3-pointers, it’s a bit closer: Okafor’s 66.5 to Kaminsky’s 58.6. Using true shooting percentage, which also factors in free throw shooting, it’s even closer due to Kaminsky owning a free throw percentage about 20 points higher than Okafor.
It’s not exactly a secret that Bo Ryan’s offensive philosophy is based on players that can do it all from any position: guards who can rebound and big men who can spread the floor. What makes Kaminsky so valuable is his ability to perfectly fill that second role, receiving the ball on the perimeter and being able to distribute or take a deep shot.
Still, there’s no denying Okafor makes more of his shots than Kaminsky. That also may be the only thing Okafor does objectively better than Kaminsky.
Both are used on approximately 28 percent of their team’s possessions, but the Badger offense Kaminsky plays on is historically efficient, currently standing as the best Kenpom has ever recorded (Duke’s no slouch though, coming in at No. 4 in the country).
Despite Okafor’s better shooting, Kaminsky owns a mightily higher Kenpom offensive rating, 126.3 to 119.1, due to superior assist and turnover percentages. It’s Frank efficiency.
That’s just on offense, too. Kaminsky is a better defender by objective measures, owning a significantly higher block rate while often being forced to defend smaller forwards and sometimes guards, thanks to Wisconsin’s frequent defensive switches. Okafor has improved defensively as the season has progressed, but he’s still not going to be drafted on the strength of his defense.
Rebounding basically plays out to a push; Okafor grabs offensive rebounds at a vastly higher rate than Kaminsky, and vice versa with defensive rebounding. The first can be explained by Kaminsky frequently playing the perimeter, the second by Wisconsin forgoing transition offense to focus on defensive rebounding.
Wisconsin’s head-to-head matchup is frequently cited as a point in Okafor’s favor, but it really shouldn’t weigh in too much. Yes, Okafor’s team won, but that was thanks to the superb play of Tyus Jones, not Okafor. Kaminsky out-scored and out-rebounded Okafor in that game, but took more shots and minutes to do it. Overall, it’s a wash.
This debate is by no means over, both in argument and in season, but Kaminsky has simply been the better player in the 2014-’15 season. Okafor has the better traditional big-man stats, but that’s due to a mix of his paint-focused role with Duke and that the Blue Devils average about seven more possessions per game than the Badgers, giving Okafor more chances at field goals and rebounds.
He might be the better NBA talent, but this is the Player of the Year award, not Player of the Next 10 Years. And if Okafor really wants the prize, he can just forego the draft and come back next year.
When Kaminsky walks into the Kohl Center Sunday to play Illinois (6-5 Big Ten, 16-8 overall), he should be considered the best player in the country. Tipoff is scheduled for 12 p.m.
