Hello all, welcome back to the blog. Draft Night was full of mixed feelings, especially as a Raptors fan, seeing no trade happen for the 3rd pick, but it was overall a fun draft to watch. One thing that Bob and I were perplexed about was the massive drop from Cam Whitmore. He was projected 6th in my mock draft, 5th in most, and even 4th in a few. But he didn’t go there. Not even close. Whitmore went 20th in the draft, to the Houston Rockets, who have somehow managed to get both him and Amen Thompson from this draft and didn’t even trade anything to get them. So, why did Cam Whitmore fall so far? What went so horribly wrong that 19 GMs passed on a talent that was touted to be among the best? Let’s find out.
First, let’s look at Cam Whitmore’s strengths. At 47% Field Goal percentage from 9 attempts per game, 1.4 steals per game, and 12.5 points per game, Whitmore is a solid prospect. However, a lot of his appeal to scouts pre draft was based on upside. Only 18 on draft night, Whitmore still had a while to get settled on his new team, something scouts liked.
However, the on paper weaknesses are still very prevalent. While Cam Whitmore is an athletic player, he has the weak points of a center. He isn’t quick, his jump shot isn’t well-developed, his ball handling is subpar, and he doesn’t do passing. His free throw percentage is also at a paltry 70%. Players that rely on physicality in college usually struggle to convert their game to the league, and I expect the same of Whitmore. His NBA comparisons have been players such as Caron Butler, Jae Crowder, Justice Winslow, and Jerry Stackhouse, either stars from a time when physicality was more important or busts from the modern era, so not a gleaming recommendation.
As the leader of the Villanova Wildcats team, he led the team to a 17-17 record in the Big East, and saw the team get eliminated in the Quarterfinals of the Big East tournament to the 3 seed Creighton, who featured the likes of Ryan Nembhard, Baylor Scheierman, and Ryan Kalkbrenner. Villanova also subsequently went on not to qualify for the March Madness Tournament this year.
Another issue I came upon, one many media outlets said was the reason Whitmore fell (you’ll see my opinion on that later on), was his injury history. At the start of the 2022/23 season, Whitmore missed 7 games due to a thumb injury, and during medicals, his knee was flagged as a high risk injury spot.
I also spotted an interesting Reddit post on r/NBA_Draft while researching for this post, by a Villanova fan, known as u/bigfloppapilled on the website titled “As a Villanova fan, Cam Whitmore is a project and should not be picked in the lottery”. The writer starts by saying he has “3 big takeaways” after “watching the majority of Villanova games this year”. The first is about his good points; “[Whitmore] has insane athleticism and raw talent. I’ve seen him making driving slams and contested stepbacks that nobody aside from Kittles and Brunson ever could”. He then talks about his weak points and why he isn’t worthy of a lottery selection, saying that Whitmore is “prone to bonehead mistakes on defence”, and “at least once per game, [Whitmore] would always make a stupid turnover from trying to dribble too much”, and also talked about his lack of effort on defence. His last point was talking about Whitmore’s selfishness. “[Whitmore] doesn’t play team basketball”. The writer then went on to explain Whitmore’s skepticism with Villanova’s style. “Villanova is known for running a passing, non-selfish offence, and Whitmore did not buy into it”. This post was made over a month ago, when Whitmore was still projected in the Top 6 by everyone. If you want to see this post on Reddit, it’s linked here.
However, with all this, we still haven’t got to the reason that I wanted to make this post. Cam Whitmore absolutely bombed in the interviews and workouts with teams pre draft. Whitmore was described as “Comatose” during pre draft evaluations, but it gets even worse. An “unnamed top 10 prospect” was described as having a “disastrous workout and interviews, he’s not in shape enough to get through the workout, he just walks out of the workout, he says “I can’t do this anymore”, he walks to the locker room and staff members walks in, he’s hitting a vape pen, the player dropped it, put it on top of his foot and was like “hey, what’s up””. This wasn’t definitively described as being Whitmore, but he was a top 10 prospect going into the draft, and no other top 10 prospects had as big a fall as Whitmore.
An Eastern Conference executive told the Athletic “At the Hoops Summit, Whitmore was not a practice-type player and didn’t look very good during the week”. Whitmore’s lack of effort was obvious throughout combines and workouts, and that could destroy his career. It’s already cost him $14 million from his rookie deal, potentially more from contract extensions, and hopefully for Whitmore and his new team, the Houston Rockets, this is the humbling experience he needs to wake up and finally start making an effort. I’m Jim James, until next time.