Three reasons Cavs should avoid James Wiseman in 2020 NBA Draft

Putting it bluntly, the Cleveland Cavaliers should absolutely avoid James Wiseman in the 2020 NBA Draft, if he’s available at their draft selection.

With the 2019-20 season being suspended until further notice for the Cleveland Cavaliers and other NBA teams since Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the novel coronavirus on March 11 and since other NBA personnel (of which you can view recent updates about here), it’s unclear as to when the 2020 NBA Draft will be.

At this point, while it is anything but a certainty, given the newer draft lottery rules, according to Tankathon, the Cavs are currently projected to have the second overall pick in the upcoming draft.

Again, though, it’s far from certain if Cleveland will actually end up with that pick, but regardless of if the 2019-20 season is resumed or not at some point, the Cavaliers should have a very high pick, feasibly in the top five. Going into the current season’s hiatus, the Cavs had the league’s second-worst record at 19-46.

So factoring in that, the Wine and Gold should again, be able to have one of the 2020 NBA Draft’s top selections. Putting it simply, if he’s available at their pick, while I was a fan of him potentially helping the Cavs’ defense in coming years more so before or early on in the season, Cleveland should avoid center James Wiseman.

Looking at the baseline statistics for Wiseman, they obviously jump out, even with there being a sample size of three games. Again, I’ll reiterate, it was just three games for Wiseman in his collegiate career, of which was at Memphis.

He did have 19.7 points, 10.7 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game, though, according to Sports Reference. Clearly, Wiseman was able to feast against significantly lesser opponents in the early going, however, and he got a plethora of easy chances in games way before AAC play got under way.

Furthermore, while Wiseman honestly got a raw deal when he was suspended at the beginning of the 2019-20 college basketball season by the NCAA after which Wiseman withdrew from Memphis (of which our own Corey Casey hit on), he still really could’ve used considerably more collegiate game experience for him to further develop his skills leading into the coming draft.

Granted, there wouldn’t have been a potential tournament run for Wiseman and Memphis, anyway, given that the NCAA cancelled the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Tournament and other remaining winter sports championships, to go along with spring sports’ seasons, to limit the potential for spread of COVID-19.

Moreover, while his 7-foot-1 size as a potential 5 man of the future for the Cavs could be intriguing for down the road with Wiseman not quite 19 yet, it’s really uncertain if he’ll be able to have legitimate inside-out potential as he does not have consistent touch away from the paint and hasn’t shown nearly enough low-post willingness at this point. That’s one of the reasons Cleveland should avoid Wiseman in the 2020 NBA Draft.