(January 6th) Alex Condon’s player profile is a good illustration of how statistics simply don’t happen in a vacuum. Sure, a few of the numbers here are down from the first player profile. Particularly, those related to scoring have gone down, with Condon dropping from the 95th percentile in points to the 84th.
Some of that is due to actual struggles – Condon has dropped from the 88th percentile in two-point percentage to the 39th, which is a major drop, but the overall efficiency is still very good, in the 82nd percentile. However, the main difference is just due to Florida shifting touches in bigger games into the (very deserving) hands of Walter Clayton. Clayton has averaged 16.5 FGA/game in games against major conference opponents, but 8.5 FGA/game in games against other opponents. With him being on such a heater, it makes sense that Condon would shoot less and his scoring would go down.
Instead, Condon has shifted focus to rebounding (up from the 85th percentile to the 90th) and protecting the rim (up from the 86th percentile to the 90th). He’s doing what he’s asked, and doing it highly effectively, so it’s hard to imagine any NBA team being dissatisfied with those performances.
(December 12th) Alex Condon, despite already having been ahead of schedule – very few freshman don’t see Power 5 minutes – has stomped on the accelerator pedal. Condon last year was statistically good across the board, to the extent that the biggest complaint about him might have been the lack of a singular statistical strength.
Well, turns out, he still doesn’t have a singular statistical strength because with the way he’s playing right now, basically everything has been a strength. The efficiency, the passing, the foul-drawing, the shot-blocking, you name it, Condon has been elite at it. Even the jump shot, formerly a question, has gone in on the limited attempts that Condon has taken. We know that Condon put significant work into that jumper over the summer, and so far it looks like it’s materialized.
Now, you may note that while Condon has made 46.2% of his three-point jumpers, we only report him at 33.8%. That’s because all of the numbers we provide are sample stabilized, which effectively means that we penalize players with low sample sizes. Every NBA team, to our knowledge, does something similar. But while 33.8% feels much lower, it still ranks in the 96th percentile for bigs. Effectively, even though we want to see Condon shoot more threes to be persuaded that the improvement is real, and we think teams will as well, he’s shooting so well in the sample he does have so far that he still performs well even when we account for how small that sample is. Overall, Condon has taken a massive statistical leap, and if it carries through the season, the NBA will take notice.