Is Ben McLemore The Next Dwyane Wade?

The short answer to the headline is: probably not. While I wouldn't rule anything out, the odds of any one player becoming an NBA superstar, no matter how good of a start to his career he has had, are so low that it is hardly even worth making the case.

And yet, Ben McLemore has put up some crazy good numbers in the first month of his college career. Someone in the comments of the last post about him brought up Dwayne Wade, so I thought I would take a quick look, expecting Wade to be far superior.

But, well, see for yourselves:

Honestly they are virtually the same player so far. (for the record Wade had a 108.8 offensive rating his Freshman year to McLemore's 116.6 so far. I didn't include it in the chart because it threw off the scale).

As Freshmen, they're both high usage players who shoot quite a bit, can rebound a bit (Wade a bit more), shoot fairly well (McLemore's true shooting percentage edge is boosted by his free throw superiority) and don't turn the ball over much for Freshmen, especially high usage ones.

Who knows how his development path will end up, but McLemore sure compares favorably to one of the best NBA players of the last decade. Now if only we are able to do a comparison of their Sophomore year numbers next year.