In my very humble opinion, I can honestly say I know a good player from a bad one. I also know that sometimes I can allow my predjudgement of my favorite team (Timberwolves) to say that “I like this player”. But one player that I can honestly say will be good is Wayne Ellington.

I sometimes don’t like to dwell on stats when it comes to matters of action, instead of numbers. Wayne Ellington is a “natural”. What I mean by natural is that the things that he does, he does them so well, and when running a triangle offense, Wayne Ellington always seems to be in the right place at the right time.

For a rookie, the 1st year is to get a feel for the NBA game, and being the 28th overall pick in the draft, I consider Wayne to be a steal.

There was a lot of fuss in the Wolves not taking a shooting guard in the draft with their first 2 picks, yet people completely forget that we got Wayne Ellington.

What’s highly apparent is that Wayne Ellington is very underrated. His game is very much different than most think. In fact, up until this point, many Timberwolves fan’s are believing that Wayne Ellington is a true off-guard, so it compelled me when he said “In high school, I used to dominate the ball, and do a lot of things that I didn’t do in college”.

It’s funny because I’ve seen many glimpses of different qualities in his game at random moments.

He runs the fast break well with Jonny Flynn and Corey Brewer. He’s very volume savvy, meaning that he makes the most of his time on the court.

In a preseason game, Wayne Ellington had a game in which he played 16 minutes, scoring 11 points on 5-8 shooting, and 3-4 from the 3-point line.

While he hasn’t had a good game so far, he chooses his spots carefully and as Kurt Rambis said “He does a lot of things well, naturally”.  “There are so many things he does naturally well”.

It’s almost unfair that Wayne Ellington does not start for this ball club, but something tells me that his minutes will go up, given the fact that SG/SF Sasha Pavlovic is showing inconsistency, and Damien Wilkins is not part of the Wolves “future”.

In college, Wayne Ellington was NCAA’s Most Outstanding Player, and those types of players don’t get drafted 28th overall.

He shot over 50% from the 3-point line in the preseason, and while he hasn’t had a game to showcase his abilities, remember we’re still only 3 games into the season.

Simply put, Wayne is a shooting guard that excels in all types of offenses, given his speed and his incredibly underatted athleticism. Mark my words: Wayne Ellington will be great.

I

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 2:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.