One of the big questions heading into the season is how will all of the new faces fill the roles of the dearly departed? How will Jonny Flynn's minutes compare to Sebastian Telfair's? What about Ramon Sessions and Kevin Ollie? Who will replace Mike Miller? Are Ryan Hollins, Brian Cardinal, and Oleksiy Pecherov significant upgrades over Jason Collins, Craig Smith, and Mark Madsen? Let's start with the point guard spot.
The biggest problem with point guard projections for the Wolves is that Jonny Flynn is a rookie. There's really no sure-fire way to go about projecting college stats into the pros but the good folks at Basketball Prospectus do their best with the SCHOENE system (NOTE: You can buy the SCHOENE spreadsheet by clicking here.) They project Flynn and Bassy as follows:
| Jonny Flynn | Sebastian Telfair | |
| 2p% | .433 | .415 |
| Ast% | .076 | .074 |
| TO% | .179 | .160 |
| oRTG | 103.6 | 104.3 |
| dRTG | 106.8 | 107.0 |
| Win% | .395 | .412 |
| WARP | -1.0 | -0.1 |
| FTA% | .114 | 0.77 |
SCHOENE projects Flynn to be the much more versatile and effective scorer, with similarity scores close to DJ Augustin and Deron Williams rather than Darrick Martin and Geoff Huston. They both run about a -3 OE/DE differential and they are in the same ballpark in everything except FTA%. What should stick out as a big positive for Flynn is that he is projected to keep it close in the turnover department as a rookie on a team with fewer scoring options. Is this stat line good enough? Do you expect more?
What we will be keeping a look at in terms of comparing Flynn to Bassy is this: Ast%/TO%, oRTG/dRTG, FTA%, and shooting. How does Flynn distribute and take care of the ball, how does his team perform while he's out there, how much does he get to the line, and how well does he shoot it?