In terms of the player himself, I would go with Newton, though I do not expect him to get too much court time this season. I simply do not think we have any real idea what we have in this kid, hopefully a lot.
In terms of guys likely to be in the rotation, I would go with Griffin. He is the guy who needs to replace Elijah. I would not expect him to give us as much as Elijah did, but if he cant get us 80% of that production we will have issues.
If by "wildcard" you mean a player whose performance this year will
trump = outperform the 'high cards' = better players of the other teams, then that means something more than
just the "surprise" or "unexpected" performer who creates a lot of wins for us, yes?
By
that definition, I see 3 candidates who could fulfill that special kind of role: Quincy, Marek, & Kadary.
We already know how impactful Quincy can be. If a healthy QG suddenly becomes a 3pt threat, he predicts to become quite a dominant force on the court, both on offense & defense. Maybe that's a big
if, but were it to pan out, he'd probably become our starting SF.
We already know how impactful Marek is when he's on the court. With him getting the green light as this team's first scoring option,
IF he also can start reliably hitting his 3pt shots, there may be no stopping him from dominating games whenever he's on the court. I'm suspecting there is a good chance of this.
Based solely on reports and JB's comments, Kadary could become the guy who is unstoppable on offense, and IF he can also show that he can play defense with equal proficiency, it could be he who is the team's Trump Card difference maker.
Frank could also conceivably blow up in this way, but I haven't heard enough high praise of him dominating the middle in practice to make me think he doesn't have quite a bit more to learn about playing Center in college.
Buddy & Joe & Alan & Sidibe will all have their nights, but if they become regularly dominant vs the toughest opponents, I will frankly be surprised...