Wade points to NBA’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander when talking to Copeland about sharing the basketball

Will Wade was downtown Raleigh at The Pit to do his weekly radio show. He had a ton of great quotes, which we’ll get into in other articles, but I thought this back and forth with The Voice of the Wolfpack, Matt Chazanow.

Chazanow asked Wade about usage rates, which his staff has talked a lot about.

“The most simplistic version is the percentage of times that the ball ends in their hands to make a decision at the end of the play. Shoot, pass, whatever you want to do…”

Wade explained that he needed to talk to Quadir Copeland after the Virginia game because he was holding onto the ball too much…

“So let’s put it this way. I had to sit down with Q before the Virginia game — like in the last three games before Boston College. All right, who’s the best player in the NBA right now?”

Chazanow guesses a few guys…

“Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. So he has the ball for the Thunder, the best team in the NBA. He has the ball 38% of the time for the Thunder. In our last three games, Q had the ball over 40% of the time. I said, What in the world are you doing?  I was a little more colorful than that. Sure. But if the best player in the world has the ball, like, what are you doing? Yeah, it’s too much. Get the ball out of your hands. There are other people.”

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We actually talked about this exact thing in early December. NC State’s key to figuring this thing out rests in policing these usage rates. As fans, you likely see it more as ball movement, but they are directly related…

INSIDE THE NUMBERS:
Pairing the usage rate analytics against offensive efficiency numbers and overlaying those with Will Wade’s post-Liberty comments shows you how NC State is planning on finding a way to get the most out of their two superstars.https://t.co/v7TshfevZu pic.twitter.com/hW6tXzNLdK

— Pack Insider (@PackInsider) December 12, 2025

Q responded well vs. Boston College

“He had 10 assists, and I explained to him, Q, in the games that if you shoot 10 or more shots, we’re 1-4. Right. What else do you want me to tell you? ‘Well, I can get to the rim.’ Well, no joke, you can get to the rim. But that’s what they want you to do.

“Because when he’s shooting, that means Paul’s not shooting. That means Matt’s not being efficient. So we had to recalibrate that part of it, and the biggest guy who took the brunt of that is Darrion, who has to have the ball. And when he has the ball over 40 minutes — Look, he’s going to take some crazy shots. He’s going to miss some layups. He’s going to shoot that little fadeaway I don’t like. He’s going to do all that stuff. But over 40 minutes, when you give him the ball, you win. Over 40 minutes, that stuff contributes to winning.”

And so you have to get him the ball over 40 minutes. So the biggest difference was that we had Darrion at 31 %, Q at 30 %. And so then the offense just all of a sudden looks better. Well, no joke. We’ve got the two guys who can create rotation. And what happens is they just load up on Q when he’s got the ball for 45 percent of the game. I mean, in the Virginia game, Q had the ball for over six minutes himself. Darrion had it for two minutes. That can’t happen. If you time the actual time they had the ball … I told Q we’re going to have to buy a new air pump, pump the ball back up on the dribbling. That was the main thing that we needed to get fixed.