Here is the plain text result:
We’re doing our NBA Awards Watch every Thursday until the end of the regular season, and each week we’ll emphasize a new award. This week, we’ve got Rookie of the Year.
Sandwiched between the class with Victor Wembanyama and the upcoming Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, this rookie class has been one we’ve known isn’t likely to deliver a future star or franchise-changer for a while. But there are still some good role players in the mix. That has made me wonder whether we’ve seen similar ROY races in the past.
For the criteria I use for each award, check out our initial Awards Watch from this season. It explains how I, and a lot of the voting history, look at the six major individual awards. We’ll go heavy on Rookie of the Year here and give quick-hit thoughts for the other awards. All betting odds are courtesy of BetMGM.
We haven’t had a lot of duds when it comes to the Rookie of the Year winners. By duds, I mean players who eventually ended up being mediocre or afterthought players in the NBA. Let’s take it back 40 years to 1985 when Michael Jordan won the award.
Person, Miller, Evans, Carter-Williams, and Brogdon were the worst Rookie of the Year winners in the last four decades. Person had a 13-year career and put up 19.0 points per game in his first six seasons with the Indiana Pacers. Miller had a 17-year career, averaged double-digit scoring, was named Sixth Man of the Year, and won two titles with the Miami Heat. Evans had a historic start to his career, but eventually, foot and knee issues and a suspension for violating the antidrug program cut his career short. Carter-Williams was traded the year after winning Rookie of the Year, and we all knew his rookie numbers were inflated by the Trust the Process Sixers.
The example most akin to what we’re seeing in this 2024-25 rookie class is what happened with the Rookie of the Year campaign in 2016-17. That was the year a second-round pick ended up winning the award because a Philadelphia 76ers rookie simply didn’t play enough games to garner enough votes to justify taking home the trophy.
Joel Embiid was the best rookie in the class, and it was a legitimate conversation of whether 31 games was enough to be named Rookie of the Year. Jaylen Brown and Jamal Murray were in that class, but they didn’t have significant rookie seasons.
This year, once again, we might end up seeing a second-round pick take the award. Payton Pritchard is not Embiid by any stretch, but he does look like he’s capable of being a great role player. Pritchard is by far the best rookie we’ve seen this season, but he’s played 23 games and is out for the season with a knee injury. He averaged 15.3 points in 25.3 minutes with a 58.9 true shooting percentage. No other rookie can really approach that level of production.
Mark Daigneault, Oklahoma City Thunder: He’s averaging 14.2 points per game with 64.5 percent true shooting. The Thunder are better when he’s on the floor, and his usage rate is below 20 percent. That means he’s just hyper-efficient in how he affects the game with his scoring.
Kenny Atkinson, Cleveland Cavaliers: An impressive outpouring of Cavs fans did not read what I wrote last week and just reacted to the ranking. With that, I say, thank you for clicking! But Atkinson is back in the lead position in a tight race because the Cavs keep winning. So do the Pistons, but not like this. The Cavs became the sixth team in league history to have two 15-game win streaks in the same season, and they might win 70 games. They’re on pace to get to 69 wins, and this streak doesn’t even end when Mitchell sits.
Ty Jerome, Cleveland Cavaliers: Jerome went from a fringe role player to being integral on the best team in the NBA. That’s remarkable improvement, even though he has no chance of winning this award.
Source link
