April 02, 2015
About a month from now, Minnesota Timberwolves swingman Andrew Wiggins will very likely be announced as the NBA’s Rookie of the Year, and basketball fans in Chicago, Orlando, and Philadelphia will proceed to freak out as a result.
Here’s the thing: Rookie of the Year doesn’t matter, and winning it doesn’t positively alter any player’s career trajectory. This is admittedly a totally obvious observation to offer (I’m not exactly splitting the atom here), but think of it as more of a defense mechanism. I’m bracing for the outraged fans that send me running from Twitter for at least a couple of hours.
All we have to do is look back to recent history for examples of the award winners going every which way: Michael Carter-Williams won last season, and he didn’t magically learn how to shoot over the summer. Ditto for Tyreke Evans in 2010. Brandon Roy and Derrick Rose found major difficulty escaping injury woes after being crowned as the league’s top first-year player, which both sadly left (and are still leaving, in Rose’s case) a huge void. Damian Lillard is an awesome point guard that deservedly captured ROY honors in 2012-13, but the guy who finished in second place will be the best basketball player on the planet for at least a half-decade barring major injury.
Point is, Nerlens Noel is still going to be Nerlens Noel regardless of whether he receives that little clear trophy or not. The same goes for Wiggins, Nikola Mirotic, and Elfrid Payton. And most importantly, Sam Hinkie’s rebuilding plan (aka “THE PLAN”) won’t be further validated if the skinny 6-foot-10 shot-blocker wins Rookie of the Year. We’ll have to wait and see if Noel is turning away drivers at the rim in the Eastern Conference Finals a few years from now to know that for sure.
Look, I get it. By their nature, fans are irrational (trust me, I know that first-hand), and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see “your guy” rewarded. Just try to keep in context that the Sixers and Noel himself should already be very pleased with the progress that the rook made in the season’s second half. It’s definitely a nice base to build on.
Should he win the award, though? Has he actually had the best season? Let’s compare him to the other major contenders one at a time.
(Note: All Charts Courtesy of Basketball Reference)
This head-to-head matchup features two players that both made a Seabiscuit-esque charge down the season’s backstretch and have unique enough hairstyles that their team Twitter accounts made an April Fools’ tweet where they pretended each guy got a haircut via Photoshop:
It's gone! We will miss you @elfrid's hair. 😱 pic.twitter.com/KG53y81EKJ
— Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) April 1, 2015
En route to the arena. pic.twitter.com/duhrUlsHtA
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) April 1, 2015
Noel’s major individual weakness is his inefficient shooting, and Payton is somehow much worse in this category, scoring slightly less on a per-minute basis and sporting a pretty terrible 45.7 true shooting percentage. For a frame of reference, Michael Carter-Williams was at 48 percent during his rookie year. Payton can’t throw the ball in the ocean, as evidenced by his DeAndre Jordan impression a few months ago:
There is something to be said for team production, though, and Payton definitely has an advantage in that category. The Magic are a really bad offensive team, but they resemble a professional outfit unlike the Sixers. Noel can’t be held responsible for all of the Sixers’ offensive woes, but make no mistake, he’s played a pretty major part. Plus, when Payton hits the bench Orlando gets much worse offensively, and when Noel hits the bench Philly actually becomes better. Throw in Payton’s impressive floor game — He has some really interesting change-of-pace moves down pat already, which he’ll need to utilize in order to compensate for his jumper — and the Magic rookie is decently ahead at the halfway mark in my opinion.
Basketball is a game that is played on both ends of the floor, and Noel obviously shines on defense. The Magic are 26th in defensive rating and the Sixers are 11th, largely due to Noel’s ability uncanny ability to both create steals with his quick hands and protect the rim at the same time. Payton is definitely a good defender, but a burgeoning ball hawk at the point guard position isn’t the type of destructive force Noel is on the floor, glass, and around the rim.
ESPN’s Ben Alamar made the case for Payton as ROY, and I have to admit, this choice is more difficult than first expected. In Payton, you have a player that doesn’t take a ton off the table on either end of the floor. In Noel, you have a player that takes a decent amount off the table offensively, but puts a ton back on defense. On a team that has a similar winning percentage, I’ll give the Sixers’ big man the slight edge because almost all of his advanced numbers are better.
One of the major problems with Wiggins’ candidacy is that it’s hard to quantify wing defenders, and he’s a lock to be one of the league’s best in time:
As far as picking rookie of the year, the numbers don’t bare that out. Minnesota is as big of a joke defensively as the Sixers are offensively, and the Timberwolves are actually better on that end of the floor when Wiggins is off the court. Wiggins has definitely handled a much larger offensive responsibility a decent bit better than Noel, but after that, his case for ROY is actually pretty thin comparatively.
For me, this is the easiest decision of the three. I still really like Wiggins’ potential and would probably tab him as the best player going forward out of this rookie class (minus his former Kansas teammate, of course), but he hasn’t affected the game in nearly as many ways as someone like Noel in their first year. He’ll probably win the award because POINTZ like Carter-Williams last year, but I would personally rank him fourth out of this group.
By the way, Dear Lord:
Mirotic is the wild card of this group. First off, he’s 24 years old, and unlike the other three guys, has been playing high-level professional basketball for a while now. If the NCAA is the equivalent of High-A baseball, the Spanish ACB is Triple-A. Can you imagine if J.P. Crawford was forced to be the Phillies’ opening day shortstop? That’s essentially the transition Wiggins, Noel, and Payton had to make this season. Do we dock any points from the Montenegrin big man (that looks like a “Game of Thrones” character) because of his advanced age and experience while also grading the three young guys on a curve? I say no.
Also, Mirotic is the only member of this group of four that plays for an above average basketball team, a positive factor we have to balance with the lack of minutes Tom Thibodeau has played him comparatively (1495, and the next lowest of the three is 2225). At some point, you have to take away some of the credit when the other three players are out on the floor so much more.
What impresses me so much about Mirotic is that the Bulls are 4.2 points per 100 possessions better on the defensive end of the floor when he plays. He has proven to be a much better scorer than Noel while equaling him in a lot of the other areas, while also contributing to a playoff team. For all of those reasons, I would vote Mirotic for rookie of the year as long as he closes out the year receiving consistent minutes and doesn’t fall off a cliff statistically.
Final Standings: 1. Mirotic 2. Noel 3. Payton 4. Wiggins
