NBA Rookie of the Year Update

60 players have debuted this year in the NBA. That number got to 51 within the first 2 weeks of the season then slowly trickled up to 60. There were 82 debuts last year so we can expect about 20-25 more debuts for the rest of the year, so certainly we've seen the cream of the crop although a handful of useful NBA players might still appear. So who's the best? I start with Minutes Per Game as an indicator of the team's faith in their player. Right now there are 20 guys playing more the 15MPG, let's start with those dudes.

Top 20 MPG: Okafor (30.7), Mudiay (29.3), Towns (29.1), Porzingis (28.2), Russell (27.1), Winslow (26.4), Johnson (22.3), Hollis-Jefferson (22.1), McConnell (21.4), Kaminsky (21.0), Nance Jr (20.5), Booker (19.4), Neto (19.1), Jokic (18.8), Bjelica (18.7), Lyles (18.2), Anthony Brown (17.7), Cauley-Stein (17.7), Grant (15.9), Turner (15.5)

Clearly, Okafor, Towns and Porzingis are the top 3 candidates with Mudiay as a pretty solid #4 (although due to injuries, he's quite a bit behind in games played). Porzingis has New York love (a powerful and loud thing). The eye test suggests that Towns is already a complete presence on the floor. Okafor is a helluva scorer, needs to round out his game (and clean up his off-court persona). Mudiay needs to avoid injuries but otherwise looks like he's gonna be a solid player on an overachieving squad; I'd say right now he's a distant 4th place but there's a lot of season left for him to shine out.

Just to show how head and shoulders the top 4 guys are, here's a coupla more stats:

5 rookies scoring double digit PPG: Okafor (17.5), Towns (15.6), Porzingis (14.0), Russell (11.9), Mudiay (10.7). 7 rookies above 5 RPG: Towns (9.5), Porzingis (8.0), Okafor (7.4), Hollis-Jefferson (6.1), Jokic (5.4), Nance Jr (5.0), Cauley-Stein (5.0). And only 3 rookies have 100 FTA: Okafor (68%), Porzingis (86%), Towns (86%).

Russell, Winslow and Johnson are having fine rookie campaigns and suggest that they're going to continue to get better in the future (which I think should be a part of ROY consideration).

Hollis-Jefferson looks like a solid role player but he's been out for a while and I think won't return for several more weeks; even still, he's a bright spot for the Nets.

McConnell...uh....nice kid....plays hard....should make a nice backup PG some day....but I gotta say his minutes are exemplary of the Sixers' desire to lose more than anything.

Kaminksy and Nance Jr are nice players on thin rosters, they deserve their minutes and both seem crafty enough to last in this league but neither are clearly stars to my eye.

Booker is just starting to get more minutes and taking advantage of them; he's a natural born scorer and with Bledsoe out, there's plenty of room for him to release his inner chucker.

Neto, Jokic, Bjelica and Lyles are getting minutes on teams that are used to giving minutes to new guys; I haven't seen much of Neto actually but Jokic looks like a really solid player, Bjelica is one of my personal faves of this bunch and I think Lyles is gonna be really good in 2-3 years.

Uh, I don't know much who Anthony Brown is, he's only played 18 games and has shuttled back and forth to the D League. I assume his advanced minutes are peculiar to nights when the Laker bench was extra thin. Sometimes these statistical analyses catch these flies in the ointment. No offense to Mr. Brown, I wish him well but I suspect he's not really a top 20 candidate for ROY.

Cauley-Stein is a great athlete on a team that needs way more than what he can provide; hopefully some day he'll get to the right team and be the all-out berserker he was born to be.

Grant was one of my favorite PGs in the NCAA last year, not at all surprised to see him getting solid minutes with NYK.

Turner is another one that's still getting used to his minutes, shows promise, looks solid but hasn't done much yet.

Others worth noting: Portis, Hezonja, Oubre look pretty solid so far; Payne and Harrell are just now starting get some run; and Marjanovic certainly has his admirers. I don't think any of those six guys really has a shot at ROY unless they really really (really!) take off in the last half of the season but they look like ballers that will be around for a while.

Right now I'd take Towns over Porzingis with Mudiay and Okafor as #3 and #4. But there's still plenty of season left and at this point (hate to be that guy) but injuries can still derail this race. Others that could still steal some serious votes if they start getting more minutes: Winslow, Russell, Booker, Jokic and Portis.