It’s time for the season’s first edition of the NBA Rookie Rankings. And, boy, is this a difficult thing to build. This has not been a productive class so far.
Very few players are getting anything resembling a significant role, especially on good teams. Last season at this time, 14 rookies were averaging at least seven points per game. Entering Tuesday, there were eight, and four of those players are posting catastrophic true shooting percentages under 48 percent.
Advertisement To refresh on the rankings as a whole: We rank the league’s top 15 rookies, based on how they have performed as NBA players. These are not based on how they are doing at the time of the rankings or a projection of the players they will become. They are full-season assessments of how they have played to this point in their NBA careers.
What do I look for when I rank players? Minutes and roles matter. What is each rookie getting asked to do? How often are they seeing the court? Are they being asked to create offense for their teams? Is their role limited, and how successful are they in that role? How successful is the team with them within that role? What is the degree of difficulty of said role? Is the player logging real minutes on a good team or eating up minutes on a bad team that doesn’t have anyone better? This is an art, not a science. The rankings involve examining numbers and analyzing a painstaking amount of tape, and I value the latter more.
The structure is as follows: I rank the roo.
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