The First NBA Rookies Of The Month Are Out

Maybe this makes me a loser, but I had been waiting for this first meaningless NBA honor to be announced. We’ve had so many awesome starts to the year from this Draft class, it’s almost impossible to pick a bad combination. Obviously Luka is a shoe in, and personally I have no problem with Trae Young getting it from the East. The problem is a lot of the best rookies all play in the West, with guys like Ayton, Jaren Jackson, and Bagley III all having legit runs so far. In the East you could certainly make the case for someone like Allonzo Trier who has been AWESOME for the Knicks, and Collin Sexton came on strong in recent weeks, but I have to agree that so far Young has been the best option from that conference.

Here is how both have looked all season

Doncic: 18.6/6.5/4.3 on 44/38% splits with 2.4 3PM

Young: 15.6/3.0/7.6 on 37/24% splits with 1.4 3PM

Here is how they looked in the month of November

Doncic: 17.7/6.7/4.2 on 43/36% splits with 2.1 3PM

Young: 14.0/3.7/8.1 on 35/19% splits with 1.4 3PM

Obviously the shooting splits from Young don’t look great when you compare him to someone like Trier who averaged 13.3 on 48/44%, and I even wouldn’t have hated if Wendell Carter Jr won it either. There isn’t a lot to choose from in the East, so I get why Young won.

I talked about it a few weeks ago, but the more we see these kids play the more I’m convinced we are one day going to look back on this class as one of the best drafts in recent memory. It’s just so deep with guys that are playing well right away and actually making a difference with their team that I can’t really remember something like this happening since like 2003. A situation where you have this much depth outside of the lottery? So far so good.

So while at the end of the day Rookie of The Month isn’t all that big a deal, this is the first one we’ve got and it wasn’t all that surprising. I’m curious to see how different this looks as the season go along, because none of these rookies look like they are about to slow down, but the rookie wall is real. It’ll be interesting to see which of these high usage rookies start to feel that rookie wall, and who might separate themselves as we get closer to the ROY voting time.

P.S.

Credit to me for not making a Ben Simmons got snubbed joke. I would just like that on record. Thank you.