2014 All-Rookie Defensive Team

Naming the best defensive rookies of the Lottery teams.

PG: Michael Carter-Williams (Philadelphia 76ers)

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. Michael Carter-Williams was pretty much the unanimous choice for NBA Rookie of the Year, and thanks to his tremendous size and length for a point guard NBA teams knew he had possessed great potential as a defender at the next level.  Carter-Williams knows how to use his length to his advantage, he finished his rookie campaign averaging right at two steals per game which ranked sixth in the NBA. He snatched about five defensive boards per contest which is very impressive for a guard. Ultimately, Carter-Williams had little competition for this position on the rookie all-defensive team. Trey Burke had a solid rookie campaign, but more of his strengths are on the offensive end. Other than that the talent was pretty bare for rookie point guards this year.

SG: Victor Oladipo (Orlando Magic)

This position really wasn’t close either. Coming out of college Victor Oladipo was regarded to possess tremendous potential as a defender in the NBA, and he sure showed us why this season. Where Oladipo especially thrives is off ball defense. According to Synergy sports Oladipo held his opposition to 28.4 percent shooting on shots off the screen and 28.6 percent on shots off hand-offs. That’s really, really good and Oladipo ranked 13^th in the entire NBA in both of those situations. Oladipo refuses to quit on a play.  You will constantly watch him fight through screens to contest shots and force misses. Again there’s no one who even pushed Oladipo for this spot, he’s making defense his own craft and in a few years he’ll be one of the top wing defenders in the NBA.

SF: Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks)

There were not many good rookie small forwards this year, but one of the most exciting young prospects in the NBA is Milwaukee Bucks wing Giannis Antetokounmpo. Despite still being very raw and young (19-years-old), Antetokounmpo already excels in multiple aspects of the game. One of them is on-ball defense. With an absolutely ridiculous 7-3 wingspan, Antetokounmpo has all the potential in the world to become a lock-down defender that could possibly defend at least three, possibly four, positions effectively in the future. With implausible athleticism, instincts and physical tools there is currently no limit to the Greek Freak’s ceiling. In the end, this honor didn’t require much thinking either. Otto Porter was a huge disappointment this year considering he was selected third overall and Tony Snell looked decent off the bench at times, but other than that there really wasn’t much to choose from.

PF: Ryan Kelly (Los Angeles Lakers)

The Lakers had a really bad season this year and as a result of that Ryan Kelly got a lot of minutes for a mid-second round pick and he flashed signs of being a really solid player. Most of Kelly’s  prominent strengths are on the offensive end as a floor spacer and passer, but he’s not a total dud on the defensive end either. For a rookie Kelly rebounded the ball at a decently high rate, he finished with 3.7 boards per contest which was eleventh among all rookies. Additionally Kelly averaged a respectable 0.8 blocks per game.

C: Gorgui Dieng (Minnesota Timberwolves)

Heading into the season we knew Minnesota had an established front court in veteran incumbents Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic, but it was also expected that rookie Gorgui Dieng may get some burn off the bench for defensive purposes and he did. He also played pretty well in most of these situations. The most attractive trait in Dieng out of Louisville was his potential as a rim protector, and that’s more than likely why the Wolves spent a first round selection on him. As good as Love and Pekovic are, neither possess real talent as a rim protector. It certainly took Dieng a while to figure things out, but by the end of the season was averaging 2.9 blocks per game per-48 minutes and in the final 18 games of the season where Dieng saw a massive improvement in his play he averaged 1.5 blocks per game. Dieng also showed he was a really solid rebounder down the stretch, from March 18 on he averaged 11.3 rebounds per game which was even more than all-star Kevin Love who’s regarded as an outstanding rebounder. If Nerlens Noel would have played at all this season I would have been very tempted to give him a spot on this team, but he didn’t and there were no better remaining options than Dieng.