Back-to-Back ROYs? Not So Fast

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

It’s been an especially unlucky year for the NBA’s rookie class. After fellow top-10 picks Aaron Gordon and Julius Randle were already felled by injury, we received the unfortunate news this week that an ACL tear would knock out prohibitive Rookie of the Year favorite Jabari Parker for the season. With the rookie class looking like Steve Buschemi’s ‘People to Kill’ list in Billy Madison, many Sixers fans have begun dreaming of back-to-back ROY winners hailing from Philadelphia. However, while K.J. McDaniels and Nerlens Noel may occupy 2 of the top 6 spots on the NBA Rookie Ladder, there are a couple significant reasons that scenario is extremely unlikely to play out.

First, given the distaste many people have for the Extreme Makeover: NBA Edition way of rebuilding the Sixers are undergoing, I can’t believe voters would ever reward the franchise with such an honor in consecutive years. I realize the award should go to a player as long as he is deserving, but it also serves as a referendum on the drafting and development down by the respective team, and given the outcry against the Sixers’ methods, you have to think many people would go with a slightly inferior candidate rather than give Sam Hinkie and co. credit.

Even setting that issue aside, let’s take a look at the numbers of the past 20 ROY winners, in addition to those put up so far this season by Noel and McDaniels.

Even in this day and age of advanced statistics, popcorn numbers still do the talking for many voters and the stats put up by the two Sixers rookies require plenty more butter and salt. The absolute lowest ppg total over the past 20 winners was the 11.9 mark put up by Mike Miller in 2000-01. Let’s set that as the rock bottom benchmark, because it was certainly already an outlier, as the next lowest was Amar’e Stoudemire’s 13.5.

Now, Noel sits at 8.1 ppg, and wasn’t above 8.4 for either the month of November or December, so there’s no reason he’s going to significantly improve in the scoring department over the remainder of the season. He’s out. K.J. McDaniels is at 9.5 ppg, but was at least averaging double figures for November at 10.6 ppg, which included his hot stretch of play during the end of the month. Voters might be more inclined to overlook the Sixers stink with McDaniels since he refused to sign the Hinkie contract special before the season; they could identify with him as a player standing up to that broken system. Still, even his month of November, which included some unsustainable levels of shooting, didn’t bring him near the scoring benchmark we’ve set as the ROY criteria.

Which all means that barring major injury at some point this season, the Rookie of the Year award is Andrew Wiggins’ to lose. Currently averaging 12.6 ppg, Wiggins is the only rookie aside from Jabari Parker in double figures, and having scored 14.3 ppg so far in December, those numbers are only trending upward. The fact that he was the first overall pick only furthers his cause; NBA folks love to be able to back up their own internal talent evaluation process. So no matter how many GIFs Sixers fans make of high-flying dunks or ferocious blocks by McDaniels and Noel, they’ve not bound to end up with hardware by season’s end.