You know, there's this specific kind of obsession
we all have with beginnings. You see it everywhere.
In the tech world, it's all about the garage
days of, like, Apple or Amazon. Right, the origin
story. The origin story. We just can't get enough
of it. We're fascinated not just by the hero,
you know, at the peak of their powers, but by
that exact moment. The exact moment the world
realized, oh, okay. Everything is about to change.
It's the arrival. I like to call it the day one
phenomenon. I just love the idea of immediate,
undeniable impact. Exactly. And, you know, when
we talk about the NBA, usually the awards we
really obsess over, they're retrospective. So,
finals MVP, Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame jacket,
the championship ring. Those are career toppers.
They're all about the destination. Yeah, the
culmination of everything. But there is one award
that's just, it's different. It isn't a summary.
It's a prophecy. And that's the Rookie of the
Year. It is, I think, arguably the most honest
award the league actually has. Well, think about
it. There's no voter fatigue. You can't be tired
of a guy who just got there. That's a great point.
And there's no it's his turn narrative that you
sometimes get with the league MVP where, you
know, someone's been great for five years. So
we finally give it to him. Right. This is just
a raw, unfiltered assessment of new talent hitting
the ecosystem for the first time. And looking
at this. massive stack of research we have in
front of us for this deep dive. What really struck
me is just how high the signal to noise ratio
is with this award. You might think, oh, it's
just the best new guy. Maybe he peaks at 22 and
then just vanishes. But the data says the complete
opposite. It really does. This award is essentially
the first filter for the Hall of Fame. It really
is. We're going to get into the specific numbers
later on. But the hit rate, you know, the correlation
between winning rookie of the year and ending
up in Springfield with a jacket is just. It's
staggering. It really does separate the guys
who have a good career from the absolute legends.
So that's our mission today. We are going to
unpack the entire history of the NBA's top newcomer
honor. We're going from the very first official
winner back in 1953 all the way up to the present
day with Stephon Castle. And along the way, we've
got to talk about the mechanics, the voting,
some of the really weird. Red shirt loopholes
that drive fans crazy every couple of years.
Oh, yeah. And the guys who won. Yeah. But the
NBA literally erased them from the history books
because of scandals. The lost winners. Yeah.
But I think we have to start with the hardware
itself because the physical trophy just went
through this massive identity shift that I think
really changes how we view the award. Right.
Let's start there. The rebrand. For, what, 70
years, if you were the best rookie, you took
home something called the Eddie Gottlieb trophy.
Yep. Now, just from a historical standpoint,
Eddie Gottlieb is, he's a titan. Oh, absolutely.
The ultimate administrator. They called him the
mogul. The mogul. He was the founder and coach
of the Philadelphia Warriors. He literally made
the league schedule by hand for years. I mean,
without Eddie Gottlieb, there's a good chance
the NBA just collapses in the 1950s. Right. But.
And look, no disrespect to Eddie, he wasn't exactly
striking fear into the hearts of defenders on
the court. He wasn't dropping 50 points a night,
no. He was a guy in a suit, an incredibly important
guy in a suit, but a suit nonetheless. Exactly.
So starting in the 2022 -23 season, the NBA decided,
you know what, let's align the trophy with the
actual on -court achievement it represents. And
they renamed it... The Wilt Chamberlain trophy.
Which feels like the only logical choice, really.
But I think we need to contextualize why Wilt
is the standard. Because we hear the name Wilt
and we just think 100 points. Right. Big number.
But his rookie season, specifically the 1959
-60 season, is at, it's statistically offensive.
It honestly sounds like a typo in the record
books. Yeah. It doesn't look real. In his rookie
year, Wilt Chamberlain averaged 37 .6 points
per game. 37 points, six points as a rookie.
And 27 rebounds per game. 27 rebounds. And to
top it all off, he played 46 .4 minutes per game.
Wait, wait, an NBA game is only 48 minutes long?
Exactly. That means he basically never, ever
sat down. That's insane. So he didn't just win
rookie of the year. In that one season. He won
the All -Star Game MVP and the league regular
season MVP. All at once. In his first year. See,
that's the context I wanted. Because people often
try to wave it away and say, oh, the pace was
faster back then, which it's true. There were
more possessions. Sure, that's a factor. But
playing 46 minutes a night against guys who are
physically trying to beat you up, that's not
just pace. That's a different level of endurance.
It is. So naming the trophy after Wilt is the
league's way of saying to every new winner. You
know, whether it's Paolo Banchero or Wemby or
now Stefan Castle. Here. Here is the bar. Good
luck. You will almost certainly never reach it,
but this is what perfection looks like from day
one. And speaking of Stefan Castle, the 2024
-25 winner, it's pretty interesting that the
trophy currently resides in San Antonio because
the Spurs have a very, very specific history
with this award that we're definitely going to
get to. Oh, yeah. But first, let's get under
the hood of the award itself. How does this machine
actually work? So, on the surface, it's deceptively
simple. The award was officially established
in the 1952 -53 season, and the criteria is just...
the best first -year player in the regular season.
And we have to stress, regular season. We see
this confusion every single year. A rookie might
have a pretty quiet year, but then he just explodes
in the playoffs. Think about a guy like Tyler
Harrow in the bubble a few years back. Right.
Big playoff moments. Does that kind of playoff
run help him win the award? It helps him 0%.
The ballots are usually due before the playoffs
even tip off. It is an 82 -game sample size.
Period. So if you average, say, 30 in the playoffs,
but only eight in the regular season. You are
not winning rookie of the year. It's not a postseason
award. And who is actually casting these ballots?
Because, you know, in the NFL, you have the Associated
Press. In college football, you have coaches
involved in some of the big awards. For the NBA,
it's a panel of sports writers and broadcasters
from both the United States and Canada. So it's
the media. And that's crucial, you think? I think
it's crucial because it removes what you could
call a coach's bias. Okay. Explain that. How
so? Well, if coaches voted, you'd probably see
a lot more votes for, you know, the guy who plays
hard -nosed defense or the guy on the winning
team, even if his stats aren't great. Or petty
rivalries. Or even petty rivalries where a coach
just refuses to vote for a player who, like,
dropped 40 on his team twice. Right. The media
tends to look at the whole package. The stats,
the narrative, the wow factor, and importantly,
individual brilliance, even if it's happening
on a really bad team. But it's not just pick
one name, is it? Because that could lead to these
weird plurality wins where a guy could win with
like 30 % of the vote if it's a crowded field.
Correct. It's a weighted system. And understanding
this little bit of math explains why we don't
have more controversies. Voters pick a first,
a second, and a third place on their ballot.
Okay. First place is worth five points, second
place gets you three points, and third place
gets you one point. So mathematically, this is
designed to reward consensus, not just a flash
in the pan. Precisely. Let's say, you know, player
A is the most exciting rookie, highlights everywhere,
half the voters put him first, but maybe the
other half of the voters think he's inefficient,
a chucker, so they leave him completely off their
ballot. Okay, so it's polarizing. Very. Meanwhile,
you have player B, who is just solid. efficient,
helps his team win games. He's not on SportsCenter
every night, but everyone respects his game.
So maybe almost everyone puts player B second
on their ballot. So player B could actually sneak
in and win on the math because he appears on
almost every ballot, whereas player A is the
love him or hate him guy. Theoretically, yes,
it has happened. It forces the voter to look
at the entire field. It's not enough to be the
favorite of a few. You have to be respected by
the many. The winner is the one with the highest
point total, period, regardless of who had the
most first place votes. Which brings us to what
I call the gold standard, because sometimes the
math doesn't matter. Sometimes the choice is
so obvious that everyone just agrees. Unanimous
club. The six giants. Yeah. In over 70 years
of this award, with hundreds of opinionated writers
who, let's be honest, love to be contrarians.
Oh, they love having a weird take. Only six players
have ever received every single first place vote.
Not one rogue voter. It's actually harder to
do than winning the MVP unanimously. Think about
that. Stephen Curry is the only unanimous MVP
in league history. Wow. But we have six unanimous
rookies. Just shows that sometimes a rookie's
talent is just so overwhelming, so undeniable.
There's no room for debate. Okay, let's run through
them because I think each one represents a kind
of shift in the game. The first one on the list
was 1984, Ralph Sampson. And it's easy for people
to forget now just how terrifying Ralph Sampson
was as a prospect. He was 7 '4", coming out of
Virginia. A giant. But he didn't play like a
stiff, slow 7 -footer from the 50s. He could
run the floor. He had a soft touch on his shot.
He was agile. He was kind of Wemba Nyama before
Wemba Nyama, the original unicorn. In a way,
yeah. The Houston Rockets drafted him, and there
was just zero debate. He was an immediate 20
and 10 guy. He looked like the future of the
sport. Total no -brainer. Then we have to jump
forward to 1990, the Admiral, David Robinson.
Now, his situation was very unique. He wasn't
fresh out of college, strictly speaking. No,
and we'll definitely dive deep into his whole
redshirt status later, but just purely talking
about his performance. He entered the league
at 24 years old. Already a grown man. He was
physically a Greek god. He stepped onto the court
for the San Antonio Spurs and was immediately
one of the five best centers in the entire world.
Not one of the best rookies. One of the best
centers. Yeah. Unanimous. Then there's this long
gap. The entire 90s pass. The early 2000s pass.
No unanimous winners. Not Michael Jordan. Not
Shaq. Not LeBron. Not Tim Duncan. Right. And
think about the competition. Shaq had to contend
with a phenomenal rookie in Alonzo Mourning.
LeBron had Carmelo Anthony, who had a historically
great rookie season himself. Right. That was
a huge debate. That's the thing. To be unanimous,
you can't just be great. You have to be great
in a year where nobody else is even close to
your level. It's about the vacuum around you,
too. So 2011 arrives. Blake Griffin. The highlight
reel era begins. Yes. Blake had missed his actual
draft year, 2009, due to that brutal kneecap
injury. So he comes back in 2010 -11, and he
was just physically overwhelming. It wasn't just
the dunks, which were iconic. The Kia dunk. It
was his passing, his ball handling for a power
forward. He was doing things guys his size just
didn't do. I remember that season so clearly.
It felt like he was playing a different sport
than the guys who were trying to guard him. He's
jumping over cars in the dunk contest. But in
the actual games, he was treating defenders like
traffic cones. It was pure dominance. He made
the All -Star team as a rookie. And that's usually
the threshold. If you're so good as a rookie
that you make the All -Star team, you're probably
winning Rookie of the Year unanimously. Then,
just two years later, 2013, Damian Lillard. This
one is really interesting to me because he wasn't
a hype guy. He wasn't Zion Williamson or some
hashtag one pick everyone knew for years. No,
he was the opposite. He was a four -year player
from Weber State. Small school. A lot of people
didn't know who he was. But that experience mattered.
It mattered immensely. He walked onto the Portland
Trailblazers and played like a 10 -year veteran
from his first game. He was so composed. The
voters valued that kind of polish. He wasn't
making rookie mistakes. He was closing games.
Total control. Then, 2016, Carl Anthony Towns.
Kate. This was the prototype of the modern big
man. He could shoot the three. He could post
you up. He could handle the ball a bit. He averaged
a double -double for the Timberwolves so effortlessly,
it was almost boring. He just produced every
single night. Every night. No debate. And finally,
the most recent member of this very exclusive
club, 2024. Victor Wimbanyama. The alien. Yeah.
This was, without a doubt, the easiest vote in
the history of the award. You had Chet Holmgren,
who had a fantastic rookie season for Oklahoma
City. Historically great, even. Statistically,
one of the best rookie seasons ever for a defender.
In almost any other year in NBA history, Chet
wins Rookie of the Year probably easily. But
he ran into a buzzsaw. He ran into a 7 '4 guy
who was leading the entire league in blocks,
hitting step -back threes, and doing things that,
frankly, physics shouldn't allow a person to
do. It would have been actual malpractice to
vote for anyone else. It's so interesting to
me that four of those six, Sampson, Robinson,
Towns, Wemba and Yama, are big men. Well, it
speaks to the visual impact, doesn't it? I think
so. A dominant guard can control a game, for
sure. But a dominant 7 -footer changes the geometry
of the entire court. They alter every shot at
the rim. They grab every rebound. It's just impossible
to ignore a great big man. Their impact is visceral.
We mentioned Wilt and how he won the MVP and
Rookie of the Year in the same season. And it
feels like an unbreakable record, you know, like
DiMaggio's hit streak. It feels like it should
be. But he actually isn't the only one to do
it. No, there is one other name in that club.
You have to go to the 1968 -69 season. Wes Unseld.
Wes Unseld, the Baltimore Bullet. Who was built
like a refrigerator. He absolutely was. But here's
the crazy part. He was only 6 '7 playing center.
6 '7, but he was just immovable. He had this
incredible strength. He didn't score much. He
averaged something like 13 points a game. That's
it for an MVP. But he grabbed 18 rebounds a game.
And his outlet passing, he was famous for it.
He would grab a defensive rebound and throw a
perfect 80 -foot chest pass to a streaking guard.
He turned the defensive rebound into a fast break
faster than anyone in history. So the voters
looked at him and said, OK, he's not scoring
30, but he fundamentally changed the team's entire
identity. The Baltimore Bullets went from last
place in their division to first place. Yeah.
Literally worst to first. The voters rewarded
the winning. So they gave him both the MVP and
the Rookie of the Year. We haven't seen it happen
since. Why do you think that is? I mean. We had
some magical rookies. Magic Johnson started at
center in the NBA finals as a rookie and won
finals MVP. Right. Michael Jordan averaged 28
a game. Why no league MVP for them? I think the
league is just too talented now. The gap between
a 20 -year -old rookie, no matter how good, and
a 28 -year -old in his prime, Nikola Jokic or
Giannis Antetokounmpo, is just too wide. Physically
and mentally. Both. Wilt and Wes played in an
era where a true physical outlier could just...
bully the entire league immediately. The general
talent pool wasn't as deep. That makes sense.
The learning curve is just so much steeper now.
And speaking of learning curves, I want to talk
about the predictive power of this award. You
called it the first filter earlier. Right. So
if you take the list of all the Rookie of the
Year winners who are eligible for the Hall of
Fame, so basically they've been retired for long
enough. 30 of them are in the hall. 30. That
is a staggeringly high percentage compared to,
say, the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award.
It is. In football, a running back can win rookie
of the year by having a huge workload and then
be completely burned out in four years. Right.
The position is brutal. In basketball, if you
are skilled enough and talented enough to dominate
as a rookie, you usually have the fundamental
toolkit to dominate for a decade or more. You
just look at the names on that list. Kareem Abdul
-Jabbar. Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson.
Allen Iverson, 1996 -97. That wasn't just a stats
win for him. That was a cultural win. Oh, absolutely.
The crossover on Jordan, the baggy shorts, the
braids. He announced that a new era was arriving.
Yeah. And that's what this award does best. It
signals the arrival of the next one. But, and
this is where we get into the weeds. Sometimes
the definition of a rookie is a little pliable.
The anomalies. This is my favorite part of the
rule book. We absolutely need to talk about the
red shirts because it feels like every few years
a guy wins rookie of the year after sitting out
a full season and NBA Twitter just melts down.
He's not a rookie. He's a sophomore. It's the
Ben Simmons role debate or before that, the Blake
Griffin role debate. OK, let's break down the
actual logic here because it's important. Blake
Griffin gets drafted number one overall in 2009
by the Clippers. breaks his kneecap in the preseason,
doesn't play a single second of a regular season
game. Right. So according to the official NBA
bylaws, his rookie clock has not started. You
are a rookie in the first year that you actually
play in a regulation game. Sitting on the bench
in a suit doesn't count. So what does he do for
that whole 2009 -10 season? He's traveling with
the team. He's sitting in the film sessions.
He's working with NBA -level strength and conditioning
coaches. He's eating food prepared by NBA nutritionists.
That's the core of the argument against it, isn't
it? The advantage of the NBA diet for a year.
And it is a real tangible advantage. When Blake
finally debuted in 2010 -11, he was physically
much more mature and prepared than the guys who
were drafted in 2010, like John Wall. He had
a full year of professional conditioning under
his belt. And he came out and won the award unanimously.
He did. And then a few years later, Ben Simmons
did the exact same thing. Drafted in 2016, broke
his foot, sat out the whole year, came back in
2017 -18 and won. I remember that year vividly
because Donovan Mitchell, who was the true...
rookie in that class was making a huge deal out
of it. Oh, the pettiness was elite. He wore a
hoodie to a game that just said rookie on the
front with the official dictionary definition
printed on it. Just trolling Simmons. It was
great theater. But here's the counter argument,
to be fair to Blake and Ben. Okay. While they
had the advantage of all that professional training,
they also had the massive disadvantage of rust.
They hadn't played in a real competitive basketball
game in something like 18 months. That is incredibly
tough to overcome. That's a fair point. Game
speed is different. But it's not just injuries
that create these situations. Sometimes it's
a choice. Or duty. David Robinson. The commitment
delay. This is a story that just feels impossible
in the modern NBA. Completely. It would never
happen today. So Robinson played at the Naval
Academy. He was 7 '1", clearly the best player
in the country. The Spurs drafted him number
one overall in 1987. No way. Knowing he couldn't
play for them. Because if you go to the Naval
Academy, you owe Uncle Sam some time. He had
a two -year active duty commitment to the Navy.
He served as a civil engineering officer. So
the Spurs basically stashed their franchise savior
on a naval base for two years and just... Can
you even imagine a GM surviving that press conference
today? Hey, great news. I drafted our new franchise
player. He'll be here in 2027. You'd be fired
before the press conference is over. Oh. But
it worked. Robinson kept in shape. He played
for the U .S. Olympic team in 88. And when he
finally arrived in San Antonio in 89, he was
a fully formed adult. He was 24 years old. He
just destroyed the teenagers he was playing against.
And then you have the Larry Bird situation, which
was a little different. Right. Bird was drafted
in 1978 by the Celtics. There was this weird
junior eligible rule back then where you could
draft a player before their senior year of college.
OK. But Bird told the Celtics, thanks, but no
thanks. I'm not coming yet. I want to try to
win a national title at Indiana State with my
teammates. You wanted one more run at it. He
did. And Red Auerbach, the genius GM of the Celtics,
said, fine, I'll wait. He signed him to a contract,
but allowed him to play his senior year of college.
Which, of course, led to that famous championship
game against Magic Johnson. The game that basically
saved college basketball and the NBA. So Bird
loses that game, then comes to Boston in 1979.
And it set up the perfect narrative, right? Bird
versus Magic, rookie versus rookie. East versus
West, Celtics versus Lakers. It was perfect.
And it's funny, Magic actually won the NBA Finals
MVP that rookie year, but Bird won Rookie of
the Year because his regular season stats were
just a little bit better, and he turned the Celtics
around so dramatically. He was the start of the
rivalry that defined the 80s. There's one more
oddity in this category, Jerry Lucas. This is
a real deep cut. This is the contract dispute
rookie. Very weird one. So Jerry Lucas was a
legend at Ohio State, a huge star, drafted by
the Cincinnati Royals in 1962. But he didn't
want to play for them right away. No. He actually
tried to sign with a team in a rival league,
the ABL, the American Basketball League. A rival
league. A very short -lived rival league. He
signed with a team called the Cleveland Pipers,
which was owned by a young George Steinbrenner.
The New York Yankees guy. The very same. But
the whole thing was a mess. The team folded,
the league folded, and Lucas ended up having
to sit out the entire year. So he just didn't
play. Didn't play at all. He didn't make his
debut for the Royals until the 1963 season. And,
just like the others we mentioned, the year off
didn't seem to hurt him. He came in and won Rookie
of the Year. It almost seems like taking a year
off is the best strategy if you want to win this
award. If you can afford to do it, the redshirt
year seems to produce some incredibly polished
winners, that's for sure. Now, earlier we talked
about how the weighted voting system is designed
to prevent ties. Right. It's supposed to. But
our research shows the system is not foolproof.
We have ties. You do. Three different times in
history, the voters were so perfectly split that
we had to crown co -rookies of the year. I think
the most famous one, the one everyone remembers,
has to be 1994 -95. Grant Hill and Jason Kidd.
It was the perfect storm. You had two completely
different players who were both incredible. You
had Grant Hill in Detroit. He was Mr. Nice Guy.
Polished came from Duke, this smooth scoring
machine. The heir apparent to Michael Jordan,
they said. That was the narrative. And then you
had Jason Kidd in Dallas, all flash, this passing
genius, California cool, changing the game with
his vision. They were the undisputed future of
the league, and they arrived at the same time.
And the vote ended up in a dead heat. And honestly,
looking back on it, it was the right call. They
both deserved it. it. They both ended up in the
Hall of Fame. It was the correct inability to
decide. What were the other two ties? The first
one was way back in 1971 between Dave Cowens
of the Celtics and Jeff Petry of the Blazers.
Okay. And the most recent one was in the year
2000. Elton Brand and Steve Francis. That is
a great contrast in styles right there. It really
is. Elton Brand was this fundamental Some would
say boring, but incredibly effective power forward
for the Bulls. Just a 20 and 10 machine. All
substance. All substance. And then you had Steve
Francis, Stevie Franchise for the Houston Rockets.
All dunks, crossovers, insane highlights, pure
style. And the voters just couldn't decide between
the substance and the style. So they just picked
both. I want to zoom out from the individual
players for a second and look at the map, because
if you track the winners of this award over time,
you are basically tracking the globalization
of the game of basketball. Oh, absolutely. It's
a perfect timeline for the first, what, 50 years
of its existence. This was an American award.
The pipeline was completely rigid. American high
school to the NCAA to the NBA. That was it. So
who was the first glitch in the matrix? Who broke
the hold? Well, the first little ripple was Patrick
Ewing back in 1986. He was born in Jamaica. Right.
But he moved to the U .S. when he was 11. He
played at Georgetown. He played for Team USA
in the Olympics. He was international by birth,
but completely American by his basketball upbringing.
So not a true international product. No. The
real earthquake was the 2001 -02 season. Pau
Gasol. The Spaniard. Pau was completely different.
He never played a second of NCAA ball. He came
straight from FC Barcelona's pro team. A seasoned
pro. When he won Rookie of the Year for the Memphis
Grizzlies, it was like a signal flare went up
for every GM in the league. It said, you don't
need to just watch the Final Four to f***. find
your next franchise player. You can go to Spain.
You can go anywhere. And now, in the years since,
the floodgates are just completely open. Just
look at the last decade or so. Kyrie Irving was
born in Australia. Andrew Wiggins is from Canada.
Carl Anthony Towns represents the Dominican Republic.
Ben Simmons is from Australia. Luka Donicic from
Slovenia. And now, Victor Wimbanyama from France.
It's almost becoming rare for an American college
player to win it anymore. And this connects right
back to that redshirt idea we were talking about.
We talked about how Blake Griffin had an advantage
because he sat out a year and trained with pros.
Right. Well, Luka Donicic had an even bigger
advantage than that. Professionalism. Exactly.
Luka started playing for Real Madrid's senior
team when he was 16 years old. In 2018, the year
before he was drafted by the Mavericks, he was
the MVP of the EuroLeague. the second best basketball
league in the world. So he was playing against
grown men, fighting for his paycheck, dealing
with hostile crowds in places like Greece and
Turkey. So when he got to the NBA and people
in the media were asking, can this kid handle
the pressure? It was laughable. He must have
been laughing at them. He was. He stepped onto
the court in Dallas and looked like a 10 -year
veteran because in many ways he already was a
veteran. The same thing with Wemba Nyama playing
for Metropolitan's 92 in France. These guys aren't
rookies in the traditional sense of the word.
They are seasoned pros who are just entering
a new league. It really does raise a provocative
question for the future of the sport then. Is
the college pathway dead for the truly elite
future rookie of the year level talent? It's
certainly under siege. If your goal is to be
ready to win this award and dominate from day
one, the data now suggests that playing professional
ball in Europe, or even in the G League Ignite
program, might be far better preparation than
playing zone defense against 19 -year -olds in
the NCAA. LaMelo Ball is another perfect example.
Perfect example. He skipped college entirely
and went to play Pro Bowl in Lithuania and then
Australia. He went the mercenary route. He did.
And he came to the NBA and won Rookie of the
Year. The traditional four -year college player,
like Damian Lillard, is becoming the dinosaur
in this equation. Okay, let's pivot from the
players to the teams. Because while the player
gets the trophy, the team is the one that has
to draft them. So who has the best eye for young
talent? Or maybe the better question is, who
is just consistently lucky enough to be bad enough
to get the high draft picks? That's the catch
-22 of this award, isn't it? To get a Rookie
of the Year, you usually have to have been a
terrible team the year before to get that high
pick. So the leaders on this list are franchises
that have, let's say, historically struggled
at times. So who's at the top of the leaderboard?
The Golden State Warriors franchise? Leave the
way. Now, of course, they're a dynasty now, but
if you look back at their history as the Philadelphia
Warriors and the San Francisco Warriors, they
spend a lot of time in the lottery. And they
have how many winners? They have six winners.
Six? Who are the big names on that list? It's
a murderer's row of talent. Woody Salisbury back
in 58, Wilt Chamberlain in 60, Rip Berry in 66,
Jamal Wilkes in 75, Mitch Richmond in 89, and
Chris Webber in 94. Wow, that is a staggering
list of offensive talent. Mitch Richmond, part
of Run TMC. C -Webb in his prime. It's a franchise
that has historically valued scoring. They draft
guys who can put the ball in the basket. Even
Stephen Curry, though he didn't win Rookie of
the Year, he famously lost to Tyreek Evans. He
still fits that mold perfectly. Who is chasing
the Warriors on that list? The Clippers and the
Kings franchises are right behind them. They
both have five winners each. Okay. The Clippers
makes total sense, given they were the laughingstock
of the league for about 30 straight years. Exactly.
Bob McAdoo, Terry Cummings, Blake Griffin. They
just had a lot of very high picks for a very
long time. And the Kings franchise. That includes
their days as the Cincinnati Royals and Rochester
Royals. They've had legends like Oscar Robertson
and Jerry Lucas, and more recently, Tyreek Evans.
Tyreek Evans, I forgot he won. That was an unbelievable
rookie season. He averaged 20 points, 5 rebounds,
and 5 assists right out of the gate. He did.
He unfortunately peaked very early in his career,
but that specific rookie season was historic.
He joined Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan
as the only rookies in history to post those
25 -5 numbers. Now, here is a stat from our research
that just completely blew my mind. There are
some very successful, well -run franchises that
have never had a Rookie of the Year winner. Yep,
the Denver Duggets and the Miami Heat. Zero.
For both of them. Zero. Not even with Dwyane
Wade in Miami. Wade was fantastic, but he was
in the same draft class as LeBron James, who
won it in 2003 -04. Ah, right. Just tough luck.
A brutal year to be a rookie. And the nuggets.
Nikola Jokic was a second round pick who developed
slowly. He wasn't that rookie of the year type
of immediate explosion. He only averaged about
10 points a game as a rookie. So it really shows
that you don't necessarily need a rookie of the
year to build a championship culture. In fact,
maybe it even helps not to rely on one teenage
savior. Well, that's the Miami Heat culture in
a nutshell, right? They develop guys. They find
diamonds in the rough in the second round or
undrafted. They don't typically tank for the
number one pick. OK, I want to go into the X
-Files portion of this deep dive. The unofficial
history, the lost winners. The lost files. This
is where it gets a little bit dark and weird.
So the award officially starts in the 1952 -53
season with a guy named Don Meineke. But basketball
existed before 1952. Why does the NBA pretend
that it didn't? Well, that's the thing. Prior
to 1952 -53, newspaper writers did select a rookie
of the year every season. And for a brief moment
in the 1990s, the NBA actually acknowledged these
guys in their official encyclopedia and media
guides. OK, so they were recognized at one point.
They were. But then they stopped. They were just
scrubbed from the official record books. They
vanished. Why the erasure? What happened? It
has a lot to do with the college point shaving
scandals of the early 1950s. The CCNY scandal.
Exactly. Several massive college stars who came
into the league in that era were later implicated
in fixing college games for gamblers. And the
most famous one among the lost winners is a guy
named Alex Groza. Groza. Is he related to the
NFL kicker Lou Groza? That's his brother. But
Alex Groza was a basketball phenom at Kentucky.
He won the unofficial rookie of the year in 1949
-50 for the Indianapolis Olympians. He was an
all -star. He was a stud. But then the scandal
broke. The scandal broke, and he was banned from
the NBA for life. So the NBA just scrubbed his
award. and the awards around it, to avoid the
association with the scandal. That's essentially
what happened. They wanted a clean slate. So
Don Meineke became the official first winner
because he was safely post -scandal. So who else
got erased from history? In 1947 -48, it was
a guy named Paul Hoffman of the Baltimore Bullets.
In 1948 -49, it was Howie Shannon. And in 1950
-51, it was Paul Arizon. Wait a minute. Paul
Arizon is a Hall of Famer. Pitchin' Paul. He
is. He's one of the 50 greatest players of all
time. But the NBA does not officially recognize
his Rookie of the Year award because it falls
into that lost era. That feels like a clerical
crime against basketball history. And the weirdest
one of all is the year right before the official
start, 1951 -52. There was actually a tie between
two players, Bill Tosheff and Mel Hutchins. A
lost tie. A lost tie. And because the NBA doesn't
recognize this era, Bill Tosheff spent years,
I mean decades, actually lobbying the lead for
recognition. Lobbying for what exactly? Just
the honor. For recognition and also for pension
benefits for the pre -1965ers. He was technically...
a co -rookie of the year that the league had
just decided to forget existed. He finally got
the league to acknowledge those pre -1953 years
in that encyclopedia, but they still aren't on
the official trophy list you'll see on NBA .com.
Just as for Bill Toscheff, it's just fascinating
how sports history can be curated like that.
Just snip, and those five years are gone. It
is. If you look at the official site today, Don
Meineke is the genesis point. Everything that
came before is just myth. Right. Let's bust a
myth that actually exists in the present day.
The myth of the number one pick. The big one.
The assumption is simple. The worst team gets
the best player in the draft. The number one
pick. So that player should win Rookie of the
Year. It makes perfect logical sense. You are
the best prospect. You go to a bad team that
needs you to play big minutes and score a lot
of points. But the data just doesn't support
it as a guarantee. Not even close. Only 22 winners
of the Rookie of the Year award were actually
drafted first overall. Only 22. That seems incredibly
low. That's what, like a 30 % hit rate over the
history of the award? It means that being picked
first is not a golden ticket. In fact, it often
means you're going to a dysfunctional organization
that might not know how to develop you. Or the
pressure is just too immense. So that means we
have some massive steals on this list. Guys who
were drafted way later but came in and just outplayed
all the blue chippers. The biggest steal in the
history of the award. by pure draft position
has to be Woody Salisbury. The 1957 -58 winner.
He was drafted 60th overall. 60th. That's literally
the last pick of the draft in modern terms. Mr.
Irrelevant. How does a 60th pick win Rookie of
the Year? It was a very different era. Fewer
teams, a smaller league, but still. Yeah. It's
remarkable. He came out of Texas Southern, a
historically black college. He played for the
Philadelphia Warriors alongside Paul Arizon.
He was just this tough, defensive -minded forward
who outworked everyone. He averaged about 12
points and 10 rebounds. That is just an inspiring
story. Who else is on that list of steals? More
recently, and a great example, is Malcolm Brogdon
into a 16 -17. He was a second -round pick, 36
overall, out of Virginia. I remember that race.
He was so steady, so mature. They called him
the president. And while all the high lottery
picks from that class were either struggling
with inefficiency or injured, that was the year
Ben Simmons missed. Brogdon just played solid,
fundamental basketball for a good Milwaukee Bucks
team. He was efficient. He shot 40 % from three.
He wasn't flashy, but he was undeniably the best
rookie who played that year. And what about Mark
Jackson? Mark Jackson was drafted 18th in 1987.
So not a top lottery pick. But he went to his
hometown New York Knicks and immediately started
dropping assists like a seasoned veteran. He
averaged over 10 assists a game and beat out
guys like David Robinson's teammate Kenny Smith
to win it. It just proved that fit and opportunity
matter so, so much. You can be the number one
pick, but if you're stuck behind an established
veteran or the coach just doesn't trust you,
you're not going to get the stats you need to
win. Exactly. Opportunity is the biggest variable
for any rookie. You need the minutes. You need
the green light. I want to do a quick nod to
the geography of talent here. We talked a lot
about the international wave, but for the U .S.
colleges, who runs the ROI factory? It's the
Blue Bloods, as you'd probably expect. Duke has
to be high on the list. Duke has a very strong
list. Grant Hill, Elton Brand, Kyrie Irving,
and most recently, Paolo Banchero. Okay. What
about North Carolina? UNC has a very prestigious
list as well. You've got Bob McAdoo, Walter Davis,
Phil Ford, Vince Carter. And, of course, Michael
Jordan. Can't forget MJ. Any other school that
stands out? LSU. Louisiana State actually punches
way above its weight class here. They had Bob
Pettit way back in the day, then Shaquille O
'Neal, and Ben Simmons played his one year of
college there. It's interesting how certain schools
just seem to prepare guys for the pro game better.
Or maybe they just get to recruit the guys who
are already ready. It's a little bit of both.
But the overall trend, as we discussed, is definitely
shifting away from the college program player
and more toward that individual, often international,
talent. So we've unpacked the whole history,
the weird voting math, the forgotten winners,
the red shirts, and the international revolution.
When you take a step back and look at this entire
timeline, from Don Meineke in 53 to Stefan Kassel
today, what is the big takeaway for you now?
I think the award acts as a perfect year -by
-year snapshot of basketball's evolution. In
the 60s and 70s, you just see the complete and
total dominance of the center. Wilt, Kareem.
Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, the big man was the
only thing that mattered. And then the shift
happens. Then you get to the 80s and 90s, and
you see the rise of the superstar wing and guard,
Jordan, Iverson, Vince Carter, and later LeBron.
The game literally moved from the paint to the
perimeter. And now, what era are we in now? Now
we are firmly in the era of the unicorn. Wemba
Nyama, Pella Banchero, Luka Donicic, these positionalists,
incredibly skilled, large human beings who can
do literally everything on the court. The Rookie
of the Year winners tell the story of how the
game is played and how it has changed. It's amazing.
And looking at the trophy... The Wilt Chamberlain
trophy, it really does feel like we've come full
circle. We're honoring the most dominant physical
force in the history of the game while we're
welcoming this new generation of physical marvels.
And honestly, with the way these international
players are coming into the league now, with
years of pro experience already, it raises a
final provocative thought for me. What's that?
Is the very definition of a rookie fundamentally
changing? When Larry Bird won this award, he
was a 22 year old senior from college. He was
a man. When LeBron won, he was an 18 year old
kid straight out of high school. Two totally
different kinds of rookies. Completely. And now.
We have guys like Luka and Lamello who have been
earning professional paychecks since they were
16. It's a different kind of rookie, a different
level of preparation. It is. And as the global
game continues to expand and develop, that gap
between amateur and pro is just going to keep
shrinking. The next Wilt Chamberlain might be
playing professionally at age 15 somewhere in
Europe or Africa right now, and we just don't
know it yet. That is a both terrifying and incredibly
exciting thought. The future is definitely here.
This has been an absolute blast unpacking all
this Rookie of the Year history. It's always
a pleasure to look at the numbers and the stories
behind them. And to you listening, thanks for
diving deep with us. Whether you're a rookie
listener or a veteran subscriber, we really appreciate
you. We'll see you on the next deep dive. Take
care, everyone.