Hornets' LaMelo Ball reportedly wins NBA Rookie of the Year

[Yappi]

Votes for the NBA Rookie of the Year are in, and according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, this season the award is reportedly going to LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets.

Hornets' LaMelo Ball wins NBA Rookie of the Year

Ball beat out fellow finalists Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton.

sports.yahoo.com

 

[Chop Stix]

What a massive accomplishment considering he was written off as a bust by 95% of Yappi at 14 years old

 

[Omar]

What a massive accomplishment considering he was written off as a bust by 95% of Yappi at 14 years old

How’s Lonzo’s career pan out? Do you still own those Big Baller shoes? He didn’t even deserve it over Anthony Edwards.

 

[Chop Stix]

How’s Lonzo’s career pan out? Do you still own those Big Baller shoes? He didn’t even deserve it over Anthony Edwards.

Lonzo had the best season of his career (per advanced metrics) this past season and his stock is as high as it has ever been since he's been in the league. He'll likely sign a 4-5 year free agent deal this offseason worth $85-$110 million, so I'd say he's doing well.

I never bought anything Big Baller lmao. I was a fan of the hype but it was clearly a niche fly-by-night brand in an ultra competitive market space.

As for Lamelo, he definitely deserved to win ROY over Edwards.

He had a better PER, TS%, more WS, and his team won 10 more games.

The only thing Edwards really did better was score more points/game.

 

[Omar]

Lonzo had the best season of his career (per advanced metrics) this past season and his stock is as high as it has ever been since he's been in the league. He'll likely sign a 4-5 year free agent deal this offseason worth $85-$110 million, so I'd say he's doing well.

I never bought anything Big Baller lmao. I was a fan of the hype but it was clearly a niche fly-by-night brand in an ultra competitive market space.

As for Lamelo, he definitely deserved to win ROY over Edwards.

He had a better PER, TS%, more WS, and his team won 10 more games.

The only thing Edwards really did better was score more points/game.

Isn’t that all that matters in the NBA?

 

[nwwarrior09]

This is what I expected. Edwards wasn't all that great the first half of the year before coming alive as a scorer the second half of the season on a team that was pretty bad. Ball had a bigger impact on his team and did it with better consistency.

 

[14Red]

They had to give it to someone, and Ball got it. That's about it. He's a mediocre at best guard who'll probably be coming off the bench in a few years. The Ball family must have some kind of deal with the NBA. Lonzo's been a complete bust. He can't shoot and his teams don't win. I'm a Sixers fan and I can say pretty confidently if Tyrese Maxey got the same minutes that Ball got, he'd have out played him. Rookies of the year tend to be on bad team and get alot of playing time. Remember a Sixer rookie named Michael Carter Williams from Syracuse who burst on the scene on a bad Sixer team and got ROY. That was the high point of his career.

 

[nwwarrior09]

They had to give it to someone, and Ball got it. That's about it. He's a mediocre at best guard who'll probably be coming off the bench in a few years. The Ball family must have some kind of deal with the NBA. Lonzo's been a complete bust. He can't shoot and his teams don't win. I'm a Sixers fan and I can say pretty confidently if Tyrese Maxey got the same minutes that Ball got, he'd have out played him. Rookies of the year tend to be on bad team and get alot of playing time. Remember a Sixer rookie named Michael Carter Williams from Syracuse who burst on the scene on a bad Sixer team and got ROY. That was the high point of his career.

I strongly dislike the Balls and see them as being a clown show due to Lavar, but much of this is wrong. Lonzo Ball was a terrible shooter a few years ago and has improved dramatically as a shooter year over year. He shot roughly 38% from three this year, making 172 3s in 55 games. His overall field goal percentage is bad because roughly 70% of his shots are now 3s. He shot roughly 50% inside the arc this year. I don't consider him to be good, but as of now I'd consider him to be an average PG that's incredibly become a quality perimeter shooter who's a lower-end starter or a very high-end bench player.

The younger brother is a much better player with a fairly high ceiling at this point. I don't think this was an exemplary rookie class by any means, but he stuffed a lot of stats with above-average player efficiency and the second best efficiency among rookies. The Hornets improved a ton this year between him and adding Gordon Hayward. After one year he is probably on a comparable trajectory to what "experts" thought Shaun Livingston could have been before his severe injury. Out of players who did really make it, I think there probably are a lot of similarities to Jason Kidd and Jason Williams at this point.