Minnesota Sports Forum

I just wanted to create a post on this topic. I 100% know whoever wins this award has determination how the players career is going to go and the award means literally nothing besides for fan purposes. Just wanted to write my thoughts after reading some articles and listening to some podcasts over the last few days and weeks.

1st off based on everything I have read and heard on podcasts Lamelo Ball is a 100% lock on winning the ROY. I want to say Lamelo has had a great rookie year and I can easily why he will win the award. The thing that annoys me though is the narrative surrounding Lamelo and Ant. Both Ant and Lamelo won 3 rookie of the month awards. Ant played in all 72 games while Lamelo missed 21 games and only played in 51 of 72 games (70.8% of the games). The thing that has annoyed me about the race on why people are saying Lamelo is a lock at Rookie of the Year is when people say Lamelo is in the playoffs. 1st of all Im sorry the Hornets are under .500, so lets not act like they are just this elite team. 2nd the Hornets are 10-11 (.476) without Lamelo and 23-28 (.451) with Lamelo. The Hornets are getting outscored when Lamelo is on the court and Lamelo has a negative On/Off number. To be fair his On/Off number is -0.5 so its not a big number at all. If Lamelo never gets hurt maybe he continues his hot play and is without a question the ROY but I think Lamelo is getting the benefit of the doubt that he would of continued his hot play even though since Lamelo has returned from injury he is averaging 15.1/6.2/6.2 on really bad splits 38/24/66 splits. He is also averaging 3 turnovers a game since coming back and the Hornets are 3-7 since his return to the lineup.

Obviously Ant killed himself in the Ryan Saunders era. He might of effected losing more then any other player in the NBA before Finch took over. Ant more then likely dug himself a hole he could not dig out of in this race. Just after listening to podcasts this week and people are saying Lamelo is a for sure #1 on ROY and people are putting Haliburton #2 in some cases over Ant. I just think there are so many false narratives going around right now. There isn't stats that fit the narrative the Lamelo is a main reason why the Hornets are winning games. Lamelo and Haliburton both missed multiple games this year. Ant played in everyone. Lamelo is getting the benefit of the doubt with assumption he would have played great all season without any injury and Lamelo has been bad since returning the Hornets lineup.

In the end I don't know why I really care because this award means nothing. I can see why Lamelo is going to win the rookie of the year he has higher stats everywhere besides GP (What matters) and Points per game. I won't be mad when Lamelo wins the award just think the narrative is so false on why he is winning it and that Lamelo is getting the bump because he is a "Social media ratings Juggernaut" to go along with his great play this season.

Two teams should be super excited about their 2021 draft picks... Charlotte and Minnesota.

Ball was a surprisingly really good and more efficient than expected. Edwards' in-season turnaround was amazing.

Other rookies should make their teams happy, too (Haliburton, Bey, Williams, Quickly, McDaniels, et al)... but both Ball and Edwards offer the Promise of Stardom.

I have to give the nod to Ball because to your point Kek, he did not contribute to losing basketball nearly as much as Ant did in the first half of the season. Ant was an absolute sink hole of bad shots, missed shots, and poor defense. In other words, he looked like the undisciplined volume shot taker that he was at Georgia. That along with KAT's injury and Ricky's poor play absolutely killed us early on this season.

If there was such thing as an in-season most improved player award, I'd give it to Ant! And ultimately, that's what should get us excited.

Ball came back and played 10 more games so that helps and hurts his case. Still his shooting numbers are pretty good even after those 10 games where he shot so poorly but he does a lot of other stuff that shows up in the stat sheet and probably some stuff that doesn't. I think he could also get credit for coming back and playing through an injury etc. But yeah The Hornets being in the playoffs...what do they have around 10 more wins (haven't looked yet) than the Wolves? Yay?!?

I'll say this about Ball what he did this year when he was out there was pretty amazing. This is a guy that played a handful of international games (like 21 total) over a 2 year period. He was probably the least experienced player in the entire draft. The competition he faced in those few games was for from top end too and his numbers weren't amazing but they were really small sample sizes too. I'm happy he is having success it seemed like the more I read and heard about him before the draft he didn't seem like a bad kid at all. I think he is deserving of the ROY award. If I had to vote for one player I wouldn't be able to make a quick decision but that's partly because I would have wanted to see more games for both players. Fortunately my vote doesn't count and ROY doesn't really matter anyway. Lol

Not getting the award may help motivate Ant this summer. Ant with a chip on his shoulder would be a good thing.

This is actually kid of crazy.

Enes Kanter, Dwayne Bacon, RJ Barrett, Bojan Bogdanovic, Mikal Bridges, Anthony Edwards, Justin Holiday, Nikola Jokic, Georges Niang, Duncan Robinson and Ivica Zubac are the only 11 players to play all 72 games this season. (via @bball_ref) https://t.co/wkOGT8Zqy2

Anthony Edwards' drastic in-season growth (Pre-ASB -> Post-ASB):

Rim FG%: 53.0% -> 64.5%
Pull-Up 3PT%: 25.2% -> 38.7%
FTA/75 poss: 2.95 -> 5.23
Drive FG%: 39.2 -> 52.4
AST%: 13.0% -> 14.8%

14.9 PPG on 46.6% TS -> 23.8 PPG on 56.7% TS

ROTY? https://t.co/8RJ4EM6Wze

LaMelo Ball: positive or neutral +/- in 20 of 49 games played (40.8%)

Anthony Edwards: positive or neutral +/- in 29 of 70 games played (41.4%)

Do with that information as you wish.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Not getting the award may help motivate Ant this summer. Ant with a chip on his shoulder would be a good thing.

I was thinking the same thing, Cool. I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I'd like Ant to get the ROY award because I like him and by all accounts he's worked really hard this season. Kek has made a strong case statistically for Ant over Ball. On the other hand, I think I'd actually prefer it if he doesn't get for the reason you gave.

As Abe noted, Minnesota and Charlotte should both be thrilled with Ant and Ball as their first round picks. Minnesota has McDaniels as a bonus first round pick that could turn into the first round steal of the draft.