“Just let ‘em go.” With that simple message, Kobe Bryant cracked the hard-assed algorithm of Byron Scott’s face palming rotations. “Let ‘em go,” he told the coach in regards to the Lakers future, embodied by true rookie D’Angelo Russell and red shirt rookie Julius Randle. Both kids played all of the fourth quarter and overtime in a game the Lakers would lose to the T-Wolves with Russell hitting the contested drive to send the game into an extra period. The loss did little to dampen the unanimous feeling that this was the Lakers best game of the season – and almost exclusively because Scott’s arms-crossed drill sergeant act was defused by Kobe.
Rookies can oscillate between futuristic revelations and immature mistakes on a single possession. There’s no playbook for coaches detailing how and when to appropriately develop 19 and 20-year-old basketball players. Should they be given 30+ minutes and allowed to succeed or fail with high volume opportunity? Or should they be given nothing, forced to earn everything, and kowtow to vets by carrying chinchilla coats and fetching donuts while wearing Hello Kitty backpacks? The Lakers are caught in the center of this question with Kobe’s farewell tour adding a contentious element to an already-imprecise process.
Russell was the second overall pick in the draft. Scott’s currently playing him about 5.5 minutes/4th quarter which is 10th overall in his rookie class, wedged between Jerian Grant (19th overall, 5.7 minutes/4th) and Frank Kaminsky (9th, 5 minutes/4th). The Lakers are 3-21 right now, losing by more than 10 points/game and prior to Kobe stepping in and disrupting Byron’s rotation schemes, Russell still couldn’t get court time. But in 4th quarters, Russell’s inefficiencies get worse. His TS% drops from 48% to 44% while his O and DRtg’s (per stats.nba.com) also get worse in the last period.
Meanwhile in Miami, Justise Winslow is leading all rookies in 4th quarter minutes played at 9.2/game. The Heat are 13-9, yielding the 2nd least points to opponents with the 4th best defensive rating. He appears in all (5-man, 4-man, 3-man, 2-man) of Miami’s best lineups based on point differential and is defining himself as an updated mold of fellow Duke player Shane Battier as an indispensable defender whose impact exists beyond two-dimensional statistical measures. The only Heat player getting more 4th quarter minutes is perennial all-star, Chris Bosh. While Winslow’s NetRtg comes in at +6.8 (best of any Heat player getting at least 20 minutes/game), that number jumps up to +14.2 in the 4th. For all players appearing in at least nine minutes/4th quarter, Winslow ranks second to LeBron James (+23.4) in NetRtg.
Erik Spoelstra uniquely deploys Winslow in almost an inverse of how Scott uses Russell. Where the Lakers point guard has started 22 of 24 games, he gets the bulk of minutes (~7/quarter) during the first three quarters of the game before Byron’s thousand yard stare narrows and his moustache tightens and he relegates Russell to the bench in favor of some combination of Kobe, Jordan Clarkson, and Lou Williams. Winslow hasn’t started a single game, yet sees his highest volume of minutes come in the 4th quarter.
Winslow is the exception and not the rule for rookies. Number one overall pick Karl-Anthony Towns sees his NetRtg boost from -1.4 overall to +5.7 for 4th quarters, but still only sees six minutes/4th – much to the consternation of Wolves Twitter. Emmanuel Mudiay is second in mpg for rookies (29.9), but ranks fifth in 4th quarter minutes at 6.3 where his NetRtg drops from bad (-8.9) to worse (-9.5). Philly’s top choice Jahlil Okafor is getting 32 minutes/game and typically saves his best for last. In the final quarter, he averages his highest points while shooting 60% TS – up 11% from his overall TS. And any rookie conversation would be incomplete without the Lativian Gang Banger, Kristaps Porzingis. The Knicks are 11-14 and only one player on the roster with any impactful playing time has a positive NetRtg: the Zinger at +0.1.
A quarter of the way into a rookie’s inaugural season is probably too early to start seeking out trajectory-threatening trends. Teams, coaches, and players walk a developmental balance with their young players that become interpreted by media, writers, and passionate fans. What works for Towns with Sam Mitchell and Kevin Garnett isn’t likely to be replicable with Russell and Byron and Kobe. What Spoelstra does with Winslow in Miami can’t be copied by Derek Fisher and Phil Jackson in New York. What we can see in the numbers above and when we vainly try to read between the lines of coach-to-media communications are trends and then attempt to draw conclusions from those trends, but lacking a clearly-defined intent, even that can become confusing and noisy. What’s left but to (over) analyze and project and wonder in amazement at the rising arcs and sleeping valleys of kids not even old enough to legally consume alcohol.
Maybe it’s happened before like back in the weird forgotten 1970s of America, but rarely have we seen a batch of rookies arrive with such an emphasis on their hair: Nerlens Noel‘s brick top flat top, Elfrid Payton‘s Edward Scissorhands angles, Nikola Mirotic‘s light-swallowing beard. And there’s also Andrew Wiggins. If the NBA is a league for its radiant styles, it’s all predicated on deep substance and now that spring is upon us, the aforementioned rookies have combined their obvious talents with money-winning consistency.
The number one pick and boringly-styled hair-having Wiggins hasn’t required the same type of learning curve as his cohorts. His monthly splits look like a pyramid of sorts with a steady climb through the holiday season and a peak in January. It’s not that he’s fallen off, just that his January with nearly 20-points/game, a 55% TS, 109 O-Rating, and nearly a three/game was better than anything else heâs done this year.
Data from Basketball-Reference. Layout from Tableau.
It’s beyond the stats though. A couple nights ago the young Wiggins (just turned 20 in February – to be young again) delivered one of the dunks of the year when he used every bit of his 40+ inch vertical and smash slammed on everyone’s favorite French basketball player, Rudy Gobert:
But Wiggins is the exception and not the rule. Unlike his elaborately-coiffed rookie counterparts, Wiggins’s excellence is already old hat (we’re in hyper time). Noel, Payton, and Mirotic have needed a combination of time and opportunity to replicate their previous successes at the NBA level.
Take Payton, the 6’4″ Louisianan point guard who’s about a year to the day older than Wiggins. Payton was Orlando’s opening night starter, but lost his spot about halfway through November when he his TS was in the low 40s and his Ortg was in the high 80s. Then March rolled around and maybe it was the All-Star break (which he participated in) or turning 21 and finally being able to drink or who knows, but things have come easier including back-to-back triple doubles in March and a seven-game stretch where he averaged 14-pts, 9.5-asts, nearly eight rebounds and a pair of steals while shooting 50% from the field. Orlando only won a single game in that stretch, but … well, let’s not focus on that.
Mirotic is a bit different and not just regarding ethnicity or age. Mirotic’s rookie season has existed at the mercy of Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau who patrols the sideline with his Cookie Monster voice and stubborn rotations. Only an intervention brought on by injuries have unshackled the Montenegrin Maestro. From October to February he averaged below 20 minutes/game despite the Bulls going 12-2 in games where he played over 25 minutes. March has been something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mirotic as his numbers cranked up in a way that would demand PED testing in baseball. His scoring has gone from under six points/game in February to over 20/night in 15 March games. His usage rating was up over 30% for the month which if pushed out across a season would put him in the top-ten in the league. Despite the increased usage and minutes (over 30minutes/game in March), his TS is still a close to 58% on the strength of shooting nearly 84% from the line on over seven free throw attempts/game. It’s almost like the increased reps and opportunity have resulted in Mirotic having even greater confidence and comfort exploring the range of his offensive talents.
And then there’s Nerlens. I’m writing about him last because heâs the most titillating of the bunch which isnât to say heâs the best because I donât know or care to know who’s best. It’s just that Noel, with his flat top and baseline-to-baseline high-energy act of harassing opponents like a never-ending human basketball Exxon Valdez disaster covering the opposition in some thick suffocating existence is my favorite. In as much as each of these players has grown and developed from the fall to the spring, Nerlens’ growth is the most striking. The increase in on-court opportunity has been light as he’s hovered around 30 minutes/game all season, but meanwhile his game has come together in a way that one hopes breathes hope into the fledgling Philadelphian fan base. Noel hasn’t even turned 21 yet, but if we believe in the guy we’ve seen in March, then we’re looking at a kid capable of averaging in the teens in points while grabbing double digit rebounds, getting over two steals and two blocks each night. He’s the rare big man with elite agility, quickness, and length that allows him to completely disrupt the other teamâs offense. Again, if we have trust that his March numbers arenât some funky aberration then weâre looking at a kid capable of defensively impacting the game similar to David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and now Anthony Davis. (Off topic, my phantasmagorical mind canât help but root for a New Orleans frontline anchored by the Brow and Noel.)
Month over month progress for the ever-rising, ever-evolving human oil spill (that’s a compliment!), Nerlens Noel
Spring will soon be over and with the exception of Mirotic, these rookie years will end with the regular season. After all, we can only be rookies once and while people are lining church pews to celebrate Easter Sunday with Jesus and adults in snow white rabbit costumes gnaw on oversized carrots while doling out Cadbury eggs and listening to biblical tales of resurrection, these rookies will be transitioning into summers of work and expectations. With our favorite rookies, weâll sleep through sunny summers and wake up sunburnt and confused at the falling leaves of Halloween with the presumption that Marches and Aprils are signs of things to come. Okafors and Mudiays will be the new kids, but for our four rookies above, the leeway that comes with being a first timer is forever out the window. It only gets harder from here.
Dancing With Noah 