Report: Tyreke Evans to be named ROY
Tyreke Evans will be named the NBA’s 2009-10 Rookie of the Year later this week, Sactown Royalty has learned.
The announcement is expected Thursday or Friday. The Kings nor the NBA have announced Evans’s victory, and the team has not yet alerted the media of a press conference later this week.
In my prediction post, I said the following:
I think this is a two-man race between Evans and Jennings. Evans’ numbers are better than Curry’s and his team is a little better, so if we’re going to go with a good player on a bad team, it should be Evans.
As for Jennings, his case depends how much importance we place on a team’s record and how responsible the player is for that record. It’s funny — a good record is crucial in winning the league MVP, but for ROY, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Why is that?
In the end, I think Evans will win Rookie of the Year. Given the history of the award, if a player clearly has the superior numbers, winning just doesn’t matter. That’s the case here.
Evans averaged 20.1 points, 5.3 rebounds and 5.8 assists to become the first rookie since LeBron James to average 20-5-5 in his rookie season. (Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan are the only other players to accomplish this feat.)
Both Evans and Curry posted eye-popping numbers, but did any rookie have a bigger impact on the 2009-10 NBA season than Brandon Jennings? Even though his FG% fell off a cliff, he still posted pretty good numbers, and guided the upstart Bucks to the #6 playoff spot in the East.
Based on the criteria that picked previous award winners, Evans is very deserving. But when we look back on this season’s rookie class, I think we’ll remember Jennings’ leadership, Evans’ 20-5-5, Curry’s stretch run and Blake Griffin’s knee injury, in that order.
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I don’t think the Bucks would have been worse off this season with any of the other rookie point guards (maybe save Flynn) and I don’t think the Bucks’ success, especially late, really had as much to do with Jennings as you think.
By the way, it’s worth pointing out that for the last 3 months of the season Curry averaged 22-5-7, but much of that probably has to do with Nellie’s run and gun system.
Opinion is nebulous. “I think… I don’t think…” I can’t prove that Jennings’ year was more impressive and you can’t prove it isn’t.
Basketball Prospectus says that Jennings’ defense was quite good, and there’s more to running a team than posting big numbers. He wasn’t responsible for the team’s late-season push (Bogut and Salmons deserve more credit), but he kept them competitive early on and dealt with the arrival and departure of Michael Redd and the arrival of John Salmons. He never had a problem changing his role from scorer to distributor, which is something (changing roles) that rookies often struggle with. I don’t think Evans or Curry would have handled it as well.
Curry’s numbers were excellent over the second half of the season, but the award is called Rookie of the Year, not Rookie of the Last Three Months.
I don’t disagree with the Evans selection, but it’s funny how winning is so important to the MVP race yet it doesn’t matter at all in the ROY, MIP or 6th Man awards.
I was just pointing out the Curry thing because I thought it was interesting, so there’s no need to be defensive.
And, for what it’s worth, I preface my comments with “I think” so as not to be a douchebag. I at least want to give the appearance of humility.
Here are the facts, since you asked nicely. The key to the Bucks’ success this season, especially late, was D. There’s no question about it. And Jennings posted a team 8th-best D-rating of 104 on the season. He also had a 11th best WS/48.
So it’s really hard for me to believe that dealing with the departure of Michael Redd and the arrival of John Salmons qualifies as the most memorable rookie-related storyline of the season.
And, for the record, Jennigns “changed his role” from scorer to distributor because he can’t mf-ing shoot the ball. He didn’t change his role, so much as stop making baskets. It’s not like he stopped taking shots. (His APG actually declined marginally but consistently throughout the course of the season.)
I’m not saying Jennings isn’t awesome, I’m just saying there was a veritable crop of other first round point guards that could have done just as much for the Bucks. What will come in years ahead, on the other hand, remains to be seen…
Who’s being defensive? The award is for the year not the last three months. That’s just a fact. Don’t be defensive.
Basketball Prospectus seems to think Jennings is a good defender:
Second Team – Brandon Jennings, Milwaukee
Don’t laugh. While the book on Jennings was that he was too slight to be anything but a liability on defense, I’ve been impressed when I’ve seen him play and his numbers are strong across the board. In particular, Jennings’ dMult of .864 (meaning opposing point guards produced at 86.4 percent of their usual rate against the Bucks) is tops among the point guards I considered.
He’s a member of all of the Bucks’ top 20 5-man units, was +0.7 in simple rating (Evans was +0.8). Part of Jennings’ on/off court numbers is that he had a pretty good point guard (Ridnour) playing behind him, so his on/off isn’t going to look as good as some other situations around the league.
The Bucks played pretty good defense all year, but they were especially good down the stretch. That, along with Salmons and Bogut’s emergence as go-to offensive players led to the strong finish. Jennings changed his role willingly. Just because he shot a low percentage in the second half it doesn’t mean that he’s going to automatically take fewer shots. (Just ask Allen Iverson.) And you can be a distributor without seeing a big uptick in assists. Many times he ran some offense and then gave up the ball to Salmons on the wing and let him create. Other times he dumped the ball into Bogut and let him go to work. That could be a tough pill to swallow for a guy who averaged 22+ in his first month in the league.
I get that your opinion is that other point guards could have played just as well in Milwaukee, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Evans would bring alpha dog issues, Curry would bring defensive issues…Lawson and Collison could have been good fits but I don’t know that they have the scoring to carry the Bucks through the first couple months of the season like Jennings did.
Yes, Jennings has a great personality. I agree. The man drives a Ford Edge. How’s that for humility?