Malcolm Brogdon is one of the best-ever second-round rookies
By Miles Wray
Considering that a player who suited up for all of 31 regular season games is a legitimate frontrunner for Rookie of the Year, something went seriously awry at the 2016 NBA Draft. While there’s extensive statistical evidence that this year’s rookies are very bad when compared against all other rookie classes, here’s another way to look at it: NBA executives totally biffed the 2016 first round, and then proceeded to nail both the second round and the Summer League signee process. Of the 20 rookies with the most cumulative Win Shares this year, only nine of them are first-rounders. Plus, none of the top five rookies in Win Shares are first-rounders: Alex Abrines, Davis Bertans, Rodney McGruder, Willy Hernangomez and far-and-away leader Malcolm Brogdon.
That clustering of non-elite draft picks on top of the Win Shares leaderboard is unprecedented. But even just Brogdon’s accomplishment alone, as the second-round Win Shares leader of his rookie class, has only happened a handful of times in league history. I went all the way back to the 1973 NBA Draft (and stopped there because the 1972 NBA Draft featured just 13 first-round picks) to find which other non-first-rounders, like Brogdon, triumphed over the rest of their rookie class. It’s only happened five previous times — and each time, another player overtook the precocious rookie to become the best overall player in the class.
Here they are, going from oldest to most recent:
Note: I’m classifying players by when they played their rookie year, and not when they were drafted. I.e., Joel Embiid is grouped with the 2016-17 rookie class, and not the 2014 NBA Draft.
John Drew — 1974-75
Drafted 25th Overall (Second Round)
Eventual best player: Bill Walton
We’d all maybe know John Drew’s name now if he didn’t pick up a cocaine addiction (which he eventually kicked) in the 1977-78 season. As a 20-year-old rookie with the Hawks in 1974-75, though, Drew impressively averaged an 18-10 double-double in under 30 minutes a game, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since.
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Spectacular Twitter follow Bill Walton finished sixth among rookies in Win Shares after only managing to appear in 35 games on the season. Eerily, Embiid is also tied for sixth (with Juan Hernangomez) in the same category this season — another connection between two players who I feel are readily comparable. A bad omen for fans of the Sixers and Embiid: Walton only appeared in 209 regular-season games for the Blazers, or fewer than Allen Crabbe has played so far. On the other hand: Walton did get Portland that ’ship.
Larry Smith — 1980-81
Drafted 24th Overall (Second Round)
Eventual best player: Kevin McHale
Much like Drew a few years earlier, who had emerged from Gardner-Webb University, it seems likely that pre-Internet NBA executives slept on Larry Smith because he went to Alcorn State. And hey, it would have been hard to get eyes on those small-school guys. Smith would end his career with thousands more rebounds than points, plus the nickname “Mr. Mean.” This dude would have been an Ivan Johnson-style phenomenon in the Internet era.
As a rookie, Kevin McHale didn’t put up huge cumulative numbers because he had to wait his turn on the bench behind a championship-winning starting lineup. Although nobody seems at all destined for a McHale-esque Hall of Fame trajectory, it could be that Davis Bertans, Patrick McCaw, Jaylen Brown and Jakob Poeltl have been prevented from putting up monster stats by their own good, deep teams.
John “Hot Rod” Williams — 1986-87
Drafted 45th Overall (Second Round)
Eventual best player: Dennis Rodman
A few years after the brief but, uh, memorable ownership tenure of Ted Stepien, there was still plenty of space for rookies in Cleveland’s rotation after the team had gone nearly a decade without a winning season. As rookies, Williams, Brad Daughtery and Ron Harper got more minutes and points than any other Cavalier, and the trio made up three of the four top-producing rookies in the league that year.
Over in Detroit, Rodman had yet to discover his eventual iconic identity as a player, putting up the lowest rebound percentage and highest (read: worst) Defensive Rating of his career. Rodman’s rookie year scoring rate of 15.6 points per 36 minutes is nearly double where his career average sat when he retired: 8.3 points per 36.
Luis Scola and Jamario Moon — 2007-08
Scola: Drafted 55th Overall
Moon: Undrafted
Eventual best player: Kevin Durant
The 2007-08 season was the only time before this year when a non-first-round pick held down the top two spots in the rookie Win Share race. In second place was Moon, who arose from an unfathomably long string of minor league appointments to suddenly flourish in the NBA with a dunk-centric skillset. Scola had been selected by the Spurs in the second round way, way back in 2002 — his arrival to the NBA becoming all-but inevitable after helping dispatch America in the 2004 Olympics. Not only did the Rockets trade for Scola in the summer of 2007, they traded away starting forward Juwan Howard as well, creating minutes for Scola on the team that went off on the surprise 22-game win streak.
Not only was Seattle-based 19-year-old Durant well off the pace set by Moon and Scola — his 2.3 Win Shares could hardly hold a candle to the 4.5 Win Shares from fellow 19-year-old Thaddeus Young — Sean Williams of the New Jersey Nets — a player I have, sorry, never heard of — even finished with more Win Shares than him. This does not sound like the career setup for one of two 21-year-olds ever to average more than 30 points per game, but, well, there you go.
Marc Gasol — 2008-09
Drafted 48th Overall (Second Round)
Eventual best player: Russell Westbrook
On Feb. 1st in 2008, and for many months thereafter, it would have been laughable to propose that the Grizzlies could actually, maybe, honestly benefit as a franchise from the deal that sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers. But almost a decade later, here we are, with Gasol the younger already bested Pau’s Grizzlies franchise records, and with so many contractual years left of gritting and grinding.
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As inevitable as Westbrook’s mammoth success feels now, it’s kind of astonishing to look back and see how there was absolutely no statistical foreshadowing at the time. Westbrook’s 1.9 Win Shares are basically what Yogi Ferrell has done in 42 games this season. Also, rookie Westbrook turned the ball over more than three times per game while shooting less than 30 percent on 3-pointers and less than 40 percent from the field. That was just the 10th time that had happened, and only Michael Carter-Williams has done it since.
So as much as it feels like the hierarchy of the 2016-17 rookie class is locked in cement, odds are we still don’t know who all of the really good players are yet.