Towns, Porzingis, and Jokic: What to expect?

The top three finishers in last year’s Rookie of the Year voting were all centers (as much as that positional box still exists), all of whom happened to be 20 years old at the end of the season. Karl-Anthony Towns (who actually won the award), Kristaps Porzingis, and Nikola Jokic imply a bright future for the NBA big man.

Each of these three bigs represents several aspects of the hypothetical and highly idealized “NBA big of the future.” All are mobile defenders, capable of defending in space and controlling the paint. The mobility translates at the offensive end too, where all three are versatile enough to face up to take slower bigs off the dribble, or catching the ball on a roll to the rim and making a play. All three have burgeoning post games and the foundation to be legitimate three-point shooting threats. They are solid rebounders and skilled passers. They are the total package.

There are also appears to be a fair bit of argument about the relative merits of each as compared to each other. Most would agree that Towns had the (conventionally) strongest rookie season and probably has the best athletic profile. Porzingis, by virtue of being 7’3″, offers these skills in an obscenely large package. Jokic seems to have a head start in the arenas of efficiency and many advanced metrics tabbed him as the most productive of the trio last season.

Box Plus-Minus, Real Plus-Minus, and Justin Willard’s new Dredge metric were all a little more fuel for the Jokic hype train. All three metrics represent an estimate of a player’s net impact per 100 possessions and all three rated Jokic the highest, often by a wide margin.

Jokic probably received the least attention of the three last season, mostly by virtue of not being the top pick in the draft and not playing for the New York Knicks. However, after building on his rookie season with a strong finish in this summer’s Olympics for the Serbian national team, Jokic is on a lot more radars.

The question of which of these players is the best or likely to have the season next year is primarily academic and almost entirely irrelevant. All three will likely be very good, well ahead of the typical second-year big man (who, historically, are not very good). They are franchise cornerstones for their respective teams and all have the potential to be transformative over the next few years. We are not quite to the point of developing player projections for next season here at Nylon Calculus and so are still doing some navel gazing at last year. And, in using any statistics about their rookie seasons as a measuring stick there are a few important contextual items to note.

The first is playing time. Towns and Porzingis both started every single game they played in last year. Jokic only started about two-thirds of his games and averaged just over twenty minutes a game (21.7 to be exact, compared to 28.4 for Porzingis and 32.0 for Towns). In looking at total minutes played, and the percent of those minutes played against starters (defined as opposing lineups that featured at least four starters) Jokic trails significantly.

Altogether, Jokic played about 400 fewer minutes against starters than Porzingis and about 700 fewer than Towns. That feels like a fairly meaningful margin and could help explain why Jokic’s all-in-one numbers are so eye-popping. That is not to say he was a Boban Marjanovic, who posted an equally eye-popping BPM of +3.6 last season but played just 69 total minutes (nice!) against opposing starters. Still, a relatively low number of minutes against the best lineups opponents can muster has to be a factor in Jokic’s showing in some of these advanced numbers.

Another contextual point in comparing these three players is their progression over the course of their rookie years. The graph below shows a rolling eight-game average of each player’s DRE (a single-game, box score based estimate of a player’s net impact per 100 possessions).

All three players had a clear peak around the middle of the season and declined from there. Porzingis seemed to hit the wall first and his drop-off was the most pronounced. Towns peaked latest and both he and Jokic were fairly consistent to finish the season. To put the DRE measures in perspective, 0.0 represents an average player, about what C.J. Miles offered last season. A DRE of 3.0, around where Porzingis peaked would have been roughly equivalent to the season-long production of Jimmy Butler. A DRE of 6.0, around where Jokic and Towns peaked, is Kawhi Leonard/Chris Paul territory.

So, looking at a softer more indistinct sort of a projection, what are the lessons here?

For Jokic, temper expectations with the understanding that he’s going to be playing more minutes and more meaningful minutes. For Porzingis, remember the season as a whole — thunderous tip-dunks and early expectations shattered, as well as a second-half of the season that wore him down. And then there’s Towns, whose rookie season was pretty much without caveat. I suppose the lesson there is, prepare to be amazed.

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