Mavericks guard Luka Doncic has the best chance to win the Rookie of the Year award, according to an ESPN panel. Doncic will fill up the stat sheet and might wind up with the ball more often than second-year guard Dennis Smith Jr., according to Mike Schmitz. Top overall pick Deandre Ayton ranks second on the poll, with Schmitz noting that the Suns big man likely to get more playing time than any other rookie. Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr., Cavaliers point guard Collin Sexton and Bulls center Wendell Carter Jr. round out the top five.
We have more from around the league:
- Retaining Paul George in free agency and dumping Carmelo Anthony‘s contract while receiving projected sixth man Dennis Schroder in return earned the Thunder the top spot on NBA.com’s David Aldridge’s offseason rankings. The rankings are based upon what teams have done during the offseason. The Lakers ranked No. 2 by virtue of signing LeBron James and handing out one-year contracts to other players, thus allowing them to be a force again in next year’s free agent market. The Nuggets gained the No. 3 spot by locking up Nikola Jokic and making trades that cleared roster spots and eased their luxury-tax situation.
- Forwards DJ Hogg (Texas A&M) and Malik Pope (San Diego State) and swingman BJ Johnson (LaSalle) are among the top 10 prospects at the G League Invitational, according to Bryan Kalbrosky of HoopsHype. The invitational takes place Sunday in Chicago and over a dozen of last year’s prospects received training camp invites afterward.
- The Warriors’ over-under odds for wins next season is 62.5, according to Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook. The Celtics ranked second overall with a 57.5 over-under win total with the Rockets third at 54.5. The Hawks have the lowest projected win total at 23.5. The odds for each NBA team were passed along by ESPN’s Ben Fawkes.
Anybody want to take bets on all those Lakers free agents still being on the roster at the end of the season. LeBron needs to tell his wife he likes it when Lance blows in his ear. LeBron will get $5MM worth of them from Lance this season. Amazing.
They’ll all be there, they’re cheap and on 1 year contracts. They’re saving cap space for next off season and hopefully they’ll finally be able to move Deng’s contract?
LeBron rarely keeps players for an entire season. He makes changes every summer and trade deadline.
Is that u Dionis?
These “who’s going to be…?” lists before the season starts are fun to us fans, but we don’t vote for them. besides we’ve got a season to see what they actually do.
Oops forgot to tell my 2 cents. I’m thinking b/c we’ve recently seen a waive of players that aren’t actually rookies, but ended up getting rookie of the year I’ll go with Billie Preston and “Will it go round in circles?”
Maybe; but more likely to ‘fly high like a bird up in the sky’!
I would like to hope that Doncic ends up with the ball more often than DSJ, I mean Doncic is aiming to be a superstar in the league, while DSJ is a nice player maybe to be the 3rd in a big three, cannot see much star potential in him, a good to very good player, but Doncic can be a game changer, definitely the franchise player.
My so early favorites for the ROY are Ayton, MBIII, which wasn’t in that list, SMH, Doncic & WCJ, is gonna be one of this four, as a dark horse depending on his health could be MPJ, you can never forget him.
Your assessment on DSJr is not very accurate. He’s 20 years old and his talent is through the roof. Running a pick n roll w/ Jordan will be close to unstoppable.
He will have better numbers than Doncic
Nobody has even seen Doncic play yet. They are getting excited about how he performed against guys that could no longer play in the NBA. Nobody has an idea how he’ll actually do!
I agree with the top 3 offseason rankings, OKC strengthened themselves very well with Schroeder, TLC & Noel & freeing themselves of Melo.
Lakers, well you gotta be on top with LBJ, but all the other signings are good too, specially the best is that they haven’t lost any young ones, specially Ball, Ingram & Kuzma, very exciting, the showtime is back.
Also Denver, wow that is like signing a super FA getting locked Jokic for 5 years, that is the cornerstone for the future, also IT is a very good signing & getting rid of so many bad contracts. Also getting MPJ is like having won the lottery. I really think Denver is gonna be a #4-5 they will surprise people, the only teams I can see ahead of them are GSW, Lakers, OKC & Houston, then Minny & NOLA with them, so 1 spot left in the west for either Portland, San Antonio & Utah, I would probably give it to Portland.
Okc still needs to stretch the man bun singler. Once he is gone, then the off-season moves are complete.
I think the Warriors will finish 27 games ahead of the Lakers in the division. They will go undefeated throughout the playoffs and win their 4th title in 5 years. Steph Curry and Kevin Durant will tie for the NBA MVP and Durant will get his 3rd straight Finals MVP. Durant, Curry, and Thompson will announce they intend to play together. Kawhi will announce he wants to win another title, and LeBron will never win another one, so he’ll sign a 1 year contract for the minimum.
Make that play together until they retire! And they’ll trade Draymond, Iggy, Livingston and picks to New Orleans for Anthony Davis.
For Denver, they will announce that Isaih Thomas will always be Jamaal Murray’s backup.