National Basketball Association

NBA Season Preview: The crackpots and these rookies

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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NBA Rookies are an infusion of hope.

They arrive at the NBA Draft thoroughly scouted and broken down, tracked and projected. Once the rookies are paired off with eager new franchises, they move on to Summer League. Then training camps and preseason games. By the time the opening tip of a new season goes up, there is a hefty file of documentation on the relative talent of each of these brand new players.

But that doesn’t make them any less mysterious.

Most NBA rookies are not good, even those headed on a short track to stardom. Still, initial assessments often tend to be rosy. Basketball is more fun when every player and every team is maxing out their talent, and so the natural inclination is for assumptions to drift in that direction. Even when we feel the tug of reality, no one wants to envision a promising young player chained to the bench for an entire season for lack of defensive experience, or to create room for some middling veteran. We can’t help but hope for the best for them.

Even with what we think we know about these players, and the slightly dreamy hypotheticals we entertain for them, the dynamic of a rookie season is almost always one of surprise.

Last season’s rookie class featured three rookie big men — Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis, and Nikola Jokic — all of whom threaten to remake out understanding of what’s possible from the center position. No matter how high your individual preseason assessments were of that trio, seeing them as rookies actually follow through on their promises, breathing life into their potential was a shock. All three looked to be good to varying degrees, but this good, this fast?

How about D’Angelo Russell suffering through the absurdist coaching style of Byron Scott? Or Devin Booker making himself perhaps the most indispensable member of the Phoenix Suns? Or Emmanuel Mudiay finishing with one of the least efficient shooting seasons in NBA history?

The point being, we have hopes and expectations for the rookie class each season but there are no bullseyes, only slightly smaller surprises.

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