Key Storylines: Why this season’s Rookie of the Year race is wide open

Top picks Zaccharie Risacher of the Hawks and Alex Sarr of the Wizards will look to claim the Kia Rookie of the Year award.

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We’re counting down 24 major storylines for the 2024-2025 NBA season. Our senior analysts will dissect a new topic every day as we help you prepare for opening night on October 22.

Here’s the storyline No. 6:

Here’s why the Kia Rookie of the Year race is wide open this season:

A good rule of thumb when gauging how open the Kia Rookie of the Year race might be in any NBA season is this: “Was there consensus on the No. 1 pick in the previous June’s Draft?”

Makes sense, right? If you have a reliable, no-brainer top pick, that player will most likely demonstrate his value, if not from Day 1, then certainly from Year 1. Any general manager or president of basketball operations who wins the lottery and spends that money The oh-so-coveted addition to his vision of the team’s future, he hopes he gets the proverbial pick from the litter. That is to say: the best player in that year’s class, also known as Rookie of the Year.

When you bring in a franchise player like Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, or even an 18-year-old LeBron James, it seems reasonable to expect him to compete and outshine all the other newcomers. ROY? Most of those guys have MVP awards and Hall of Fame honors on their way.

And yet…here’s a sobering statistic. Since the league went to the current Draft lottery format in 1986, there have been 38 No. 1 picks. Only 18 (46%) won Rookie of the Year. Those franchise guys don’t come around that often.

If there was one of the 58 prospects chosen in the 2024 Draft, he has yet to come forward. There was no consensus No. 1. No one, before or since, has claimed that Atlanta’s Zaccharie Risacher, Washington’s Alex Sarr or Houston’s Reed Sheppard are Chris Webber, Allen Iverson or Victor Wembanyama this year.

This season’s rookie race could look more like 2021-2022, when Toronto’s Scottie Barnes rose from No. 4 to take home the award ahead of the players picked before him (Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green and Evan Mobley). The voting was close – Barnes with 378 points, Mobley with 363 – and it could go that way again next spring.

Remember that there are other factors that always come into play. Injuries are at the top of the list. Cunningham was a fairly certain No. 1 pick in 2021, but the Detroit guard was hurt and finished third to ROY. When Memphis’ Ja Morant took home the trophy in 2020, he was assisted by Zion Williamson — everyone’s automatic No. 1 in that class — when the New Orleans nose tackle made just 24 appearances.

Fit within a team’s rotation is another variable, as are the bosses’ ambitions for that rookie. When San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich once again seemed uninterested in winning last season, the ROY race between Victor Wembanyama and Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren remained surprisingly close for much of the year.

The Frenchman then took first place in 99 and won the award handily.

There’s no Wemby in the Class of 2024, maybe not even a Paolo Banchero (not a consensus No. 1 pick, but a runaway ROY winner in 2022-2023). Look for plenty of climbers and descenders on the Kia Rookie Ladder in 2024-25.

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Steve Aschburner has been writing about the NBA since 1980. You can send him an email here his archive here And follow him on X.

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