Buddy Hield: Outside Rookie Of The Year Candidate

With the injury to Ben Simmons the race for Rookie of the Year is wide open. Buddy Hield is the outside pick to win the award.

With Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers sitting on the sidelines for the start of the 2016-17 season, the Rookie of the Year race has the potential to be wide open. Buddy Hield has an outside chance to establish himself early in the season with the New Orleans Pelicans and make it his award to lose.

History is against Hield. There are only four players who have been taken with the sixth pick of any NBA draft in history who have won the award. These players were Adrian Dantley in 1776-77, Larry Bird in 1979-80, Brandon Roy in 2006-07 and Damian Lillard in 2012-13. This would not be a bad list to join. New Orleans has never had a Rookie of the Year either.

Obviously there are a number of players who would stand in Hield’s way to win the award. With the exception of Simmons and maybe Jamal Murray, Hield’s situation is unique in this draft. He has the greatest opportunity to make a difference on a poor team.

Ben Simmons

With Ben Simmons potentially out for three months with the surgery to his foot, this makes it very hard for him to win the award. He could miss somewhere in the region of 26 games. Only five players in the history of the NBA have won Rookie of the Year playing less than 60 games. Two of these were Kyrie Irving and Vince Carter in lockout seasons, so they don’t really count.

Brandon Roy won the award playing only 57 games in the 2006-07 season. However, in those games he averaged 16,8 points per game which is five more per game than his nearest rival, Andrea Bargnani, who averaged 11.6 per game.

Roy also averaged 4.0 assists per game, which was higher than Rajon Rondo, who averaged 3.8 per game in his rookie year. Roy collected 127 of a possible 128 first place votes in winning the award, per Basketball-Reference.

Patrick Ewing won the award playing only 50 games in the 1985-86 season. However, when you average 20 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game as a rookie, there are not many first-year players who can compete with these numbers. Ewing collected 36 of a possible 78 votes to win the award, per Basketball-Reference.

The only other player who achieved this feat was Terry Dischinger who played 57 games in the 1962-63 season, which was only 80 games long. Dischinger averaged 25.5 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. No other player in the All-Rookie team of that year averaged over 15.0 points per game.

Simmons will have to join some fairly elite company if he is to win the Rookie of the Year award.

Brandon Ingram

Sep 26, 2016; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers forward Brandon Ingram (14) poses at media day at Toyota Sports Center.. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports /

Brandon Ingram is a tremendous pure shooter. He was taken with the second pick of the 2016 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Lakers due to the talent he showed through his year at Duke. His 17.3 points per game came at a 44 percent shooting percentage.

The upside for the Lakers is that Ingram took 195 of his 484 field goals last season from beyond the arc. That is two out of every five shots taken. He made 80 of those 195 shots, for a shooting percentage of 41 percent.

Ingram will be fighting for playing time at the crowded forward position. Nick Young, Julius Randle, Larry Nance Jr.and Luol Deng all have legitimate claims for playing time which will take time away from Ingram.

Ingram’s body may also not be NBA ready. At 6-foot-9, Ingram is only 190 pounds and is extremely thin. He has been compared to Kevin Durant, but he is 50 pounds lighter. This lack of body weight may cut his playing time in his rookie season.

Jaylen Brown

Jaylen Brown was taken with the third pick of the 2016 draft by the Boston Celtics. It is safe to say that this was a surprise on draft night. The Celtics are were looking for a star player to take them deep into the playoffs. Instead they drafted another project. An inefficient scoring combo guard/forward with a jump shot as a work in progress and poor decision making.

Marcus Smart is already this player for the Celtics. Maybe Danny Ainge was hoping for a trade. Brown will be competing with Jae Crowder and Gerald Green to name a few at the small forward position. I can’t see him producing the numbers to win this year’s Rookie of the Year.

Dragan Bender

Dragan Bender was taken with the fourth pick of the 2016 draft by the Phoenix Suns. Despite being touted to go highly, the only way that I will describe the Bender pick is project. Bender is young, he is only 18 and he has only played 10 games professionally, per Basketball-Reference. He averaged 8.6 minutes, 1.5 points and 1.2 rebounds per game.

What has excited NBA teams is his height, 7-foot-1, and his shooting range. The NBA was energized last season by the Latvian phenom Kristaps Porzingis who amazed us with his shooting, awesome put-back dunks and general all round play as he helped the New York Knicks out of their 2014-15 funk.

Bender is not Porzingis. He is not ready to make the transition into the NBA yet. The Suns knew this when they took him at No. 4. They are building for the future and Bender will not figure out enough in his first season to be the best rookie in his class.

Kris Dunn

Kris Dunn was taken with the fifth pick of the 2016 draft by the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Timberwolves took Dunn presumably as insurance for oft injured point guard Ricky Rubio.

Dunn averaged 16.4 points and 6.2 assists per game last season for Providence. Most likely, he will run the second unit unless Rubio is injured. This will not give him enough time on court to feature prominently in the Rookie of the Year voting.

A second problem for Dunn is that he is playing on the same team as the previous two Rookie of the Year winners, Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. Towns appears to be the leader of the team with Wiggins supporting him. Dunn is going to have to find his way on this team which is still trying to find their identity.

The third problem for Dunn is that he is competing with a number of players for his position. These include Rubio, Zach LaVine and Tyus Jones for minutes in the backcourt for a young, exciting team.

Jamal Murray

Jamal Murray was selected with the seventh pick of the 2016 draft by the Denver Nuggets. Murray is another young guard on a young roster. This is going to be problematic for Murray with such a young team around him.

Jusuf Nurkic, Nikola Jokic, Emmanuel Mudiay and Will Barton are all important players in Denver and none of them have more than four years experience. Adding Murray into this mix of youth and you have a young team trying to find an identity.

Mudiay is also going to try and rebuild his reputation after a less than stellar rookie year. Murray could prove me wrong but it is hard to see.

So Why Buddy Hield

Buddy Hield was selected by the New Orleans Pelicans to add a shooter to their ranks. Now with the loss of Ryan Anderson, the Pelicans’ best floor-spacer last season, Hield has become vital.

Where Hield has the advantage over players such as Murray and Dunn is that the Pelicans have a star already on their team in Anthony Davis. Davis is such a presence on the court that he will take the heat off the rookie Hield.

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Hield is also looking like getting some good playing time at the start of the season. Tyreke Evans is targeting a return in mid-December and Jrue Holiday is expected to miss the start of the season as he’s been tending to his wife.

Hield may not start from day one of the season but his shooting will have him knocking on the door sooner rather than later. Last season for Oklahoma, Hield averaged 25.0 points per game shooting at 50.1 percent from the field. What is an even more impressive number is that he made 147 of his 322 three-point attempts at 45.7 percent.

Hield attempted 601 field goals last season, and 322 of these were three-point attempts. Just under 54 percent of all Hield’s shots last season were from three-point land. New Orleans needs outside shooting to space the floor for Davis to go to work and on these numbers, Hield should be the man.

Next: NBA: Top 10 Candidates For 2016-17 Rookie Of The Year

If Hield can bring this tremendous accuracy to New Orleans then he will be given enough playing time to have a good shot at Rookie of the Year.

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Buddy Hield: The Outside Pick For Rookie Of The Year

By Matthew Hallett | Oct 15, 2016