NBA: The 25 worst players to ever win Rookie of the Year

NBA: The 25 worst players to ever win Rookie of the Year: 13. Ray Felix

In the early 1950s, a fledgling National Basketball Association was figuring out how to walk and slowly began introducing things such as league awards. The Rookie of the Year award was first given out in 1953. A few months later Ray Felix was drafted first overall, and he became the first “Rooke of the Year favorite” and ultimately became its second winner.

Felix played college basketball at Long Island University before the Baltimore Bullets selected him in the 1953 NBA Draft. He put up 17.6 points and 13.3 rebounds as a 23-year-old rookie, earning an All-Star nod, becoming just the second black player to do so.

The following season, Felix joined a solid New York Knicks team and made the playoffs but saw his role slowly reduced from there. By his early 30s, he found his way to the Los Angeles Lakers where he played on two title contenders, In 1961 losing in the Western Conference Finals to Bob Petit and the St. Louis Hawks, and in 1962 in the NBA Finals to a Boston Celtics dynasty that was cruising through 11 titles in 13 seasons.

Felix won Rookie of the Year in 1954, and while he wasn’t the clear-cut best player from that rookie class, it’s not immediately clear who was. Players such as Frank Ramsey and Cliff Hagan were drafted with Felix, but Ramsey served a year with the military and Hagan went back to Kentucky for another season. Of the rookies playing alongside Felix, George Yardley and Clyde Lovellette both had solid careers, but both had poor rookie seasons.