NBA All-Rookie Teams: Way-too-early picks for the best first-year players
NBA All-Rookie Teams: Predicting the 2022-23 First-Team
The first NBA All-Rookie Team is reserved for the best of the best rookies. The NBA Rookie of the Year will take one of the five spots, leaving four spots for other top-performing players.
Paolo Banchero, Orlando Magic
2022-23 stats: 23.3 PPG, 8.7 RPG, 2.0 BPG
The presumptive favorite for NBA Rookie of the Year, Paolo Banchero had a really solid preseason and has shown flashes of why he was the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft. Banchero should have no problem playing a ton of minutes in Orlando, which will help him put up big numbers. He showed a great combination of strength and finesse, which will allow him to score in a number of different ways for the Magic this season.
Keegan Murray, Sacramento Kings
2022-23 stats: 19 PPG, 5 RPG, 2 APG, 2 BPG
The No. 4 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft looked sharp in his debut against the Denver Nuggets and showed he’s going to be a great two-way player.
Keegan Murray gave us a small sample size in Preseason, but those two games he appeared in for Sacramento (coupled with a really nice showing in Summer League), are enough to get fans excited about this former Iowa Hawkeye. He’s a two-way player who plays at an elite level on both ends of the court, which makes him an easy pick to be named to the NBA All-Rookie team at the end of the 2022-23 season.
Jaden Ivey, Detroit Pistons
2022-23 stats: 17.6 PPG, 6 APG, 5.3 RPG
Jaden Ivey is a popular pick among many to be named to the All-Rookie First Team when the dust settles after the regular season, but he’s on a team with a lot of young guys looking to prove their worth in a rebuild. Any worries about not having enough ball to go around with Cade Cunningham, Saddiq Bey, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Isaiah Stewart in the starting lineup have quickly been put to rest. Ivey has played outstanding in his first few games as an NBA player and looks like a contender for NBA ROTY.
Bennedict Mathurin, Indiana Pacers
2022-23 stats: 24 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 2.0 APG
Bennedict Mathurin, the No. 6 overall pick in the draft, has really impressed at every stop in his young NBA career. He was the top-scoring rookie during the preseason and looks advanced for a 20-year-old. The only thing that he seemed to struggle with was shooting from beyond the arc, which will come with time. Mathurin has to be a dark horse candidate to win the NBA Rookie of the Year based on the small sample size we saw during October. Now that the regular season is here, Mathurin continues to put up absurd numbers for the Pacers. He already looks like the steal of the draft.
Jabari Smith, Houston Rockets
2022-23 stats: 13.3 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 1.6 BPG
We saw just one preseason game from Jabari Smith, the No. 3 overall pick, but he did not disappoint. He looked great shooting the ball, knocking down 53% of his field goal attempts, and went 5 of 8 from beyond the arc. It was exactly what we wanted to see after a lackluster Summer League from the former Auburn product.
Unfortunately, Smith suffered an ankle sprain during practice not long after his first preseason game and the Rockets kept him out of their remaining preseason slate as a precaution. He recovered and has played in all the Rockets’ regular season games.
He’s had a trial by fire of sorts to start off his NBA career, facing three really tough teams right out of the gate in Atlanta, Memphis, and Milwaukee. But he’s held his own and has found ways to chip in until he climbs out of an early-season shooting slump (30.4 FG%).