Evaluating the NBA’s Most Impactful Rookies
Looking beyond the standard statistics, which NBA rookies made the biggest impact on winning this season?
When it comes to NBA rookies, it’s often difficult to evaluate just how impactful these players are. Simply looking at the usual statistics can be somewhat helpful, but how do we know that production isn’t empty and actually impacts winning?
One metric that can directionally be a guide when measuring a player’s impact on winning is Box Plus/Minus (BPM), which is a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions contributed above a league-average player and translated to an average team.
This season, only seven rookies have a positive BPM, which goes to show just how difficult it is for a first-year player to be an overall impactful player.
1. Leonard Miller (11.3)
2. Victor Wembanyama (5.2)
3. Chet Holmgren (3.2)
4. Trayce Jackson-Davis (3.0)
5. Amen Thompson (1.5)
6. Dereck Lively (0.6)
7. Cam Whitmore (0.1)
From there, another measure of a player’s individual impact on a team’s success is Win Shares. Only eight players produced more than three in this metric over the course of the season.
1. Chet Holmgren (8.2)
2. Derek Lively (4.8)
3. Trayce Jackson-Davis (4.5)
4. Amen Thompson (3.7)
5. Brandin Podziemski
6. Cason Wallace (3.6)
7. Jaime Jaquez (3.4)
8. Victor Wembanyama (3.2)
While this evaluation is an oversimplification and there are many other ways to measure a player's impact on winning, these two metrics match the eye test overall. It’s much harder for a player on a non-competitive team like Brandon Miller (Charlotte Hornets) or Ausar Thompson (Detroit Pistons) to rank highly in metrics like this — which is worth calling out — but overall the rookies who have helped their teams most in being competitive this year have been captured.
Either way, the only rookies to appear on both of the previous lists include Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgren, Amen Thompson and Trayce Jackson-Davis. Each of these four players will have a real case in being on an NBA All-Rookie Team, especially given their respective statistics are backed up by being proven winners. Furthermore, several of the rookies who led this group in BPM and WS will have the chance to earn legitimate postseason minutes in the coming week.
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