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Is This Year's Rookie Class the Worst in Modern NBA History?

By several measurements, 2016-17 is on track to be the single worst rookie class of the three-point era.
Photo by John Geliebter-USA TODAY Sports

The Philadelphia 76ers announced on Wednesday that rookie sensation Joel Embiid's season is over due to the torn meniscus in his left knee. Embiid ends the year having appeared in 31 games, electrifying believers and doubters of The Process alike with an absurd line of 20.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 2.5 blocks in just 25.4 minutes per game. The Sixers, one of the five worst teams in basketball, actually outscored their opponents by 67 points during the 786 minutes Embiid was on the floor; they've been blasted by 385 (and counting) points during the 2,066 (and counting) minutes he's spent on the bench. That's the equivalent of going from the Raptors to the Nets, based on whether or not Embiid was in the game.

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What I'm saying is: he's good. What I'm saying next is: the rest of this year's crop of rookies are incredibly not.

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After Embiid, the first-year player making the biggest impact so far has probably been Malcolm Brogdon, a solid bench guy on a scrapping-for-a-playoff-spot Bucks team. The Hernangomen—Willy of the Knicks and Juancho of the Nuggets—have been solid as well, albeit in limited minutes. Alex Abrines has been… fine. Yogi Ferrell had a nice two-week run. Rodney McGruder has played some good defense. Dario Saric, Embiid's teammate, has made some plays, but he can't shoot and has left plenty to be desired on the other end of the floor. (Yes, there have been several other solid but unremarkable rookies. No, we're not going to list them all here.)

None of those guys exactly screams Rookie of the Year, though, which is kind of the point. This rookie class is hella bad. Exactly how bad? Well, by several measurements, it's on track to be the single worst rookie class of the three-point era (since the 1979-80 season).

Since 1979, 2,608 players have stepped on the floor with a "rookie" designation, per Basketball-Reference. Ninety-five of those players have registered at least 5.0 Win Shares during that season, an average of 2.5 players per year. Barring a truly miraculous end-of-season run from Brogdon, McGruder, or Willy Hernangomez, none of the 79 rookies who have appeared in a game during the 2016-17 season will reach that mark, which would make this only the fourth season in the last 38 where no rookie did so. (And only the third full season. One of the aforementioned four was the lockout-shortened 1998-99 campaign, which lasted only 50 games.)

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Our face when we saw the stats for this year's rookie class. Photo by Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

This year's rookie class had accumulated a combined 30.5 Win Shares heading into Wednesday night's play, a full-season pace of 40.5 that would rank dead last in the past 38 seasons. Adjusting for minutes played does not help. This class's rate of 0.043 Win Shares Per 48 minutes is easily the lowest of any rookie class during the three-point era, as well. Lower than the infamously bad 2000-01 class that saw Mike Miller win ROY by averaging 11.9 points and 4.0 rebounds per game. Lower than the class that debuted two years ago, sans Embiid and Saric, who were drafted in 2014 but didn't step on the floor until this season. Lower than all of them.

Of course, some of the other classes toward the bottom of this list should give us pause before writing the book on this year's crop.

Take a look at the 2013-14 class of rookies, which recorded the fifth-lowest Win Shares Per 48 Minutes rate during its first season of any group in the past 38 years. After its initial season, that class looked like an outright disaster. Three years later, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a superstar; Rudy Gobert is a borderline All-Star and one of the best defensive players in the league; C.J. McCollum looks like he'll score 20 a game while shooting over 40 percent from three for the foreseeable future; Otto Porter is in the midst of a breakout year; Victor Oladipo, Cody Zeller, Steven Adams, and Andre Roberson are all important starters; and Kelly Olynyk, Shabazz Muhammad, Dennis Schroder, Tony Snell, Gorgui Dieng, Mason Plumlee, Solomon Hill, Tim Hardaway Jr., Alan Crabbe, and others are effective role players. Undrafted guys like Ian Clark, Robert Covington, Seth Curry, Dewayne Dedmon, and Matthew Dellavedova have found their place in the league, too.

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So, yeah, just because this rookie crop looks brutal today does not necessarily mean it will stay that way. After all, 2016's No. 1 overall pick, Ben Simmons, has yet to step on the court. Given his wide-ranging skill set and the role he could have been expected to play in the 76ers' offense, it's reasonable to assume that he would have added quite a bit of production and possibly propped up this dragging class all by his lonesome. (He will now technically be classified as a rookie next season, though, just as Embiid, Saric, and Willy Hernangomez are rookies this season even though they weren't drafted in 2016.) Last year's top ten also happened to feature several "developmental" prospect picks who are just too young to make a serious impact yet, like Suns forwards Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss, and Bucks forward/center Thon Maker.

This class also suffers from being compared to their immediate predecessors, which was the best we'd seen in a while. The depth and breadth of big man prospects who took the floor for the first time last season was spectacular, with Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis, Myles Turner, and Nikola Jokic all taking the league by storm to one degree or another. Devin Booker caught fire over the second half of the season and added a potential star guard to the mix. Willie Cauley-Stein's per-minute and efficiency numbers were ridiculous. Josh Richardson, Justise Winslow, Jonathan Simmons, Norman Powell, and Frank Kaminsky all found roles on playoff teams. The immediate impact the class made was unusual, which has given us all whiplash when considering the relatively moderate influence this season's rookies have had on their teams.

A few years from now, it's entirely possible that we could be singing a very different tune about the guys who made their maiden NBA voyage during the 2016-17 season. Maybe Embiid gets (and stays) healthy, Brogdon becomes a high-level starter, the Hernangomezes stick around as contributors, and Buddy Hield makes Vivek Ranadive look like a genius.

Or maybe things continue on this path, and the 2016-17 rookie class joins 2000-01 as maybe the worst we've seen in modern NBA history.

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