All-Rookie Team

We are about 1/8 through the season. So here is my totally unnecessary predictions for the All-Rookie team:

Chris Paul
Wow. I severely misjudged him. What can I say - I thought there was a little too much hype before the draft. But ... this kid is incredible. He may end up going about 18/6/6 on the season. And he can read lanes in a poor-man's-Iverson sort of way. Now if only he learned to shoot. And if he only learned to defend. But this kid seems to be a lock for Rookie of the Year unless one of the others does something incredible.

Deron Williams
I was super-high on D. Williams before the draft. Maybe I got sucked into the hype. I was a little scared about that - but now my confidence is up on him again. And besides, the summer time with John Stockton seems to have paid off. Even before moving into the starting lineup, he was the Jazz's leading assist-man. He is a little bit streaky when it comes to shooting, but his outside (3pt) shots fall at around 40%, which is nothing to sneeze at. While he isn't as fast as Paul and can't read lanes as well, he seems to be a better on the ball defender - a capable one at that.

Channing Frye
Like Paul, Frye is someone I underrated. (Good call, Danh!) I thought he was a top handful, but I was a little concerned about his strength and rebounding capacity. Turns out, he plays this strange 3-4-5 hybrid that actually works pretty nicely - especially into Coach Brown's system. He is remarkably efficient. I don't just mean that in terms of putting up numbers. I mean that he does little things that normally aren't tracked in boxscores - things that set Duncan apart from other 20/10 types. Though, even if we talk modeling, note that he does lead rookies in PER with 23.2. More importantly makes his opponent remarkably inefficient with a PER of 9.9. Oh, and let's not forget that the Knicks still aren't really a great defensive team or anything. But Frye knows his shit cold. And it shows.

Charlie Villanueva - Well. Yah. Ok, so he was reputed to have attitude problems, etc. And he got hammered in the press when he was drafted at 7. Recall that a few years back when he was in high school, they thought that he should go in the draft after his freshman year in college, but he was somewhat disappointing. Anyway, turns out his potential is still there. And he seems to be playing with a chip on his shoulder. At the 4 he is able to step out and hit the 3 at 38%, he has a helluva lotta 18+ pt games, with an average of like 14 to go along with about 7 boards. His PER is reasonably high (around say 17) but his defense is a little questionable.

Ike Diogu - Yes, he has only played one game to date. Yes, this might look hasty. But he seemed super-solid in that game. As expected he shot rather well, and he was fairly strong all around. He seemed confident enough to play his package in limited time. He interrupted lanes, took medium (~14 ft) jumpers, hit his free throws, tried out post-up moves, made a few pretty cuts, etc. And he basically did all of this in 11 minutes, racking up 11 pts, 3 boards, 1 stl, getting to the line some 3 times, shooting 57%. Now we obviously don't expand that to 40 minutes and estimate that the kid is a 44 pt, 12 board, 5 steal type kid... but we do recognize that he had a great summer league, and he did pretty well in minutes matched up against Tim, Rasho, and Nazr. Of course, the bulk of his minutes came against the latter two, and this is a horribly small sample size - but I think that Montgomery is going to work him into about 25 minutes per game at least. I suspect Foyle's minutes get cut with Murphy sliding to the 5. (Not starting, but effective playing time.)


Close considerations:
Andrew Bogut
Sarunas Jasikevicius
Ray Felton
Luther Head
Salim Stoudemire