Wembanyama's rookie season

[JustBuzzin]

II'd say LeBron, Shaq and Duncan are the only ones better in the last 30 years.

How is LeBron the best rookie season when people were debating Melo should have won it as he got his team to the playoffs in a much tougher conference.

[Patches Perry]

II'd say LeBron, Shaq and Duncan are the only ones better in the last 30 years.

How is LeBron the best rookie season when people were debating Melo should have won it as he got his team to the playoffs in a much tougher conference.

Forgot about Carmelo, he had a really good rookie year too. Nuggets won 26 more games than the year before.

[Exp0sed]

Tim Duncan was 5th in MVP voting his rookie season.

If Wemby was drafted into a winning team he could have been 5th tbh

the Sochan at PG experiment with Wemby not at Center kinda dragged his overall numbers and impact down
if we take that sillyness out and focus just on his season from the second he was switched to C (which means most of the season) - he'd be 5th in my book

obviously with the Spurs winning 20 games it's irrelevant but he was def that good

if they get Trae plus another good vet he'd be 5th and upwards as early as next season. barring injuries he'll be he GOAT but it's low key boring because he's 7'5, super agile, smart and can pull up from the logo when he's feeling it so...nothing to see here too unfair haha

[Bornstellar]

Duncan, Robinson, and Shaq are the only players to have better rookie seasons that Wemby in the modern era

[zimpy27]

Wemby had probably the best statistical output of a rookie in the past 30 years.

Only negative stat was this one:
Spurs had a 27.3% W/L (3-8) without Wemby
Spurs had a 26.8% W/L (19-52) with Wemby

[tmorgan]

It’s been so long since LeBron’s rookie year, I think people have forgotten how truly mediocre he was. Sure, you could see he would be awesome sooner rather than later, and he had some insane highlight dunks, but he was extremely inefficient, raw, whatever you want to call it.

41.7% from the field, 29% from three, 20.9 ppg, 5.5 reb, 5.9 ast, 3.5 to, 0.7 blk, 1.6 stl in 39.5 (!) minutes.

Even when you adjust for era/pace, Wemby’s season was a TON better on a per minute basis, and somewhat better in totality.

Of course, year two LeBron was five levels higher. If Wemby sees anywhere near that level of improvement, he’s MVP already.

[picko]

I think some people are confusing 'best' with 'most exciting'. There have clearly been more impactful rookie seasons than Wembanyama. People seem to forget that CP3 entered the league as a fully-fledged PG, capable of running a team as good as anyone, while Duncan made the all-NBA first team. Both made massive contributions to winning right out of the gate.

Wemby, of course, has been excellent in his own right and I think you could say that he's been easily the most exciting rookie we've had since Shaq. That's both in terms of what he's done of the floor - every other game he seems to be doing things that seem rather impossible - but also in terms of what he has the potential to become.

If you want to account for age, then I think you could make a reasonable argument. Shaq was about 10 months older than Wembanyama when he made his debut, CP3 was 8 months older and Duncan was almost a couple of years older. Accounting for age, you might have to go back to Magic (4 months older) for a better rookie season. Wembanyama has certainly shaded the rookie campaigns of everyone who entered the league younger than him though.

But if you are including all rookies, I think it's difficult to argue that he's better than Duncan or CPI3 or Shaq or Robinson.

[The Master]

For players in their age 19/20 season, since Wemby began this campaign at 19 and ended it at 20, it's really only sophomore Lebron who has an argument. Even then you could make a case for Wemby based on defense.

LeBron was 6th in the MVP voting as a sophomore on 42-40 and +0.3 SRS team.

For a 19/20yo rookie - both from boxscore (5.2 BPM) and impact metrics standpoint (23rd in EPM) - this is the greatest rookie year ever. You can easily argue he's already a top30 player and DPOTY contender - and such level is historically unparalleled for a 'one and done' rookie (age-wise). Doncic was 54th in RAPTOR and had 3.9 BPM production - and I guess that would be the closest performance to Wemby. And being on a level of ~top50 player on high volume in case of Luka was already bloody impressive, Wemby is just a tier better player. Fun fact: Luka in his sophomore year was +8.4 BPM, 4th in MVP voting and 7th in RAPTOR, so it seems MVP-level performance in his 2nd year is something to be expected from the French.

[CIN-C-STAR]

Wemby had probably the best statistical output of a rookie in the past 30 years.

Only negative stat was this one:
Spurs had a 27.3% W/L (3-8) without Wemby
Spurs had a 26.8% W/L (19-52) with Wemby

3-8 is small sample-size theater though.
For example, they won today without Wemby against the Pistons B-Team.
The Pistons ARE a B-Team (sorry Pistons fans), so beating their B-Team means nothing. Was probably the easiest win of the season for any team.
Take that one win out of youe equation, and suddenly he increased their win % by 7%.

[zimpy27]

Wemby had probably the best statistical output of a rookie in the past 30 years.

Only negative stat was this one:
Spurs had a 27.3% W/L (3-8) without Wemby
Spurs had a 26.8% W/L (19-52) with Wemby

3-8 is small sample-size theater though.
For example, they won today without Wemby against the Pistons B-Team.
The Pistons ARE a B-Team (sorry Pistons fans), so beating their B-Team means nothing. Was probably the easiest win of the season for any team.
Take that one win out of youe equation, and suddenly he increased their win % by 7%.

It's a small sample but those 11 games were against a pretty good spread of competition and 8 were away with only 3 at home.
Wins @GSW, PHO, DET
Losses @MIL, @NOP, @DAL, @SAC, @OKC, @POR, CHI, @CHO

[hauntedcomputer]

Pettit deserves a mention. 20/14/3 and an all-star, MVP in his second year. (Blocks and steals not counted).

Mikan (BAA) 28 pts, 4 assists and a title. First NBA year 27 and 3, apparently they didn't track boards but he was averaging 13 to 14 after that. All-NBA first team and a title.

[Iwasawitness]

It’s not even the best rookie season in his franchise’s history. That would be David Robinson (a 24-year old Robinson, but still) Fun fact, guess who averaged more blocks their rookie year?

Things were different back then. Attacking the paint and utilizing the mid range were a lot more common, not to mention the fast pace they played at.

For anyone to average 3.6 BPG, in this day and age no less with the game being a lot more perimeter based, is extremely impressive. I’ll admit that from a numbers perspective, Robinson had the better year, but when you consider Wemby’s age, his thin frame, the ridiculous amount of hype he had coming in the league… and then to put up the kind of numbers he did after? To me, Wemby definitely had the more impressive rookie season.

[Iwasawitness]

II'd say LeBron, Shaq and Duncan are the only ones better in the last 30 years.

LeBron has done a lot of things in his career.

An all time great rookie season is not one of them.

[ChipotleWest]

More like how many 19 year olds have had a better season

I agree, that's the more logical question to ask.

I can think of several players off the top of my head, all-timer greats to be sure, who have had better rookie seasons. D-Rob, Duncan, Kareem, Wilt were all definitely better. If you dug down you could probably find a few more. Of course all those guys were older, some significantly older.

For players in their age 19/20 season, since Wemby began this campaign at 19 and ended it at 20, it's really only sophomore Lebron who has an argument. Even then you could make a case for Wemby based on defense.

Luka was 21 ppg 7.8 rebounds 6 assists at 19. He had slightly better numbers than Lebron as a rookie. But of course both Wemby and Lebron made up for that on defense.

[DwayneSchintzus]

No matter where you land on this, the only rookie seasons that you can compare to his are the all-time greats.

That's a win no matter how you slice it. The future is very bright for Wemby and San Antonio.

[Ein Sof]

Robinson is a Christian dude who believes his body is his temple etc. He also came out of the Navy and they're strict.

Don't disagree, but I'm sure he fed his temple with the right supplements in the free wheeling 90s.

Still LOL'ing at the idea that a 7'1" basketball player can look like this naturally.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

More like how many 19 year olds have had a better season

It was his 20y season according to bref rules, though, for what it's worth.
following that rule Luka's 2nd season was better, but Luka was just a few months younger during his rookie year.
to be honest, I might take this Wemby season over LeBron's second season, much closer in actual age. Another contender would be Kobe's third season, who was 6 months older than Wemby.

[Rust_Cohle]

II'd say LeBron, Shaq and Duncan are the only ones better in the last 30 years.

Wemby's rookie season was better than LeBron's

[Homer38]

Read on Twitter

[Hornet Mania]

More like how many 19 year olds have had a better season

I agree, that's the more logical question to ask.

I can think of several players off the top of my head, all-timer greats to be sure, who have had better rookie seasons. D-Rob, Duncan, Kareem, Wilt were all definitely better. If you dug down you could probably find a few more. Of course all those guys were older, some significantly older.

For players in their age 19/20 season, since Wemby began this campaign at 19 and ended it at 20, it's really only sophomore Lebron who has an argument. Even then you could make a case for Wemby based on defense.

Luka was 21 ppg 7.8 rebounds 6 assists at 19. He had slightly better numbers than Lebron as a rookie. But of course both Wemby and Lebron made up for that on defense.

I'd probably rank them Lebron, Wemby then Luka. All were excellent, obviously.

I mainly wanted to agree with the other post that 'Wemby is the GOAT rookie' is not true, but when you control for age he's in that conversation.