Give Al Horford the R.O.Y. award

[tombattor]

It's a tough call. As good of a season Horford had, I think you have to go with Durant. He really had no one else on his team and most of the time, he had to deal with opposing teams gearing up to stop him.

[campybatman]

The article is by Granderson and includes an interview he'd done with Horford this month.

Kevin Durant is the leading scorer among all NBA rookies. He is also the leading scorer for the worst Seattle team in franchise history. That's not hating, that's fact. No Sonics team has lost more games than this 2007-08 squad.

So I don't understand why Durant is still considered the top rookie of the year candidate. Teams are supposed to get better when they add the top kid in the class, not (historically) worse.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/st ... ortCat=nba

[cfan79]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To be fair to Durant though his team around him is actually worse then they were last season. If they kept Lewis and Ray Allen they wouldn't be that bad. So that is a big component why they are worse then they were last season.

[tlee324]

They're just using Durant's team against him. It has no standing at all on the fact he's a better player than Horford.

[Retrovision]

Is thhis the boston celtics board? Its nice to get some respect from the new rivals.

[tanat-0s]

I really like Al Horford but some of you are nuts. When was the last time you saw Durant play? He shot 47% from the field since the All Star break avg 22 a game. While he is capable of more it doesn't mean that the season he had was a disappointment, it was probably the best season for a 19 year old not named LeBron ever. He scored 30 more times than Horford scored 20.

I am all for winning means something but the Hawks won 37 games lets get real. I have never heard of this award being for the best rookie on a winning team. Forget about what the Hawks would be with Durant what would the Sonics have been with Horford instead, yikes.

the argument that horford should be rookie of the year because he "helped his team make the playoffs" is ludicrous. same for scola. if you swap out durant for either of those guys the sonics would have had the worst record ever, they might not have won 10 games. durant himself won several of the sonics' games on his own practically.

QFT.

And stop bringing Durant's FG% into discussion. He plays SG, Al plays C, it's natural that guard's FG% will be lower. And besides Durant shot 43.0% for a year. That's pretty good % for a rookie guard. Rookie LeBron shot 41.7%, rookie Carmelo shot 42.6%, rookie Iverson shot 41.6%. Add TWO super clutch shots against Atlanta and Denver this season and it's not even a discussion really. Statistically KD's season is up there with LeBron's for Christs sake!

[sully00]

Durant just put up a season as bad or possibly even worse than a lot of antoine walker seasons, and likewise, he lead the league in loss shares.

And guess who was second with 31 loss shares in '03-04 when he won ROY of the year, LeBron James. He was out done by Joe Johnson's 34 and just out paced Paul Pierce's 30, and Carmelo Anthony's 29. Yeah wouldn't want any of those friggin guys on my team.

To rip on Durant because of how his team finished means you don't have a clue what was going on in SEA or your Hawks fan (and at least they can be justified). It just wasn't about winning games and frankly that isn't a foreign concept around here.

[HMFFL]

How I see it is Kevin is basically get fed the ball at will, but yet the voters need to take into consideration the amount of double-doubles Al Horford had this year, but it's an outstanding number, and yet so may people are just ready to hand Kevin the ROY.

[JediSkyWalker]

People are NOT handing the award directly to Kevin. Durant has done what other young stars heading into the league at the age of 19 have done.. shoot.. a lot.. and missing.. a LOT!

Both, Carmelo and Lebron James shot around the same FG % and had around the same amount of points Durant put up this year. They too, had bad records, a 'mediocre' roster and were 19.

[celticOCD]

IMO, this isn't close. Scoring 20 points per game on 43% shooting is exceptional, right in line, as others have documented, with the performance of hall of fame bound players in their rookie years, and only a notch below the 25 ppg and 47% shooting that superstars put up in their primes. And this is with every opponent knowing Durant was the only guy they had to stop. Horford, by contrast, was a 10/10 guy, and the fifth option on his team. His numbers, pro rated, are actualy about the same as Sheldon Williams put up last year(although I do think he's better), and I doubt anyone has ever won the ROY award being the fifth scoring option on their team. Paul Pierce accurately described him during game one as a "garbage man." Garbage men can play important roles, but they don't make for good ROY candidates, IMO.

The "impact" argument doesn't work either. It's very difficult to attribute Atlanta's seven game improvement to Horford. Atlanta had no hope of making the playoffs last year, and as we well know every team in that group probably lost a few games they shouldn't have lost. Their best players have been healthier this year. And they added Bibby. It's not hard to see how those factors could easily cause a seven game turnaround. Meanwhile, in Seattle, a team that wasn't very good to begin with discarded their two all-stars and replaced them with a teenage rookie, who was asked to carry the team by himself. Again, the difference in record is not hard to understand.