2014 Fantasy Basketball Rookie of the Year

With the recent conclusion of the NBA regular season Fantasy Alarm's own Mark Kaplan and myself are going to hand out our End of the Season Fantasy Awards with an eye towards next season. We recently handed out our Fantasy MVP and now it is time for our Rookie of the Year. (click on items in blue to be taken to linked pages).

Mark Kaplan's 2014 Fantasy Basketball Rookie of the Year

This was a no brainer as Michael Carter-Williams had an impressive season and

was easily the most productive rookie. He averaged 16.7 points(40.5 FG%/70 FT%), 6.2 rebounds, 6.3

assists, 1.9 steals, 0.6 blocks per game this season. That stat line is even more impressive considering

that LeBron James is the only other player in the NBA to average 6 plus rebounds/assists per game this

year. MCW does it all and I expect his FG% to rise next season which should lead to bump for his scoring

average. Mc-Dubs made a name for himself in his rookie season, and will be rising up draft boards next

year.

Michael Pichan's 2014 Fantasy Basketball Rookie of the Year

Kaplan nailed it, but before I give you my 2014 Fantasy Rookie of the Year here is a look at my preseason picks for the award.

My Preseason Rookie of the Year Favorite was Victor Oladipo

My Preseason Darkhorse for the Rookie of the Year was Vitor Favorani

If we gave out the award after the first couple of games I would have looked like a genius as Faverani was a beast averaging a double-double of 12.5 points and 10.5 rebounds with 4.5 blocks in 31.9 minutes through the first two games of the season, but it was all downhill after that. To my credit we made our preseason picks before the season, hence the title “preseason picks,” but boy did that go from great to idiotic in a hurry as Faverani lost his starting job by November and fell from fantasy relevant to fantasy irrelevant faster than Donald Sterling’s comments landed him with a lifetime ban.

While my sleeper pick of Faverani was a bust, my top preseason pick for rookie of the year in Victor Oladipo was not far off, but going against Da True Guru's pick of MCW as fantasy rookie of the year would be a stretch, and you know me by now I never go chalk and almost always think outside the box, but as much as I tried to find another rookie to defend for the award (i.e. Gorgui Deng) I just could not find a logical leg to stand on. And boy did I try, as you can see in the table below. I thought maybe Dieng's late season success would trump MCW, but it did not.

 

 

 

As you can see, even with how much of a fantasy orgy it was with Gorgui at the end of the season it still did not match what MCW was able to bring to the table the last month of the season. MCW's April stats jump out even more if you consider he had to deal with the proverbial rookie wall as he started all 70 games he played in while Oladipo started in 44 of 80 games and Dieng made 15 starts of the 60 games he saw limited action before Nikola Pekovic went down later in the season.

Make sure to bookmark our NBA article's page so you have it going forward as there will be plenty of fantasy basketball content throughout the summer including more Fantasy Awards, DFS recommendations, NBA Draft and Summer League coverage, as well as strategy sessions to help you be on top of the competition going into the 2014-15 Fantasy Basketball season. In addition follow Kaplan on twitter @DaTrueGuru and my self @FantasyNomad.