2024-25 NBA Awards Part IV: Rookie, Coach, and Sixth Man of the Year
The final part in my 2024-25 NBA Awards series
Part IV of my NBA awards picks series contains Rookie, Coach, and Sixth Man of the Year. I’m not doing All-Rookie teams because I find them, even in a good year, incredibly stupid, and this season had one of the least inspiring rookie classes in recent memory. I’ve also omitted Clutch Player of the Year and Most Improved Player because I find those awards superfluous. Just add All-Star slots, or expand All-NBA to four teams and All-Defensive to three if you want to give more players shine.
Rookie of the Year
Zach Edey, Stephon Castle, Jaylen Wells
Zach Edey
Why is Zach Edey the 2024-25 NBA Rookie of the Year? Well, he played meaningful minutes (1,416 minutes, 55 starts) for a playoff team, led all rookies in Value Over a Replacement Player (VORP) and Win Shares, was elite on the offensive glass (17.5% OReb%), and the Grizzlies were +2.02 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court. 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds per game doesn’t scream ROY, but unlike most rookies, he actually had to earn the right to be on the court in the first place.
A consistent take I’ve heard in nearly every ROY race is, “What will people think if this guy wins Rookie of the Year?” Well, they should exclusively think that the player was the best rookie that year and nothing else. Will Edey have the most superlative NBA career out of this year’s rookie class? Probably not, but he was the best player in the only year this rookie class will be eligible for Rookie of the Year. Only in the NBA do people get butthurt if a guy who doesn’t become an All-Star wins this award. Zach Edey, congratulations, you are the one-eyed cyclops in the land of the sightless.
Stephon Castle
Stephon Castle has the most traditional case for Rookie of the Year, and by that, I mean he led all rookies in points per game at 14.7 (apologies to Jarden McCain, but 23 games leaves him out of this). Throw in the fact that he chipped in 4.1 assists per game and played strong defense for a rookie guard, and you’re probably wondering why he didn’t get the darn award for himself. The problem with Castle was that his shooting efficiency was so poor that all of those shots he took almost certainly hurt the Spurs’ chances of winning, and they did. The Spurs were -2.5 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the court.
If Castle can ever figure out how to shoot threes at a respectable clip, he shot 28.5% this season, he could become a star. But until he does, he’ll remain such an offensive detriment that it will take All-Defensive team contributions for him to be a positive contributor. Castle has a bright future and did well in a difficult situation that saw him play a bunch of roles for the Spurs, but he’s also one of the reasons the Spurs were 13-23 in games without Victor Wembanyama.
Jaylen Wells
The best way to describe Jaylen Wells’ rookie season is that he was thrust into the deep end and didn’t drown. He played 79 games (74 starts) and 2,043 minutes before a scary fall ended his season, and he was tasked with being the Grizzlies’ go-to perimeter stopper. Was he elite at it? No, but he was adequate, and being adequate for a bunch of minutes gets you in this Rookie of the Year conversation. He averaged 10.4 points per game on 35.2% 3-point shooting and looks likely to carve out a long career as a 3-and-D guard/wing. As far as 39th overall picks go, that’s an amazing outcome. Honestly, the Grizzlies’ playoff chances took a huge hit when he went down injured, which tells you just how good his season was and just how flawed the Grizzlies’ roster is.
2024-25 Doesn’t Deserve an All-Rookie Team, Let Alone Two
Sixth Man of the Year
Naz Reid, Payton Pritchard, Malik Beasley
Naz Reid
The reigning Sixth Man of the Year has not seen his name in the conversation nearly as much as he deserves, but I’m here to remedy that. While Naz Reid saw his scoring and shooting efficiency slip just a tad from last season, the addition of a few more assists and fewer turnovers actually saw him improve his offensive rating. Reid was an invaluable cog in a Minnesota machine that finished the season fourth in net rating. With him on the court, the Timberwolves outscored opponents by 7.1 points per 100 possessions, a +4.6 improvement from when he was on the bench.
With the departure of Karl-Anthony Towns, the Timberwolves had to rely on Reid playing center far more often, and he lived up to the challenge. Getting 14.2 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game from your backup center/power forward is big-time stuff, and he did it on league-average efficiency as well. Reid is one of the most important players on one of the league’s best teams. He allows the Timberwolves to play massive lineups when he’s at the four, and spaced out lineups when he is at the five. There’s a reason he’s a fan favorite and cult legend, and it’s because the dude can absolutely ball.
Payton Pritchard
I haven’t looked at a ton of other awards columns, but my guess is that Pritchard will be the leading candidate for Sixth Man of the Year, and I have no gripes with that. He has had an astounding season. He averaged 14.3 points per game on a true shooting percentage (TS%) of 63.3%. Among guards, that was the fifth highest TS% in the league, and his BPM of 3.5 was 25th overall. On a per-minute basis, Pritchard played like an All-Star. So, why isn’t he my Sixth Man of the Year?
Outside of incredible scoring efficiency, Pritchard doesn’t offer all that much, and he doesn’t have to with how strong the Celtics are. His defense would be an issue on most other teams, and if he weren’t consistently surrounded by All-Stars, I’m not skeptical his efficiency numbers would be as sterling. The Celtics have a net rating of +8.8 with Pritchard on the court, but that was actually -0.6 points per 100 possessions worse than when he’s on the bench. Basically, Pritchard is not integral to the Celtics in any real capacity, and while he’s a nice luxury to have, he’s benefiting more from the Celtics than they are from him.
Malik Beasley
This is not hyperbole, Malik Beasley just had one of the greatest 3-point shooting seasons in NBA history. He became the fifth player ever to hit over 300 threes in a season, joining Stephen Curry, who has done it six times, James Harden, Klay Thompson, and Anthony Edwards. His 319 made threes was one off from Edwards’ league-leading 320, but Edwards needed nearly 600 more minutes to get there. And, just to hammer it home, he joined Curry as the only other player to pair over 40% shooting from three on over 12 3-point attempts per 36 minutes. The Pistons were one of the biggest surprises of the season, and Beasley’s scorching hot shooting played a massive role.
What holds Beasley back, in my eyes, from winning Sixth Man of the Year is his utter lack of contributions outside of elite floor spacing. However, that shouldn’t take away from the season he had. The Pistons were +1.9 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court, which shows the value of a high-volume sniper. Beasley can pretty much be bad at everything, but is still a core contributor to a playoff team because he is one of the league’s most lethal shooters.
Coach of the Year
Kenny Atkinson, Ime Udoka, JB Bickerstaff
Kenny Atkinson
Let’s keep this simple. Kenny Atkinson took a team that had averaged 49.5 wins over the previous two seasons and turned them into a 64-win juggernaut. He took a team that struggled to get their offense in the top ten and turned it into the league’s best. He made Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen work on offense, and Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland work on defense. Every button he pushed worked. The Cleveland Cavaliers are a real threat to win the title for the first time since LeBron James, because Atkinson unlocked this roster’s potential. The most difficult jump to make is from good to great because every additional win is more difficult than the last. Only the addition of a superstar should take a 50-win team to 64. That’s why Kenny Atkinson deserves Coach of the Year.
Ime Udoka
Two seasons ago, the Houston Rockets won 22 games. Their offensive rating was -3.4 points worse than the league average, and their defensive rating was a more putrid -4.5 points below the league average. Then they brought in Ime Udoka, and everything changed. His first season, they made a 19-win improvement in a 41-41 campaign, and this season they won 52 games and secured the second seed in the Western Conference with enough time to spare to punt the final three games. Their offense ranked 13th (115.3), +0.8 points better than the league average, their defense ranked fourth (110.8), and their net rating was seventh at +4.6. In fact, if you remove their final three games, their defensive rating improves to 109.9, and their net rating jumps to +5.3, which would rank third and fourth in the league.
Udoka has turned the Rockets into one of the nastiest defensive units in the league, and while their offense is ugly, it is honestly quite effective. They led the league in offensive rebound rate at 31.7% and had the sixth-lowest turnover rate (11.8%). To take a team where five of your top seven players in minutes played are 23 and under to these heights is absurd, and it’s even more incredible when your two veteran stalwarts are Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks. What Udoka has done over the past two seasons is incredible, and this season was even better when you factor in how strong the Western Conference was. The Rockets’ 23-19 record against teams with winning records was the second-best win percentage in the Western Conference and the fourth-best in the league. To put together a season like this without an obvious All-NBA candidate is nearly unheard of, and Udoka deserves a ton of credit for building a defensive identity and leaning into his team’s strengths on offense.
JB Bickerstaff
JB Bickerstaff is going to get a ton of first-place votes for this award, and it’s not hard to understand why. Last season, the Pistons won 14 games. This season, they won 44. That’s 30 more games. The Pistons’ turnaround is more than six teams have won games this season. Bickerstaff took a team from an utter mess on both ends to competent on offense and solid on defense, and he deserves a ton of credit for that. However, I have in third for a few reasons.
The first is that Bickerstaff came in after one of the worst coaching jobs in modern NBA history. Monty Williams might have been a good coach at one point, but he behaved like DOGE in Detroit. Another crucial bit of context is that while the Pistons won 14 games, their expected wins, based on point differential, came in at 20. If the 2023-24 Pistons had had a competent coach, they were probably close to a 30-win team. That doesn’t make this season’s turnaround unimpressive, but it takes it from historic to heroic.
The second is that the Pistons went out and added a bunch of veterans. After Cade Cunningham, the Pistons’ leaders in minutes played this season were Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, and Tim Hardaway Jr. None of those guys were on the team the year before, but all three gave the Pistons great minutes, and as mentioned before, Beasley delivered a historic 3-point shooting season that no one could have predicted and is very unlikely to be replicated.
The third is that the Pistons were dreadful when facing good teams. Against teams with winning records, the Pistons went 12-27. Taking care of business against bad teams is important, but I think the Pistons would have comfortably been a sub-.500 team in the Western Conference, where nine of the 15 teams had a positive net rating and only the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans were truly morbid.
Bickerstaff did a great job turning the Pistons into a respectable outfit, but I think he also walked into a situation where a 20-win improvement should have been the expectation. He bettered that by 10 wins, which is magnificent, but I think the job he did was a step below what Atkinson and Udoka did.
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