I recently saw a tweet that said something along the lines of, I’ve never seen a rookie so good be talked about so little in reference to Paolo Banchero. And I started thinking about it, and he was right. Despite having one of the best rookie campaigns of the 21st century, Banchero had generated relatively little attention. Maybe it was due to the fact that everyone was looking ahead to Victor Wembanyama who was hyped as arguably the best prospect ever, or the fact that he plays for the Magic, a team that’s not covered much by the top networks, or maybe it’s just because the rookie of the year race was never close, so it didn’t generate as much intrigue. But whatever it was, Paolo Banchero’s rookie year doesn’t seem to have been appreciated for what it really was. And that’s one word: Dominant. Banchero had the 6th highest scoring average for a rookie of the year winner in the last 23 years at 20.0 points per game, trailing only Blake Griffin, Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Tyreke Evans. Not a bad group of names to be with, excluding Evans all the names there are/were perennial all-stars and likely hall-of-famers. Paolo set himself up well to be that level of player as well, and yet despite his seemingly clear future of being a superstar, he’s not really talked about much. Paolo Banchero’s rookie year wasn’t talked about enough.
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2 Comments
Good vid keep it up Herm!!
Paolo is good but ppl acting like he was amazing are hyping too hard imo. The guy who isn’t being talked about enough is Jalen Williams. He outplayed Paolo by a pretty significant margin the 2nd half of the season. Last 37 games of 75 J Dub 16.5ppg 5.3reb 3.8ast 1.8stl .4blk 1.7TO 52.9/40.6/85.6 shooting splits(elite) and +93 on court. Paolo last 36 or 72 games 18.8ppg 7reb 3.6ast .6stl .6blk 2.6TO 41.6/28.5/71.9(terrible) -108. Last 26 games J Dub 18.6ppg 5.4reb 4.2ast 1.9stl .3blk 1.8TO 55/44/89 splits +31 Paolo last 26gm 19.4ppg 7.6reb 3.9ast .5stl .7blk 43.3/28.7/70.6 splits -64. J Dub in 11 games without SGA 21.5ppg 4.7reb 5.5ast 1.9stl 1.9TO 55/39/79 splits +45 including a flukey 1pt 0-8 shooting game in December and those numbers still better then any stretch Paolo had all season