2019 NBA Award Season

The 2019 NBA All-Junior Teams

The rookie and sophomore classes have been amazing. So why is the junior class so lackluster?

We’ve analyzed all the rookies to death. Luka Doncic and Trae Young have had all-time rookie seasons, regardless of which one wins Rookie of the Year. We’ve debated the sophomores ad nauseum. Simmons or Tatum, Mitchell or Fox? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it could be one of the best NBA draft classes ever, no matter how you slice it. But with all that talk about rookies and sophomores, what’s wrong with this year’s junior class?

This year’s junior class has been one giant heap of letdown. One junior is an MVP candidate. Another might be the Most Improved Player. But after that it’s mostly disappointment after disappointment. By their third season, players are expected to be positive contributors on winning teams. So why does it feel like so many juniors are their team’s biggest question mark rather than their most exciting exclamation point?

The NBA chooses All-Rookie 1st and 2nd Teams. Why not do it for sophomores and juniors too? The league doesn’t specify positions on the All-Rookie teams, so it’s just the 10 best guys. We already chose our All-Sophomore Teams, but who are the 10 best from the 2016 draft class? If you need a refresher, here were last year’s All-Rookie and All-Sophomore teams…

Junior of the Year (JOY)

Joel Embiid, Philadelphia

The only real surprise here is that Embiid’s still a junior. Nothing about Joel Embiid this year has been junior. He’s an absolute monster in the post and a behemoth on defense. Embiid is averaging better than 27 points, 13 rebounds, and 3 assists a game. Only six other players in NBA history have done that for a season, and you’ve probably heard of them: Wilt, Kareem, Pettit, Elgin, Mikan, and Shaq. O’Neal only did it once, which makes this just the second 27/13/3 season since 1976. Seems good.

Embiid’s three-point shot is not so good. He’s letting it fly four times a game but hitting only 30% for a second straight year, and he’s making only 35% from mid-range. Maybe it’s time to let his teammates absorb those shots. Embiid also still posts up too often, considering it’s one of the most inefficient possessions in the game. All of which makes it all the more impressive that Embiid is still at 60% true shooting. That’s thanks especially in part to making 81% of his free throws on more than 10 attempts per game, which has happened only 40 seasons in NBA history.

Embiid’s defensive rebounding is up, and his turnovers are down. He’s at a career-best 114 offensive rating and continues to show steady improvement every year. And again, he’s still playing just his third season on an NBA court — he’s played fewer than 160 regular season games in his entire career. Joel Embiid is still just getting started.

All-Junior 1st Team

Pascal Siakam, Toronto

Who could have guessed a year ago that Pascal Siakam would be the consensus #2 pick in a 2016 redraft? (Joel Embiid wasn’t actually in the 2016 draft, of course, but Ben Simmons was.) Whether he wins the award or not, Siakam is certainly the league’s most improved high-profile player. He took a low-usage reserve role and became Toronto’s one bedrock starter, increasing his usage without hurting his per-minute numbers, while his shooting numbers skyrocketed. Siakam leads the Raptors in minutes this year. He’s second on the team in win shares, just a couple tenths behind Kawhi Leonard and first among all NBA juniors.

And let’s talk about that shooting. Siakam entered the year with 30 threes in two years on an ugly 22%. He’s made 73 this year, about one a game, at a perfectly efficient 36% clip. He’s also doubled his free throw rate and boosted his success rate from 64% the first two years to 78%. Maybe that’s why Siakam is up from +4 on/off per 100 possessions a year ago to +14 this year. This is a dude that spent most of his rookie season in the G-League. Now he might be playing big minutes late into May or June. Heck of a rise.

Buddy Hield, Sacramento

Buddy is the only junior on the list older than Embiid, thanks to aging a year somewhere in the middle of this season. Luckily for us, his game has aged like a fine wine. Buddy’s making 3.4 threes a game on a sparkling 43%, his second year in a row at that rate. He’s fourth in the league in threes behind only Steph, Harden, and PG, and his finishing is up at the rim and on mid-range, too. Hield is leading the Kings with 21ppg, and he’s shooting 46/43/89. His backcourt mate De’Aaron Fox made my Sophomore 1st Team. Suddenly that Boogie trade everyone mocked is looking pretty good for Sacramento.

Domantas Sabonis, Indiana

Sabonis is a crowd favorite in Indiana, and it’s easy to see why. He models his game after his pops, with a barrage of polished post moves and sweet passing skills to boot. Sabonis is putting up 14 points, 9 boards, and 3 dimes a game off the bench and crushing 63% true shooting. He’s hitting the boards hard and getting to the line more often, and he’s made huge strides in his finishing at the rim, up from 55% his rookie season to 67% last year and 74% this. Now we just need to see if he can keep up all that efficient production as a starter at some point. Remind me again — who won the Paul George trade, OKC or the side that got Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis?

Malcolm Brogdon, Milwaukee

Brogdon might be the fifth starter for the Bucks, but that still makes him the starter on the best team in the NBA. The Bucks are +11 per 100 possessions with Brogdon on the court, and they have a 121 offensive rating. That’s not all The President, but it’s not not him either. Someone’s gotta hit all those open shots when Giannis dives and kicks. Brogdon is shooting 54/43/93 on 15 points a game, and those are his final shooting numbers since he’s out injured right now. Here’s the complete list of 15ppg scorers to shoot 50–40–90 for an entire season: Larry, Steph, Nash, Dirk, KD, Reggie, and Mark Price. And now Malcolm Brogdon. Imagine that.

All-Junior 2nd Team

Jamal Murray, Denver

Considering the competition, it’s pretty disappointing for Jamal Murray not to make the All-Junior 1st Team. For all Murray’s talent and occasional scoring bursts, he hasn’t quite made the leap many expected. Murray has 46- and 48-point games this year, but his 18 points, 4 rebounds, and 5 assists have ticked forward only slightly despite Denver’s big leap forward. Murray makes only 48% of his twos with a career-worst 57% at the rim. He’s making a pedestrian 36% from deep , and his three-point attempt rate continues to move in the wrong direction. With all the weapons around Jamal Murray, you hope for more than 54% true shooting and 0 BPM. That’s a pretty negative-sounding picture for a the starting point guard on one of the best teams in the West, but it’s because it still feels like Murray can be so much better if he cranks up the efficiency and gets a little bit more consistent.

Tomas Satoransky, Washington

I almost forgot about Satoransky, a 2012 second-round draft pick just now playing his junior season. For perspective, Satoransky was drafted three picks before Draymond Green. Sato had a slow start to the season but, like last year, flourished once John Wall went to the bench injured. As a starter, Satoransky has averaged 11 points and 6 assists, and he’s been wildly efficient next to Bradley Beal. The Satoransky-led offense has a spectacular 121 offensive rating, thanks partly to Beal but also to Sato’s 40% three-pointer and 59% true shooting. His defense is atrocious, but the Sato Wizards are 24–27, a 39-win pace good enough to make the playoffs out East, and far ahead of the 8–18 team John Wall was leading.

Fred VanVleet, Toronto

Like Monte Morris on the All-Sophomore 2nd Team, Fred VanVleet gets a lot of attention because of his extremely competent backup play on a high-profile team. VanVleet just does his job, with 11 points and 5 dimes off the bench and a nice three, though his 45% twos leave something to be desired. But that’s what you get with a smaller, not particularly athletic guard, and it’s why FVV went undrafted before leaping into a solid NBA career. That 38% three will keep him in the lineup, and it often keeps him out there in crunch time, too. VanVleet profiles as a guy who will probably top out as a high-end backup, but that’s just fine for a player literally any team could have signed.

Malik Beasley, Denver

The Nuggets had to feel pretty good entering the year with a guard rotation of Jamal Murray and Gary Harris, with Isaiah Thomas and Monte Morris coming off the bench. But is it possible Malik Beasley has been their best guard? The Mutant has rained fire on opponents all season with a scorching 40% three and 90% from the line, good for 60% true shooting. He’s improved his scoring touch all over the cut, up to 73% at the rim and 44% from mid-range, a microwave bench scorer if there ever was one. Don’t be surprised to see Beasley and not Gary Harris closing some playoff games this spring.

Ivica Zubac, Los Angeles Lakers/Clippers

On February 7, the Lakers traded Zubac for journeyman shooting big Mike Muscala. Moose scored 48 points in 13 games for the Lakers. Zubac has started all 23 games for the Clippers with a tidy 18 points and 12 rebounds per 36 minutes on the court. Oops. Zubac was good for the Lakers too, one of their few positively-rated players, and he’s been good on both sides of Staples Center. He has a soft touch and a real cupboard of post moves, and he’s improved his footwork enough to hang in there defensively. The Clippers might have themselves a free starting center.

Honorable (-ish?) Mentions

The junior class is a far cry from the sophomore crew. The sophomore honorable mentions were littered with 19ppg scorers Lauri Markkanen and Kyle Kuzma and valuable 3-and-D guys like Sterling Brown, OG Anunoby, and Jonathan Isaac. Three or four of those guys would make the 2nd Team in this class. Instead, I was stuck talking myself into Zubac and Beasley.

I couldn’t quite talk myself into an obvious omission, Jaylen Brown. Brown has been rough. His shooting has regressed to the mean and then some, just 34% on threes and 66% from the line, and he’s not getting there as often either. Brown’s scoring is down, and the rest of his box score is mostly empty. He has a negative on/off rating for the Celtics, and a move to bench has only buried his confidence even further.

There’s one other thing missing from the list above: forwards. Pascal Siakam was the only forward chosen, along with three centers and six guards. It’s a forward-backward class, and the problem starts at the top with the class’s most prominent forward. Brandon Ingram scored 18ppg but showed no real statistical improvement from last season. He made 31 threes all year and finished with a -2.8 BPM.

But Ingram has been better since January 1st! His numbers have been. He’s scored over 20ppg with 6 boards and 3.5 dimes, his numbers again taking the leap with Lonzo Ball out (oh, and that LeBron guy too). Ingram’s numbers are up with the ball in his hands, but they come with a 116 defensive rating and a putrid -7.5 per 100 possessions. Sorry Lon Shapiro; those are empty numbers. Ingram played under 60 games a second straight season, and while the eye test shows a player making progress, the numbers just aren’t that excited. To wit, Ingram ranks 24th among NBA juniors in win shares; that puts him just behind Cheick Diallo, Danuel House, and Thon Maker. Woof.

Ingram’s numbers aren’t that far off from Taurean Waller-Prince. He played the same 52 games and scored only 13ppg but did so much more efficiently, hitting 39% of his threes en route to 58% true shooting. Of course, he’s also -7.5 per 100 possessions like Ingram, which just goes to show, average players on bad teams do not deserve positive recognition.

Dario Saric is yet another junior that took a step back this year. He had an abysmal start of the season for Philly, though he’s found his place in Minnesota with a 115 offensive rating and 58% true shooting. He’s gotten to do a little playmaking with all the Wolves injuries and is starting to find some chemistry playing off of Karl-Anthony Towns.

Juancho Hernangomez has been a useful rotation piece for the Nuggets, a third Denver junior on the list. He’s fine for 20 minutes a game, and so is Dorian Finney-Smith for Dallas. Caris LeVert was more than fine early for Brooklyn before that brutal broken leg injury. The numbers haven’t been as pretty since his return, but he looks like a keeper for Brooklyn long-term.

Davis Bertans has the best plus-minus on the Spurs. He and Bryn Forbes are the latest sharp-shooting diamonds in the rough carrying San Antonio to yet another playoff berth, along with fellow junior big man Jakob Poeltl. Ho hum. Feel free to combine them into Jakdavyn Berltles and replace Zubac on the 2nd Team if it makes you smile. Or just give Pop a raise and a trophy and call it a day. Jakdavyn Berltles would probably come over from Bosnia-Herzegovina on a rookie contract for Pop and put up 14 a game on 51/38/86 shooting with quality D thrown in, just for good measure. We are not worthy.

2019 ALL-JUNIOR TEAMS

G Malcolm Brogdon G Buddy Hield F Pascal Siakam C Domantas Sabonis C Joel Embiid (JOY)

G Jamal Murray G Tomas Satoransky G Fred VanVleet G Malik Beasley C Ivica Zubac

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Thanks to Basketball Reference as always.