Metrics 101: 2018 NBA Rookie Season Predictions for Every 1st-Round Pick

Prepare for some restraint.

Now that the league’s top rookies have gone through the 2018 NBA draft and joined their new organizations, it’s easy to fall in love with their potential. They are clean slates at this stage of their respective careers, cheap wholesale nfl jerseys brimming over with untapped upside that could manifest itself in so many different ways.

Maybe Deandre Ayton and Trae Young are going to compete for the league’s scoring title. Mohamed Bamba might lead the Association in blocked shots, though that’s only if Jaren Jackson Jr. doesn’t claim the title for himself. So on and so forth.

But reality is usually a little less exciting than these overly optimistic hypotheticals we’ve crafted in our minds, which is why we should circle back and look at the scores of the top qualified rookies from 2017-18: nfl jersey cheap wholesale china

Points per game: Donovan Mitchell (20.5), Kyle Kuzma (16.1), Ben Simmons (15.8), Lauri Markkanen (15.2), Dennis Smith Jr. (15.2)
Rebounds per game: Ben Simmons (8.1), Lauri Markkanen (7.5), John Collins (7.3), Kyle Kuzma (6.3), Bam Adebayo (5.5)cheap nfl wholesale jerseys
Assists per game: Ben Simmons (8.2), Dennis Smith Jr. (5.2), De’Aaron Fox (4.4), Donovan Mitchell (3.7), Bogdan Bogdanovic (3.3)
Steals per game: Ben Simmons (1.7), Donovan Mithell (1.5), Jayson Tatum (1.0), Josh Jackson (1.0), Dennis Smith Jr. (1.0)
Blocks per game: Jarrett Allen (1.2), John Collins (1.1), Ben Simmons (0.9), Daniel Theis (0.8), Jayson Tatum (0.7)

Keep those finishes in the back of your mind as we run through the projected stats of this year’s first-rounders, based on their pre-NBA production, skill sets and expected playing time in their new homes. Lofty numbers, as you might now expect, are surprisingly rare.

School: Villanova

Age: 20

2017-18 Per-Game Stats: 10.9 points, 8.0 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.7 steals, 1.5 blocks

2017-18 Advanced Metrics: 20.6 PER, 58.8 TS%, 166.66 TPA wholesale jerseys cheap nfl

Omari Spellman will turn 21 years old before the start of his rookie season, which makes him older than many first-round prospects. But don’t mistake time spent on planet Earth for NBA readiness, because this Villanova product—one of four taken in the first 33 picks—isn’t quite ready to become a rotation mainstay for the Atlanta Hawks.

The power forward’s big body will make him an immediate asset on the glass, but transitioning from a non-featured collegiate role to the grind of a professional calendar should prove a tough adjustment for a youngster who needs significant conditioning work. Unable to keep up with many opposing bigs on the defensive end, he’ll likely spend plenty of time in the G League before breaking into the rotation with his sweet shooting stroke.

Spellman could become an immediate pick-and-pop option who uses a relatively slow release to provide spacing for the other young members of the Hawks. But he’ll be fighting for playing time with John Collins, Dewayne Dedmon, Mike Muscala and Miles Plumlee, and that’s wholesale cheap nfl jersey china when Atlanta isn’t rolling out small-ball lineups that minimize the opportunities of its myriad bigs. cheap wholesale nfl jerseys from china

Predicted 2018-19 Per-Game Stats: 3.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.2 assists, 0.2 steals, 0.4 blocks