Zion's also playing with, Jrue, Reddick, Favors, and Ingram. Morant's playing with like 1 vet in valencunas, and he's kind of a pass-first guy, JJJ is good but he's also young. I think Zion's being over-rated personally.
To me it's about playing enough games to qualify. 37 games (if he even plays that many is typical of a college season) so he doesn't go through the rookie NBA wall, i would think a player needs to play at least 60 games.
Zion runs away with it if he was healthy from the start. Probably unanimous... I’m not entirely sure but I do think JA will get the nod for the G/P difference.
And in 2003, you wanted Melo over LeBron too? Zion is clearly better than any rookie since Blake Griffin, including Ja.
It doesn't matter who the better player is or will become. It's only who had the better season. Playing less than half the games and not being able to make it through the grind of a season needs to be factored in, in my opinion. If Dame only played in January this year, should he be considered for MVP? Absolutely not.
If a player only played half the games, but in those games had vastly superior numbers to the "next guy", and took his team from being 7 games back all the way to the #1 seed, then yeah, I'd give him the MVP.
Here's a pretty good article showing games played by previous ROY's. Patrick Ewing won ROY playing in 50 games which is the fewest games by a rookie to win it. Zion will likely play a little over 30 games at most. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/spo...iid_played_enough_to_win_rookie_of_year_.html
Hypothetically speaking would you chose Lillard's rookie year over Zion's rookie year if he remains on the same pace and only plays 37 games to Lillards 82?
So in Zion's case their easy schedule only influences you predicting them to get the 8th seed not that Zion has played against weaker teams?