Last week, Brandon Knight finished EIGHTH in the Rookie of the Year voting, ranking fifth in votes. As MFMP noted, he probably should have finished much worse than that. However, today the NBA All-Rookie teams were announced and Knight was named to the FIRST team.
The NBA has announced its all-Rookie teams, as voted on by head coaches: FIRST TEAM - Kyrie Irving, Cleveland (58 voting points); Ricky Rubio, Minnesota (49); Kenneth Faried, Denver (46); Klay Thompson, Golden State (43); Iman Shumpert, New York (40); Kawhi Leonard, San Antonio (40); Brandon Knight, Detroit (40). SECOND TEAM - Chandler Parsons, Houston (33); Isaiah Thomas, Sacramento (27); MarShon Brooks, New Jersey (18); Derrick Williams, Minnesota (16); Tristan Thompson, Cleveland (16).
Mike does a fantastic job, as usual, digging into the rookie numbers in last week's post, so you should probably start there if you haven't read it. Most view Knight's future while squeamishly looking through their fingers, but I'm a little more hopeful and excited to see how he develops. His rookie numbers on the whole were bad, but he's 20 and showed enough in crappy circumstances to trigger my inner-optimist.