Can Shabazz Napier Sneak into NBA Rookie of the Year Conversation?
In the 27 seasons the Miami Heat have been a member of the NBA, they’ve won zero Rookie of the Year awards. There’s an outside chance they could break the schneid this season.
In a recent five-on-five on ESPN.com that touched on the first month of a handful of the league’s top freshmen, columnist Brian Windhorst floated an interesting position. While he thought Jabari Parker was the most impressive rookie, he mentioned Shabazz Napier in the next breath, saying, "I have also been pleasantly surprised by Miami's Shabazz Napier, who is adjusting to the NBA game faster than I thought he would."
This is surprising, in part, because there’s nothing about Napier’s initial performance that jumps out—at least not relative to some of his more heralded draft mates.
Through 16 games, Napier is averaging a middling 6.9 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 22.9 minutes a night. If these counting stats sound unimpressive, it’s because they are. On a per-minute basis, among rooks who have played more than 160 minutes, Napier is just eighth in points, 12th in rebounds and fifth in assists. This is not the stuff of ROY contention.
The advanced stats have taken a similarly dim view of Napier. BoxscoreGeeks.com, using wins produced, calculates that he’s been 63 percent as productive as the average point guard thus far in 2014-15. Basketball-Reference.com’s win shares formulation disagrees: It maintains he’s been worth just 31 percent of the average 1.
His 10.1 player efficiency rating is, likewise, well below average.
But lurking beneath this, there’s actually ample reason for optimism. Napier has turned it on as of late.
In the six games between Nov. 16 and Nov. 25, the guard scored in double figures every night out and broke 50 percent from the floor in each game save for a 94-93 win over the Charlotte Hornets—in which he shot 4-of-9 from the floor, all three-pointers, and scored 14.
In that stretch, Napier averaged 12.3 points and shot 53.3 percent. But as impressive as he was in that time, it wasn’t necessarily out of character for the rookie. He’s been unusually efficient as a shooter in his (very) young career.
Napier has posted a 60.1 true shooting percentage through 16 games., largely a function of a healthy 40.5 percent mark from three-points range. This is good for third on the Heat, per Basketball-Reference.com, behind just a smoking Shawne Williams and the little-used Justin Hamilton. It’s also second-best in the rookie class, according to ESPN.com.
Erik Spoelstra’s confidence in the young guard has soared as well. Talking to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel, Spo gushed about his performance, saying, "You've got to have the 'it' sometimes, as a competitor, if you've been part of a winning program and you've been a big part of that in the biggest moments…That's a quality sometimes statistics can't measure. But it translates in this league."
The coach added that the rookie’s improvement had been marked.
"He's a competitor," Spoelstra said. "He rises to the occasion. I'm just going into it with an open mind, in this, his rookie year. He's been getting better. He's been open to all the work. And that has to continue."
This all augers very well for Napier. The bead on him is that he likes to shoot. During his college career at Connecticut, he was an unusually aggressive point guard. In his college career, Napier took 19.3 shots per 100 possessions—a number that swelled to 21.6 his senior season.
But it’s been a different story so far in South Beach. As efficient as Napier’s been, he’s been equally reticent to shoot the basketball in Miami’s veteran lineup. His 16.6 percent usage rate is more than 10 percentage points below the number he posted his senior season and, according to ESPN.com, is just 12th among rookies.
But if Napier continues to assert himself in Miami’s offense and does so while hitting his shots at an above-average rate, it’s entirely possible he could sneak into the Rookie of the Year discussion. Especially given that NBA awards voters have a well-demonstrated bias toward players who score buckets, which is exactly the sort the Heat have in Napier.
Napier’s case gets stronger when we consider him against what has been, up to this point, a disappointing rookie class. The hubbub that accompanied Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker into the league hasn’t yet materialized in the highlight plays—and full box scores—some envisioned.
According to ESPN.com, only three rookies are above the league average PER of 15—Nikola Mirotic, Aaron Gordon and Jabari Parker—and they're each stationed between 15.15 and 15.85. Only 11 rookies are over 10. Wins produced, courtesy of BoxscoreGeeks.com, has six rookies producing at an above-average rate, including Parker, but the numbers are still clear. This, so far, has been a pretty mediocre bunch.
So with a strong close to the season—especially with the name-value advantage Napier has after leading the Huskies to the 2014 national title—it’s conceivable the guard could steal a few votes in ROY voting. And, just maybe, steal enough to break a certain streak.
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