With all due respect to last year's Rookie of the Year Tyreke Evans, you probably have to go back a few years.
The 2008-09 winner, Derrick Rose, like Griffin, was a consensus first-overall pick, but while Rose is the front-runner for MVP this season, he has come a very long way since his first campaign. In Rose's first go-around, he scored a solid but not spectacular 16.8 points per game, and people questioned whether his jump shot and defense would ever develop.
The year before that, Kevin Durant came out the winner in the wake of the famed Durant-Greg Oden draft debate, but while KD is now as good of a player as there is in the league, things weren't so clear cut then either. In fact, Durant's choice as Rookie of the Year was far from unanimous. Al Hortford got 30 out of the 125 votes to Durant's 90. He may have scored 20 points per game, but that was about all he was able to do — and not at a very high percentage either. People may have seen his development coming, but he was far from a star at the time, and even after the draft talk, the hype didn't keep up.
In 2006-07, Brandon Roy took every first-place vote but one, and though B-Roy's rookie campaign was the most similar to those that followed, and his penchant for clutch shot-garnered him notoriety quickly, he was far from a superstar either.
The most recent rookie to really be one of those was Chris Paul, who immediately increased the Hornets' win total by 20 games upon arrival — something Blake won't get close to doing. Like Roy, Paul got all but one ROY votes, but unlike Roy, Paul hadn't remotely shown the world what he was capable of. He may have put up solid 16-8-5-2 numbers, but those pale in comparison to his ridiculous 23-11-6-3 season in 2008-09. Paul also wasn't an All Star for his first two years, as Steve Nash and Tony Parker were picked ahead of him in the West.
Another notable guy who wasn't an All Star as a rookie was one LeBron James, but I think we can all agree that he received more hype than Blake. If none of the aforementioned names is the pick, it surely must be King James.
Who do you think was the last rookie to get this much hype? Leave your thoughts below.
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