Joel Embiid is Definitely Your NBA Rookie of the Year

So what if he lapped the entire field in only half a season?

For as hotly contested as the 2017 NBA MVP and Defensive Player of the Year races have been, Rookie of the Year has been the polar opposite. This has been a complete dud of a rookie class. Number one pick Ben Simmons sat out all year. Brandon Ingram, Dragan Bender, and Kris Dunn all went in the top five and look terrible. Jaylen Brown is the one “successful” top-five pick and he’s scoring 6.6 points a game in 17 minutes. Domantas Sabonis has been “successful” because he started all year for Oklahoma City with the worst starter metrics in the entire league. Only two players in the entire draft class are averaging double digit points-per-game. One was mocked as the centerpiece of the DeMarcus Cousins trade, and the other is somehow the chic favorite to win Rookie of the Year.

The 2017 Rookie of the Year race is like the triple jump at your sixth-grade track meet. A bunch of people participated and someone has to be named the winner, but that doesn’t mean anyone was any good or had any idea what they were doing. Thankfully we saw two additional rookies this season thanks to The Process providing two Philadelphia rookies that were drafted three years ago in Joel Embiid and Dario Saric. Imagine how awful this ROY race would look without those two.

Joel Embiid was one of the season’s high points in a year with plenty of them. He is the definitive 2017 NBA Rookie of the Year…