March 25, 2018

Part 2 of Kent Shen's look at the historic rookie class of 2017/18, including fantasy performance and future outlook.

Last week, we started our look through the league's rookies, focusing on the most well-known players.

Today, we look to move into that second tier of guys. These rookies won't be competing for any rookie of the year rewards, but they possess skill-sets that could yield many fruitful fantasy seasons to come.

Let's start with a guy that's already been a valuable contributor this year.

Seeing The Future: A Look At This Year's NBA Rookie Class, Part 2

Lauri Markkanen, Chicago Bulls

Markkanen has had an excellent rookie season from a fantasy point of view, already slotting into the top 70. He was given the green light to launch 3s right away, as the Bulls really didn't have many other options on offense and Markkanen was the best pure shooter in this draft class. He shot a lukewarm 34.5% on his 3-point attempts, but considering his pedigree, it's not a reach to expect that to move closer to the 42% he shot in college as he gains more experience playing in the NBA.

Player Comparison: Kevin Love

Markkanen's fantasy kit is almost identical to Kevin Love's. He's already hitting 2.0 3s a game in his rookie season, and with a bump in usage closer to Love's 25.5 and an expected uptick in accuracy, he can easily be a 3-3.5 3-pointer a game guy. As a 7-footer, even being a less than stellar technical rebounder will still allow him to get a good number of boards just by simply existing, and we can expect him to grab a few more boards per game going forward as well once his playing time goes up.

Both Markkanen and Love share the same defensive deficiencies, but Lauri is a better shot blocker than Love has ever been, and has the potential to creep up to 1 block per game at some point within the next few years. Markannen is also better at handling the ball than Love, and we could see that down the line if the Bulls give him more reign to do so, possibly bumping his assist rate up in the future.

Ceiling: Top 60 near term, top-30 long term

While Markannen likely won't reach the heights of Minnesota Kevin Love, it's not a stretch to picture him becoming a player somewhere in between Minnesota Love and the Cleveland version. As the centerpiece of Chicago's offense, Lauri should his points per game increase to 20+ at some point, which would carry with it the aforementioned uptick in 3 pointers as well. Unlike Love though, Markkanen has the opportunity todevelop in both the blocks and assists cats, which would help him separate from his spiritual predecessor.

Kyle Kuzma, Los Angeles Lakers

Kyle Kuzma as he is right now is the exact type of trap newer players fall for in category leagues. This season, he was purely a points, 3s and rebounds guy who's value was almost completely tied to how well he was shooting at any given moment during the season. Unfortunately, as a rookie, those percentages eventually evened out to something below average (.450 shooting, .715 free throw), and he ended up settling in as a player sitting outside the top-100 despite all the hype that surrounded some of his bigger performances earlier in the season.

Kuzma contributed almost nothing in defensive stats or assists, which along with the percentages, are the categories that newer players tend to overlook and undervalue in player evaluation, and he looks destined to become the kind of guy who is avoided by more savvy fantasy owners, due to being overdrafted by the less experienced ones.

Player Comparison: Tobias Harris

Tobias Harris is an example that this kind of skill-set can hold value when everything goes right, but there is a clear cap to how valuable a player with this kit can be. Harris' jump in value as a fantasy asset can be tied to a growing 3-point game along with a significant jump in free-throw percentage a few years ago, moving him from good but not great from the line on around 3-4 attempts per game, to an elite 84~% shooter albeit on less attempts.

In order for Kuzma to reach that kind of value, he will need to increase his poor free throw percentage by a significant margin. That's the danger of owning guys who impress in popcorn stats only - when the percentages aren't there, the value is almost all gone.

Ceiling: 100-ish short term, top-70 long term

Kuzma's outlook in fantasy will be tied to how soon he is able to bring those percentages up. If he gets his FG% up past .460 and his FT% closer to .800, he can be a top-70 guy in the Tobias Harris mold, possibly with more 3s than Harris. If he doesn't, he will languish at or below the top-100 mark, and be overdrafted and overrated while doing so.

Dennis Smith Jr, Dallas Mavericks

DSJ this season is the stereotypical example of a rookie starting point guard thrust into a feature role: a decent enough volume of counting stats brought down by percentages. Starting for a tanking Dallas team, Smith Jr has been given a 28.5 usage rate in his first year, and has turned it into an incredibly inefficient 15.1 points per game with decent numbers in assists, threes and steals. He was a trap for most builds - his terrible FG% and FT% on high volume made him a net negative on pretty much all teams except punt FG%, but spent the year stealthily tanking many teams as owners chased his counting stats.

Player Comparison: Damian Lillard

While the free throw percentage was never as bad as DSJ's, for the first 4 years of Damian Lillard's career, he was a trap in the same way as DSJ for most teams as well. His FG% on a monster amount of attempts was almost impossible to recover from, with the rest of the profile being similar to what Dennis brings, except with even higher volume. Lillard was one of the top value pickups in punt FG% builds, and that seems like it'll be DSJ's fate at least for the first few years of his career as the efficiency works it's way up.

Ceiling: Top-60 type player in punt FG% builds, unplayable elsewhere in the short term, top-50 long term if efficiency gets better

DSJ's shooting percentage will probably take a few years to get up to the level where he is draftable for any team not punting field goal percentage, but he will be one of the best later round targets for that build if he is not being severely overdrafted. Unfortunately, his skill-set is exactly the type of profile that players tend to value a lot higher than their worth, so there's a chance that even if you are in the right build, someone will scoop him up before you can realize that value.

Bogdan Bogdanovic, Sacramento Kings

BB8's rookie season was an exercise in frustration, as despite being probably the best player on a putrid Kings team, his minutes were jerked around all season as the comically mismanaged squad insisted on giving big minutes to guys like Vince Carter and Zach Randolph. There was a stretch during hte middle of the season where Bogdanovic was a top-80 type guy as the Kings seemed like they were figuring things out and giving their rookie import consistent minutes and more ball-handling duties, but that has seemingly evaporated recently and 2Bog sees himself struggling to stay standard league relevant.

Player Comparison: Evan Fournier

The kit looks remarkably similar to Evan Fournier, with a bit more assists and a bit less rebounds. Assuming the Kings come to their senses before next season, Bogdanovic should see an uptick in usage and shot attempts, putting him in line to return similar type of value as Fournier has over the last few seasons.

Ceiling: Top-100 short term, Top-70 long term

As with his player comp, Bogdanovic's value is capped unless he is able to greatly increase his steal numbers. The biggest knock on Fournier's fantasy value is his lack of steals, as that is what keeps him outside the top-50, and while that skill-set has value, it makes guys like BB8 and Fournier play more like 2 to 3-category specialists that some builds will want, while others won't.

Check back next week for another back of rookies as we move on with our analysis!

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