Going into the 2013 NBA draft, experts had viewed it as one of the weakest in recent memory. There was no franchise savior available, and the lottery was looked on as a guessing game at best. A little more than halfway through the season, the rookie class hasn’t done anything to dispel this notion. Outside of Michael Carter-Williams, Victor Oladipo, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, there hasn’t been much rookie production. Nate Duncan of Basketball Insiders.com believes there are five rookies who might be able to turn their seasons around. The players he examines in the piece are Anthony Bennett, Cody Zeller, Ben McLemore, Alex Len, and Otto Porter.
More from around the league:
- Free agent center Marcus Camby is progressing in his rehabilitation from foot surgery and expects to be fully healthy by February’s end to join an NBA team, a league source told Shams Charania of RealGM. The 39-year-old, who would become the second-oldest player in the league behind Steve Nash, averaged 1.9 points and 3.3 rebounds in 24 games with the Knicks last season.
- German team Medi Bayreuth and Will Conroy have parted ways, according to an announcement on the club’s official website translated by Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. The 31-year-old, who was averaging 5.2 PPG across nine games, is already working out with another German team and is likely to sign for the rest of the season, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com.
- A Western Conference executive tells Mitch Lawrence of the New York Daily News that he expects more coaches to lose their jobs now that Maurice Cheeks has lost his. That’s a grim sign for Mike Woodson, Lawrence observes.
- It was previously thought that the NBPA would vote on a new union leader in New Orleans during the All-Star break but the latest signals suggest that won’t take place, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. There’s a push from some in the union to start the search over from scratch.
Zach Links contributed to this post.