NBA Rookie of The Year Award

NBA Rookie Of The Year Award

The National Basketball Association's Rookie of the Year Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1952–53 NBA season, to the top rookie(s) of the regular season. The winner receives the Eddie Gottlieb Trophy, which is named in honor of the Philadelphia Warriors head coach who led the team to the 1946–47 NBA Championship. The winner is selected by a panel of sportswriters throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom casts a vote for first, second and third place selections. Each first-place vote is worth five points; each second-place vote is worth three points; and each third-place vote is worth one point. The player(s) with the highest point total, regardless of the number of first-place votes, wins the award.

The most recent winner of the award is Kyrie Irving. Fourteen of the Rookie of the Year winners have won the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) during their careers; Wilt Chamberlain and Wes Unseld both accomplished the feat in the same season. Nineteen of the forty two non-active Rookie of the Year winners have been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Nineteen winners were drafted first overall. Three seasons had joint winners—Dave Cowens and Geoff Petrie in the 1970–71 season, Grant Hill and Jason Kidd in the 1994–95 season as well as Elton Brand and Steve Francis in the 1999–00 season. Tim Duncan of the United States Virgin Islands, Patrick Ewing of Jamaica, Pau Gasol of Spain and Kyrie Irving of Australia are the only four winners who were not born in the United States. (Duncan is an American citizen, but is considered an international player by the NBA because he was not born in one of the fifty states or Washington, D.C.) Gasol is the only winner who was trained totally outside the U.S.; Duncan played college basketball at Wake Forest, while Ewing immigrated to the Boston area at age 11.