People also search for NBA Most Valuable Player Award | ||
The National Basketball Association's Rookie of the Year Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given to the top rookie(s) of the regular season. Initiated following the 1952–53 NBA season, it confers the Eddie Gottlieb Trophy, named after the former Philadelphia Warriors head coach.
The winner is selected by a panel of United States and Canadian sportswriters and broadcasters, each casting first, second, and third place votes (worth five points, three points, and one point respectively). The player(s) with the highest point total, regardless of the number of first-place votes, wins the award.
The most recent Rookie of the Year winner is Karl-Anthony Towns. Twenty-one winners were drafted first overall. Fourteen winners have also won the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in their careers; Wilt Chamberlain and Wes Unseld earning both honors the same season. Nineteen of the forty two non-active winners have been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. 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, and Elton Brand and Steve Francis in the 1999–2000 season. Five players won the award unanimously (by capturing all of the first-place votes) – Ralph Sampson, David Robinson, Blake Griffin, Damian Lillard, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Patrick Ewing of Jamaica, Tim Duncan of the United States Virgin Islands, Pau Gasol of Spain, Kyrie Irving of Australia and Andrew Wiggins of Canada are the only winners not born in the United States. Ewing immigrated to the Boston area at age 11, Duncan played college basketball at Wake Forest, Irving moved to the United States at age 2, and Wiggins moved to the U.S. as a junior in high school; Gasol is the only winner trained totally outside the U.S..
Unofficial winners
Prior to the 1952–53 season, the Rookie of the Year was selected by newspaper writers; however, the NBA does not officially recognize those players as winners. The league did publish the pre-1953 winners in their 1994–95 edition of the Official NBA Guide and the 1994 Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia, but those winners have not been listed in subsequent publications.