It May Sound Insane, But There's One Way Zion Could End Up Winning Rookie Of The Year

For pretty much this entire season it looked like Ja Morant was going to run away with the Rookie Of The Year honor. He's been fantastic and has the Grizzlies currently in the playoffs and playing at a level not many thought they would get to this early. There is little reason to think he wouldn't be a deserving ROY winner. 

But then Zion came back.

Before you immediately dismiss this idea that Zion could challenge Morant for ROY, when the news first broke that he would miss a month back in October, I did some digging when it comes to guys who missed time and still won ROY

Then the next thing we knew, Zion missed way more games than we thought and has played in just 9 of their 54 games. That means even if he plays in every single one of the Pelicans remaining games he would only play in 37 games which is way below what Kyrie played when he won it. Here's the thing though, when you look at how dominant Zion has been

He's doing some historic shit that we haven't seen in decades, his averages are as legit as they come and for me it comes down to one thing really. If Zion can carry the Pelicans past Ja Morant and the Grizzlies and snag that final playoff spot while playing in all their games, he's the ROY. I understand the games played argument, no recent winner has missed anywhere close to the games Zion has, but he's just different. His only chance in my opinion is if the Pelicans make the playoffs and at the moment that's a 4.5 game hill to climb which is why if it happens I think it'll be impressive enough to pass Morant, even if his season continues to be awesome. 

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It's still insanely early in Zion's career, I mean he's only played 9 games but man what a 9 games they've been