Many people think that 2nd-year player Ben Simmons out of LSU should win the rookie of the year award. This is the popular opinion; however, I am going to argue for Donovan Mitchell, a rookie out of Louisville, who plays for the Utah Jazz, as the most deserving of the rookie of the year award. Mitchell led a team with no all-stars to the 4th seed in the West, which is loaded with teams like the Warriors, Thunder, Rockets, T-Wolves, Spurs, Trailblazers, and Pelicans.  Mitchell led the team through the 82 games regular season and has been phenomenal in the playoffs. For the season he averaged 20.5 points per game vs Simmons 15.8 ppg. Mitchell is more of a scorer, and when his team needs clutch plays, Mitchell makes them. Mitchell also has a better shot that Simmons, as the only way that Simmons can consistently score is within 10 feet of the basket. Simmons does not have a jumper or a 3 point shot, as he had ZERO attempts from 3 in the 81 games that he played!!! Speaking of not being able to shoot, Simmons can’t even shoot a free throw with the WORST free-throw percentage out of all NBA point guards with 56%. On the other hand, Mitchell is 80% from the free throw stripe. Simmons has his team in the 3 seed of the Leastern conference where no teams have a real, legitimate chance of winning the NBA finals. So many of Simmons’ wins are against no competition what so ever. Joel Embid, an NBA All-Star Starter and a top 5 center in the NBA is the teammate of Simmons, while Mitchell has…..??? (Exactly)!! Just on the showman factor alone, Mitchell should win, with all of his amazing putback dunks, including a posterizer over 3 Rockets defenders in his playoff win, and Mitchell won the NBA Dunk Contest this year.

The path for Mitchell has been harder, as he was a mid 1st round draft pick compared to Ben Simmons being #1 overall, and Mitchell has worked his way to being the leader of his team within a few months of playing pro basketball, while Simmons had a whole year in the league without playing to learn, and  Mitchell has been endorsed by Kobe as a mamba! Now, Simmons does have double the assists that Mitchell does, but let us not forget that Simmons is a point guard and Mitchell is a shooting guard, so it is expected for this to be the case, and on top of that, Embid is an easy way to get plenty of assists per night by just tossing the ball in the post. In a few years, it would not be surprising to see Mitchell and Simmons faceoff in the finals, but for now, they will simply compete for rookie of the year!