It’s every young basketball player’s dream to play for the NBA. Kids as young as 11-year-old Fabio Luca Basili, an American with strong familial ties to Zambia, are already hard at work honing their slum n dunk skills for the day they qualify for the
NBA Draft.
Getting picked for the big league is the first step to fame and fortune. Making the best of the rookie year is the key to the long-term success of what can be a multi-million-dollar career.
Legions of young players have made the great leap to the top tier of basketball. Only a few have made an indelible mark on the history of the game in their first season out.
Here are four of the greatest NBA Rookies of all time:
Wilt Chamberlain: 1959 - 60
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Tall, lanky and a serial NBA record breaker, Wilt Chamberlain is considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The precociously talented centre racked up an average of 37.6 points and 27 rebounds in his rookie season for the Philadelphia Warriors.
The Big Dipper smashed a previous NBA record by scoring an unassailable 2102 points in 56 games. By the end of the 1960-61 season Chamberlain was named the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP)
and Rookie of Year.
Chamberlain effectively re-wrote the record books by setting eight NBA records in just 12 months, a year that culminated in one of the greatest honours of all, that of NBA All-Star Game MVP.
Oscar Robertson – 1960-61
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Oscar Robertson left behind a life of poverty to become one of the most revered point guards of all-time. The Big O not only had an outstanding rookie year, averaging a jaw-dropping 30.5 points, 10.1 rebounds and 9.7 assists, he carried this awesome form through most of his career.
Robertson was a revelation in his first season with the Cincinnati Royals, so much so, he was named NBA Rookie of the Year.
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The lanky playmaker from Tennessee was also elected to the NBA First Team, snapped up the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player award and made the first of 12 back to back All-Star appearances.
Now, almost 60 years later, Oscar Robertson’s 30.5 scoring average per game remains the third highest in NBA rookie history.
Elvin Hayes - 1968-69
Image Source: nba.com
Tall, unassuming and introverted, Elvin Hayes started his stellar pro basketball career as the power forward for the San Diego Rockets. He immediately made his mark, averaging 28.4 points and 17.1 rebounds per game in his rookie year. Hayes’ stats had him leading the NBA in scoring, a feat that has never been repeated by a rookie to this day.
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Along with being named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team, his scoring average in the 1968-69 season is the all time fifth best by a rookie. Hayes ended his maiden year in the NBA with a host of prestigious awards including the Associated Press, UPI and Sporting News Player of the Year.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – 1969-70
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joined the Milwaukee Bucks for a cool $1.4 million and instantly proved his worth as a brilliant shot-blocking centre. The burly New Yorker scored an average of 28.8 points and achieved 14.5 rebounds per game, stats that duly earned him the title of NBA Rookie of the Year.
In his first season with the Bucks, Abdul-Jabbar set an NBA rookie record by scoring 20 plus points in 10 or more playoff games, a record that would stand for almost half a century. The man who introduced the Skyhook to the sport became one of the best basketball players of his generation.
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