With NBA Draft coming up tomorrow, I feel it's important to remember that most NBA draftees suck in their rookie seasons. Really, really suck.
Our favorite metric for determining a player's efficiency in a given season is his nERD score. For basketball, this is an estimate of how many games above or below .500 a team would be with that player as a starter alongside a league-average team. For example, LeBron had a ridiculous 27.3 nERD this past season, meaning that if the Heat started LeBron and four average players, they would still be expected to go 55-27. Norris Cole, meanwhile, would lead an average team to a 39-43 record with his inefficient play thanks to his -5.3 nERD.
There have been 46 top five selections since 2003 that played the year directly after being drafted (Oden, Griffin, Rubio, and Valanciunas did not). Of those 46 players, only 14 had a positive nERD score. Of those 14, only seven had an nERD score over 1. And of those seven, only '05-06 that Jason Collins) and Antoine Walker among 75 GP players. And at least those guys had some defense to back up their poor offense; Morrison's 112 defensive rating was seventh-worst among 75 GP players.
I could keep rattling stats like a 5.9 percent true rebound rate or a 0.6 percent steal rate, but to me, Morrison's most surprising rookie year number might just be 22.4. That's the percentage of plays on the floor that Charlotte ran specifically for Morrison, just 0.1 percent behind Gerald Wallace for the team lead that season. For Charlotte to keep going Morrison's way is incredible, but it also led to the single-least efficient season in the entire NBA between 2000 and 2011. And that is Morrison's lasting legacy.