Reed Sheppard is ESPN’s overwhelming choice to win NBA Rookie of the Year award in 2025
Two months before the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, the Reed Sheppard hype continues.
ESPN posted a series of predictions related to player awards for the upcoming season, and the former Kentucky basketball star was listed as the overwhelming choice to earn NBA Rookie of the Year honors next year.
Sheppard, who was selected with the No. 3 overall pick by the Houston Rockets in this year’s NBA draft — making him the first college player chosen — turned heads with a series of dazzling performances in the Las Vegas summer league last month.
His showing on the summer circuit vaulted him up the list of betting odds to be named the NBA’s top rookie in 2025, and ESPN analysts were obviously among those who took notice.
ESPN’s “Summer Forecast” series continued Tuesday with its panel — a group consisting of league experts, including reporters, editors and analysts — predicting the winner of each major award for the 2024-25 season.
Sheppard took 62% of the first-place votes in the poll for Rookie of the Year honors. The format awarded five points for a first-place vote, three points for a second-place vote and one point for a third-place vote. Sheppard finished with 74 total points, nearly double the player who was second on the list: the Memphis Grizzlies’ Zach Edey, who had 40 points.
Edey was the college basketball national player of the year at Purdue the past two seasons, and he’s still the slight betting choice to win the NBA Rookie of the Year award, according to the DraftKings, FanDuel and ESPN betting apps. (Sheppard is the No. 2 choice in all of those odds.)
If Sheppard can earn Rookie of the Year honors, he would join Karl-Anthony Towns as just the second UK player to ever win the award, which has been around for 71 years. (Dan Issel was the ABA Rookie of the Year in 1971, the only Wildcat to win that league’s award.)
Sheppard will play his first NBA regular-season game on Oct. 23 against the Charlotte Hornets in Houston.
Another former UK player, Rob Dillingham, was No. 5 in ESPN’s preseason Rookie of the Year voting, though he did not receive any first-place votes. Dillingham is entering his first year with the Minnesota Timberwolves after coming off the bench alongside Sheppard in John Calipari’s final season at Kentucky.
Former UConn stars Donovan Clingan (Trail Blazers) and Stephon Castle (Spurs) were third and fourth on ESPN’s list, respectively. Zaccharie Risacher (Hawks) and Alex Sarr (Wizards) — the 1-2 picks in the 2024 draft — tied for sixth in the voting.
Plenty of other former Wildcats were represented elsewhere in the award predictions:
▪ Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished third in the NBA MVP voting behind the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic and the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic. Gilgeous-Alexander, who finished second behind Jokic in actual voting for the award last season, earned 24% of the first-place votes from the ESPN panel, which was second only to Doncic’s 48%.
▪ The Lakers’ Anthony Davis was eighth in the panel’s NBA MVP voting.
▪ Bam Adebayo (Miami) and Davis were third and fourth in the NBA Defensive Player of the Year voting, respectively. Adebayo earned a second-best 14% of the first-place votes for that award. The Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama was the clear choice on top with 67% of the first-place votes.
▪ Sacramento’s Malik Monk, who finished a close second behind Minnesota’s Naz Reid for the Sixth Man of the Year award last season, was tied with Oklahoma City’s Alex Caruso for first place in that category on ESPN’s panel.
This story was originally published August 20, 2024 at 11:16 AM.
