The situation around Kendrick Nunn reveals a truth about rookies that the NBA probably doesn’t want you to realize and that I had hardly thought about before: a lot of their eventual NBA hype is carried over from their college days. As an NBA fan first and foremost, who doesn’t give even one single hoot about the college game, the hype I have for rookies comes solely from their NBA play. Thus, my hype for Nunn is fairly high. But for a lot of dirty casual peasants who actually pay attention to (and, gasp, ENJOY) NCAA ball, the hype they have for rookies is directly correlated to how good they were in college. Thus, their hype for Nunn is fairly low, because no one at all cares if you’ve been dominating the G-League.
The NBA, obviously, prefers that this wouldn’t be the case, that the G-League would be just as valid (if not valider) of a path to the NBA as the NCAA. But until the G-League has actual fans and not just a few people who kinda pay attention and normies who just go to the games for something to do, there’s no way that players in that league will get anywhere near the hype they could if they just played for some random school and scored 20 points per game. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg situation for sure; highly-touted high-schoolers going to the G-League would raise interest in the league, benefiting everyone, but they won’t want to unless the hype infrastructure is already there.
I’m kinda rambling, sorry. But this is the reason that Nunn can have an excellent rookie season while hardly anyone outside of Miami cares at all. It’s been too long since he’s been in college for any residual hype to carry over. 15 points a game on one of the best teams in the league (just ignore this loss, really, just ignore it, actually the Knicks are good now anyway so it’s not even a bad loss) for a rookie? He should have ESPN pundits lined up out the door, eager for just one sniff of his jockstrap. As it stands, there is no line.