It seems clear to me that Ja Morant will be ROTY of the year this season. There are no other rookies who possess his combination of stats and team success. Some people will argue that Zion Williamson deserves the award, but in the extremely thorough, extremely factual analysis that follows, even the most ardent Zion stans will be forced to reconsider their opinion. By comparing the two players on a series of important criteria, the factual facts will be laid out so truthfully that only one conclusion can be logically reached. That conclusion being that Ja Morant is going to be ROTY of the year.
STATS: Ja Morant put up 17/7/3 on 49% shooting and 36% from three. Zion Williamson put up 24/7/2 on 59% shooting and 46% from three. You can throw out Zion’s three-point shooting since he was attempting way fewer than one per game. You can also throw out the rest of Zion’s stats because he only played nineteen games. ADVANTAGE: Morant
ADVANCED STATS: Advanced stats are cool because they’re like regular stats, except more advanced. However, advanced stats are also not cool because they require an advanced brain in order to understand them. My simpleton brain can barely figure out how points per game is calculated so there’s no way for me to understand what kind of arcane mathematical sorcery is being performed to come up with these wackadoodle numbers. The only advanced stat I pay attention to is Win Shares per 48, and the only reason I pay attention to it is because it usually lines up pretty well with my intuition about how good a player is. Morant is sitting at 0.93 in WS/48. Zion is at 1.49. ADVANTAGE: Morant (because you should never trust advanced stats)
DUNKS: Morant had 44 dunks in 59 games. Zion had 51 dunks in 19 games. You do the math (please do the math because I can’t). Zion was, without a doubt, the more prolific dunker. However, if you add in arbitrary multipliers to adjust for height (by, say, giving Zion a .1x multiplier and giving Morant a 3x multiplier), it turns out that Morant is the more prolific dunker by a wide margin. This is fair because it’s way harder for Morant to dunk than it is for Zion to dunk. Check this video for proof. ADVANTAGE: Morant
TEAM SUCCESS: Both the Grizzlies and the Pelicans were making a real playoff push at the time that the season was postponed due to COVID-19. The Grizzlies have the edge, though, being 32-33 while the Pelicans are 28-36. Both players have slightly above a 50% win rate when they play and both players were their team’s #1 option. That’s about all I can say on the matter without doing a statistical deep-dive that I really don’t feel like doing. ADVANTAGE: Morant
HEALTH: If Morant was injured at all this season, it was only minor injuries. Zion’s injury history doesn’t need to be repeated because everybody knows about it and it kept him out for the first three months of the season. ADVANTAGE: Morant
ROOKIE STATUS: Morant is a rookie. Zion is a rookie. ADVANTAGE: Morant
PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS: I don’t know who the voters for the ROTY award are, but if they’re like any normal human, they’re constantly evaluating the attractiveness of every other human that they see. That means that physical attractiveness of the ROTY candidates is an overlooked but important factor. Morant has a youthful face and cool hair. Zion has a rectangular face and not-as-cool hair. Also, Zion’s head looks like it was squashed in a hydraulic press. ADVANTAGE: Morant
GAMES: Let’s be honest for a minute here. Zion did not play in enough games to win ROTY of the year. There is no getting around this incontrovertible fact. All that weaselly data manipulation I did the above sections to make it seem like Morant was the clear frontrunner? I didn’t need to do any of that because the only argument I need is this one. Morant played enough games, Zion didn’t. End of story. ADVANTAGE: Morant
After all the verified and truthful facts have been truthfully laid out with factual verification, you will have to agree with me that there is only one right answer in the Morant vs. Zion ROTY of the year debate:
Ja Morant will be ROTY of the year.