Kyrie Irving

Kyrie Irving won the NBA All-Star 3-point contest Saturday night in Houston. Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers had a high score of 23 in the championship round to defeat Matt Bonner of the San Antonio Spurs. Other participants in the contest were Ryan Anderson, Steve Novak, Paul George, and Stephen Curry.

Irving proved that he is not only a great playmaker and scorer, but also a great shooter. This comes one day after Irving scored over 30 points for the second straight year in the rookie-sophomore game. Irving will also be participating in the all-star game tomorrow night and if he has a good performance there, this could be one of the great individual all-star weekends of all time.

Irving is a young player who is only getting better. He already may be among the top 5 point guards in the NBA and might be the best point guard in a year or two. Irving is from New Jersey and was a New Jersey Nets fan growing up. After spending one year at Duke, Irving was the first overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft and won rookie of the year last season. He has done a great job of reviving the Cavaliers franchise that lost Lebron James a few years ago.

Marshon Brooks

On Tuesday it was officially announced that Kyrie Irving was the near-unanimous selection as NBA Rookie of the Year, while former New Jersey Nets rookie Marshon Brooks finished in 10th, receiving one second place and one third place vote. Brooks was taken with the 25th pick in the draft last season, and seems to have a lot of potential. Marshon finished the season third in rookie scoring, averaging 12.6 points per game. After a very hot start to the season, Marshon suffered a few injuries and went into a second half slump. He finished the season stronger than he played in the middle, but we will hopefully see a full, strong season from him next year.

At the beginning of this season, I thought Marshon had an outside chance of winning this award, but he clearly was not one of the best 5 rookies this year after slumping in the second half. Despite this, I’m sure Marshon is very happy that he received two votes and he seems like the type of person that would like individual awards (not that he’s selfish or doesn’t care about the team; he does). I expect Marshon to build on his season in New Jersey next season when he is in Brooklyn.