Del Negro Says Rookie of the Year Race Is Over, O.J. Mayo May Say Otherwise

We're not even at the NBA's All-Star break yet, but Bulls' head coach Vinnie Del Negro is already trying to say that the race for the Rookie of the Year is over. In Tuesday's Chicago Sun Times, Del Negro pretended to be an election night pundit, calling the race in favor of his own rookie point guard Derrick Rose, while making it seem like we shouldn't even bother discussing the other contenders.

Forgive us coach, if we take your recommendation with a larger than average grain of salt. Especially when there's a rookie named O.J. Mayo who's currently playing for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Here are the words from Del Negro himself, and while it's predictable that a coach would throw his support behind one of his own, the way he dismisses the league's other top rookies is simply ridiculous.

"There's not even a conversation as far as I'm concerned,'' Del Negro said Monday before the Bulls' 102-98 loss to the New York Knicks. ''Mayo's having a great year, and Beasley is an incredibly talented player and is playing well. But no one's played at the level Derrick's played from the start to this point. Not even close in my opinion."

Not even close? Most would argue that Rose is "not even close" to the top of the rookie rankings. ESPN has him fourth ($), and most experts have him no higher than second. That's because there's the little matter of the Grizzlies' O.J. Mayo to discuss.

Mayo leads the rookie class in scoring at over 19 points per game, while Rose averages almost 17. Mayo's PER is slightly better than Rose's, but those of Marc Gasol and dunker extraordinaire Rudy Fernandez are better than Mayo's. And as we've mentioned before, PER is only part of the equation.

Many will point to Rose's assist numbers being almost double that of Mayo's, but as ESPN's David Thorpe points out, Rose's assist ratio (the percent of his possessions that end up being an assist) is only 24.7. That's good for just 20th out of the league's 30 starting point guards, and just 42nd among all point guards in the league -- starters or otherwise.

I'm not saying that Rose isn't in the ROY conversation; he absolutely is. But Del Negro going public with biased commentary like this smacks of a desperate attempt to suck up to his budding superstar, when all other attempts at getting the players behind him have been, to this point, wildly unsuccessful.