Which Player From The 2024 Class Has Flashed The Most Potential?

The 2024-25 NBA regular season is nearing its end, which is a great time to look back at the standouts from this year’s rookie class.

It’s well-documented at this point, but the 2024 Draft doesn’t feature some of the heavy-hitters we’re accustomed to (more on this in a bit). Still, as we’ve showcased throughout the season, there are plenty of future impact players in this group.

So, as we did last year, let’s take a look at which freshmen have flashed the most potential in their inaugural campaign.

Why Are We Measuring Flashes?

In “Basketball Analytics: Spatial Tracking,” — which you should read — Dr. Stephen Shea wrote this in his chapter about evaluating prospects:

“College players are inconsistent. Their production can vary wildly from one game to the next. This is especially true for freshmen, and it is often after the freshman season that the most elite prospects enter the draft. … The moral is that consistency is not something we should expect from even the very best of prospects. It is something that players gain with experience; it is something they can be taught.”

Young players are inherently inconsistent. But that’s OK because consistency can be learned. So, we should instead focus on a player’s flashes since those flashes are what the player will become if or when they master the art of consistency.

How We Are Measuring Flashes

It’s been about three years since I read Shea’s book. And in that time, the best method I’ve been able to come up with for quantifying flashes is Basketball Reference’s Game Score metric.

According to the website, Game Score is a metric “created by John Hollinger to give a rough measure of a player’s productivity for a single game. The scale is similar to that of points scored (40 is an outstanding performance, 10 is an average performance, etc.).”

What we’ll do is take the average of each rookie’s 10 best Game Scores and compare that number to their peers. Our threshold to qualify for this study is at least 25 games played. That means we’ll be looking at the 10 best Game Score averages of 45 rookies.

To be fully transparent, I’ve only run this test for a couple of seasons. So, the true validity of this study is still yet to be fully proven. However, last year’s study featured Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren at the top of the list (according to Game Score) – the two players many believe have the highest ceilings of that rookie class.

The Results

Anyway, enough rambling. Here are the results for this year’s rookies (as of March 27, 2025).

Coming in at No. 1 is the current odds-on favorite to win Rookie of the Year, Stephon Castle. He only holds a slim lead, though, over the first overall pick, Zaccharie Risacher, who has been red-hot the last two months. Narrowly trailing behind them is Alex Sarr, the second pick in the 2024 Draft.

How To Interpret These Results/Main Takeaways

Two problems I’ve noticed with using Game Score is it biases toward those who play lots of minutes and carry a large offensive role on their team (since the metric uses box score data). So, the best way to use these results is to compare players who share similar minutes and positions.

For instance, it’s interesting that Risacher places much higher than Jaylen Wells, despite the latter being the far more consistent player this year. It suggests that while Wells is the better player, Risacher has far more room to grow.

Bigs seem to be the highlight of the 2024 class so far, as six of the top-10 spots are occupied by centers. All of them, give or take, have had similar minutes/opportunities. So, using this exercise to directly compare them is pretty appropriate. With that said, Donovan Clingan – the second center selected off the board last summer – having the fifth-highest “peak” of this group is notable.

A torn meniscus tragically ended Jared McCain’s dazzling rookie season. At 23 games played, he fell just short of our cutoff. But if we were to include him, the average of his 10 best Game Scores would be 17.55, which would put him eighth – right between Kel’el Ware and Wells.

Is This A Weak Class?

As we alluded to earlier, much has been made about how this class is a relatively “weak” one. Because I’ve only been keeping tabs on this stat since 2022-23, our sample is hardly large enough to get a true gauge on where the 2024 class stands in the annals of draft history. Still, I figured it would be fun to compare the last three years.

Since the knock on this draft is it lacks the top-end talent we often see on a year-to-year basis, we’re going to compare the average of the top-10 rookies (with the average of their 10 best Game Scores) from each of these seasons.

This year, the top-10 performing rookies averaged a Game Score of 18.76. That is about 2.5 points lower than last year’s average (21.24). This was to be expected, as 2023 featured the two unicorn big men mentioned above in Wembanyama and Holmgren. But even the year before that, the group headlined by Jalen Williams and Paolo Banchero had a Game Score average of 20.38 – adding at least some credence to the narratives surrounding this year’s rookies.

All data for this article was pulled by Fran Huzjan (@FHuzjan on Twitter).