For the 10th year in a row, the NBA released the results for its 2011-12 survey of general managers. Questions ranged from predicting this year's championship to the possible league MVP, but it also revealed opinions relating to the 2011 draft class.
Of this year's rookies, the No.1 overall pick, Kyrie Irving, was predicted to win the 2011-12 Rookie of the Year award. The previous year, the GMs had predicted that the top selection from 2010, Washington's John Wall, which ultimately proved to be the wrong pick.
While he had a strong, but injury plagued freshman campaign, Wall was upstaged by 2009 No.1 overall pick, Blake Griffin, who missed what was supposed to be his entire rookie season before returning to make a huge splash in 2010-11. Because Griffin didn't play in 2009-10, he was still considered a rookie and eventually won last season's ROY award in a landslide.
In this year's poll, Irving, with a 63 percent share of the vote, edged out Minnesota's Ricky Rubio (18.5%), Charlotte's Kemba Walker (7.4%), Minnesota's Derrick Williams (7.4%) and Phoenix's Markieff Morris (3.7%).
One of the more interesting questions in this year's GM poll was who is the best international player not currently playing in the NBA. Surprisingly, edging out two very good veteran players in Juan Carlos Navarro and Andrei Kirilenko, was Toronto Raptors 2011 first-round pick, Jonas Valanciunas.
With 36 percent of the vote, the Lithuanian phenom and 5th overall pick this past June received a pretty strong endorsement from NBA GMs. He is expected to join the Raptors for the 2012-13 season.
See the rest of the poll at NBA.com.
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© 2012 Neal J. Leitereg -- All Rights Reserved
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