Whitehead, LeVert keep their rungs on Rookie Ladder

When NBA.com’s Rookie Ladder comes out next week, ex-Net Yogi Ferrell will no doubt be on it. He’s played well enough to make it easily, considering how disappointing last year’s rookie class has been.

That presents a good news/bad news dichotomy for Nets fans. Bad news is that Dallas came in and scooped Ferrell up from the Long Island Nets after Brooklyn dumped him in favor of Spencer Dinwiddie. But there’s good news to be drawn from this as well. It means that the Nets scouting department did pretty well last June, taking Caris LeVert in the first round, Isaiah Whitehead in the second and signing Ferrell after he went undrafted.

Is that enough of a consolation? We shall see.

In this week’s Rookie Ladder, for the second straight week, the Nets have the No. 9 (Whitehead) and No. 10 (LeVert), and Scott Howard-Cooper writes the order could be reversed and either or both could move up. Moreover, only one other team, the 76ers) has two rookies in the top 10 and both of those were taken in 2014.

He writes of LeVert...

The surge continues. LeVert has gone from playing 20 minutes once in his first 10 appearances after returning from a knee injury to 12 of the last 15, creating a good Nets-Nets race near the end of The Ladder, so good that it’s possible to imagine both moving up. LaVert is ninth in scoring, fourth in steals and 12th in minutes while climbing fast. He hasn’t made enough shots yet because of the long early absence to qualify in shooting, but the 44.9 would be sixth.

...And Whitehead

He is third in the class in assists at 3.0 per game and is positioned to pass Harrison (3.1) for second place, partly depending on Harrison’s minutes in Memphis. The bigger move for Whitehead has been in taking care of the ball, with a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio the last 10 games to move to 1.46-1 for the season, fifth among rookies. He has also improved from 28.3 percent behind the arc the first 25 games to 39.3 in January.

As Ian Eagle told The Glue Guys Thursday night, GM’s are measured more for their prowess in the Draft than anywhere else. “That’s how they will be judged,” Eagle said of Sean Marks and his assistant GM, Trajan Langdon.

• Rookie class' production falling short of expectations - Scott Howard-Cooper - NBA.com