{"id":829360,"date":"2025-05-01T16:59:44","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T20:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=829360"},"modified":"2025-05-01T16:59:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T20:59:59","slug":"stephon-castle-wins-rookie-of-the-year-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/stephon-castle-wins-rookie-of-the-year-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephon Castle wins Rookie of the Year Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Flanked by San Antonio Spurs royalty, Spurs guard Stephon Castle was named Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At his celebratory press conference, San Antonio&#8217;s previous Rookie of the Year winners: all-time greats David Robinson and Tim Duncan and a future face of the league Victor Wembanyama, all appeared on stage to hand Castle the trophy and welcome the UConn product into elite company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Castle&#8217;s victory marked the first time since 2016 an NBA team had back-to-back Rookie of the Year winners after Wembanyama took home the award last season. The last team to do so was the Minnesota Timberwolves, when Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns won the award in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"ca\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud835\udc1e\ud835\udc25\ud835\udc22\ud835\udc2d\ud835\udc1e \ud835\udc1c\ud835\udc28\ud835\udc26\ud835\udc29\ud835\udc1a\ud835\udc27\ud835\udc32 \ud83d\ude4c<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/KiaROY?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#KiaROY<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aCg7XuGdD2\">pic.twitter.com\/aCg7XuGdD2<\/a><\/p>&mdash; San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/spurs\/status\/1917674154977026349?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 30, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In a landslide victory, Castle earned 92 out of 100 first-place votes. He also earned seven second-place votes and a single third-place vote. Castle finished with 482 points, 237 ahead of Atlanta Hawks forward Zaccharie Risacher, the top overall pick in the draft, who finished with 245 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Risacher garnered five first-place votes 64 second-place votes and 28 third-place votes. Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaylen Wells finished with three first-place votes, 23 second-place votes and 39 third-place votes. No other candidate received any first-place votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A global media panel of 100 voters selected the winner of the 2024-25 Kia NBA Rookie of the Year Award.<br><br>The complete voting results \u2b07\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VrvxR9N4tT\">pic.twitter.com\/VrvxR9N4tT<\/a><\/p>&mdash; NBA Communications (@NBAPR) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NBAPR\/status\/1917355030715187461?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 29, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Castle had a breakout rookie season for a rebuilding Spurs team built around Wembanyama. He appeared in 81 games, starting in 47 of them, and averaged 14.7 points per game. He posted two 30-point performances, including a career-high 33 points on Feb. 7 in a 117-116 loss to the Hornets, where the rookie shot an efficient 10-15 from the field and 60% from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To cap it off, he even took three-time dunk contest winner Mac McClung to the wire in the final round of this year&#8217;s contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Spurs currently are one of the youngest teams in the league rebuilding a young core, with only three rostered players over the age of 30. Despite their youth, the Spurs improved their win total from last year by 12 wins, finishing with a 34-48 record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a talented draft class entering the 2025 NBA Draft, San Antonio is hoping the lottery falls into their favor to potentially draft another Rookie of the Year candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flanked by San Antonio Spurs royalty, Spurs guard Stephon Castle was named Rookie of the Year. At his celebratory press conference, San Antonio&#8217;s previous Rookie of the Year winners: all-time greats David Robinson and Tim Duncan and a future face of the league Victor Wembanyama, all appeared on stage to hand Castle the trophy and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":543,"featured_media":829361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[110],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-829360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-san-antonio-spurs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829360"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829369,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829360\/revisions\/829369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829360"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=829360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}