That's kind of weird...
After breaking into the rookie top 5 in late February and remaining there through last week, Al Thornton was dropped all the way to 8th in David Thorpe's final ranking - behind the likes of Thaddeus Young, Carl Landry and Joakim Noah. This after a week in which he averaged 24 points and 9 rebounds. Whatever. That's fine. I know those guys all have better PER's than Al. But then again, Nick Fazekas has the second highest PER of any rookie.
It just seems to me that if Carl Landry was really that great, he'd play more than 17 minutes per game. And in case you're thinking his minutes are depressed by a lack of burn early in the season, think again. He's playing less than 18 per game in April. And he's only appeared in 41 games this season. I just have a feeling that if you offered all 30 GM's in the league either Al Thornton or Carl Landry right now, somewhere in the neighborhood of 29 of them would take Thornton. In the case of Landry, you can't even make the age argument - he's also 24.
But like I said, whatever. Even with his demotion, Al is rated the 6th best rookie from this draft class (Scola and Moon are ahead of him on Thorpe's final board, but of course were not in this draft class). And he's still the second highest scorer overall among rookies. So he's obviously a great pick at 14.