Prediction: Julius Randle and How the MIP Award Might Impact His Moments
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We haven’t yet had the chance to see how a player winning a major award will influence their moments, both in the short-term and the long-term. Award season, however, is just around the corner, so let’s take a look at what we think might happen to the winner of the Rookie of the Year award.
The race for the Rookie of the Year award has been a strange one. For much of the season Lamelo Ball was running it alone, but his wrist injury and some quality play from Tyrese Haliburton and Anthony Edwards turned it on its head. Of course, Lamelo then made a surprise early return, and as a result is once again the overwhelming favourite to take out the award. And assuming he does, can we bank on his moments spiking in price?
As we’ve talked about previously, some moments of Julius Randle and in particular Nikola Jokic have shown signs of an upwards trend as those two begin to consolidate their cases for Most Improved Player and Most Valuable Player respectively. The situation surrounding Lamelo is a little less clear-cut for a number of reasons.
Firstly, he’s coming back from a medium-term injury, so any price increases over the past week or two could easily be attributed to his return rather than the prospect of him winning ROTY. Secondly, he only has three moments and two of them are very expensive, which makes it harder to gauge any significant trends, particularly given a couple of those moments’ prices are fluctuating like Andre Drummond’s nightly effort levels.
His cheapest moment, a Series 2 Base Set Layup, has certainly done that, going from a floor of around $70 at the end of April, down to $55 by the beginning of May, back up to around $75 a couple of days later and now back into the $60s. His first ever moment has also shown a reasonable sized increase followed by a regression, while his Rising Stars moment does seem to be trending upwards. So while there’s some evidence of upwards movement, it doesn’t appear as though the Topshot community is rushing to stock up on the probable ROTY any more than they have been throughout the year.
But what about when it’s announced? ROTY obviously doesn’t have the same level of prestige as an award like the MVP, and as a result I’d anticipate any changes to the price of Lamelo’s moments will be less significant than that of Jokic’s moments (assuming they both win), but nonetheless I expect it to have a positive impact on value in both the short and long-term.
As we expect with Jokic and Randle, this short-term effect will likely be a rapid spike following the announcement followed by something of a regression to the mean. Long-term, it may be more significant. Many Topshotters have identified talented rookies as a good buy, and there isn’t a better example of that than the prices Lamelo moments already demand. Already all of these moments have rookie season badges, which will likely increase their value as his career goes on whether he wins ROTY this season or not. If these moments happen to also have come in a ROTY winning season – particularly if Topshot decides to add badges for these awards – then it’s hard to imagine they won’t be worth a lot more in a few years’ time.
