The Most Random 1 Year Primes In NBA History

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Mike James was a solid NBA player with a career average of 9.9 points per game. But in 05-06 in his contract year he had the most random jump to 20 points for the season. And instead of going up, he never came close to those numbers again in his career. Let me explain.
As an NBA journeyman, James was often traded from team to team, but despite that he improved steadily ever since his rookie year and increased his scoring average.
With the Raptors however, he got the perfect opportunity on a team that tried to figure things out after Vince Carter left.
So Mike could pretty much shoot whenever he wanted, and to everyone’s surprise, he made a lot of those shots.
47% from the field and a blistering hot 44% from downtown, made him a top 20 scorer in the league with more points per game than guys like Tim Duncan, Dwight Howard and Chauncey Billups.
What’s interesting however is that despite the huge jump from 12 to 20 points, he was only 7th in the race for most improved player. With Boris Diaw winning it that year.
After balling out for the Raptors, Minnesota signed him to a 4 year 24 million dollar contract.
But he fell all the way back down to 10 points per game. In fact, that following season with the Wolves was the last time that he even got to double digits. That’s how random this 1 year jump was.
Similar thing happened to Aaron Brooks as well. It all started in the 2009 playoffs that the Rockets entered without their main weapon Tracy Mcgrady. And when Yao Ming also got injured, that freed up a ton of shot opportunities for the role players who went against the eventual champions Lakers in the second round.
Playing without any kind of pressure, a starting 5 of Battier, Scola, Artest, Chuck Hayes and Brooks took the heavy favorites to 7 games. And Aaron Brooks was a big reason for that.
So when both Yao and Tracy couldn’t return for the next season, Brooks continued to cook, jumping from 11 points the previous year all the way to 19 and a half per game in 2010.
And with that he was voted as the most improved player.
This was a lone magical season for him however since he also fell down to 10 and a half points the next year and pretty much stayed in that range or lower for the rest of his career.
Bobby Simmons is another guy who won most improved player, and he was able to really cash in his unsustainable jump in production.
In his 4th season in the league which just so happened to be his contract year, Simmons went from almost 8 points per game, to 16 and a half, more than doubling his average from the previous year. And he added 6 rebounds to that.
This earned him the award and made him a hot commodity, with teams throwing offers at him. The biggest one came from the Milwaukee Bucks. A 4 year, 47 million dollar contract, which Bobby immediately signed.
And while he was somewhat ok in his first season with the Bucks, dropping only 3 points per game, from that point on, it’s a steep decline back to his baseline of 7 points, never coming back to the production from his contract year.
Moving on, next up are 2 players that peaked as rookies.
Michael Carter Williams had the debut of his dreams dropping 22 points, 7 rebounds, 12 assists and 9 steals on the Miami Heat superteam. And Philly won the game.
He continued the season strong, and despite the Sixers being dead last that year, he had a good season with averages of 16 and a half points 6 rebounds and 6 assists per game winning the rookie of the year award.
However his inefficient shooting especially from downtown, and the turnover issue bothered Philadelphia, so midway through his sophomore year he got traded.
Thing is, he continued to be a way below average shooter, and never took the next step. Instead, his averages steadily declined all the way to single digits and he got traded a few more times ultimately ending up on the Orlando Magic.
Tyreke Evans had a similar decline from 20 points per game as a rookie of the year to 9.5 a few years later. But funny enough in 2017 he had a random bounce back season with the Grizzlies averaging 19 and a half points per game along with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. This was his second best season of his career and was a whole 10 years apart from his rookie season which of course was his best.
Davis Bertans tricked the Wizards into giving him a monster 80 million dollar contract with 1 good season.
Bertans went from 8 to 15 and a half points per game in 2019-2020 and along with his lights out shooting, that got the Wizards fired up to make this offer to him.
But that was the absolute best that we saw from Davis, as he quickly fell to 11 points the next season and ever since then, he’s been well into single digits with 5 points per game for the last 2 years.