MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy's View from Dowunder) - Another year over, a new one just begun, you know the tune, so let's celebrate the success stories of 2017 in Australian and New Zealand hoops and look to who might carry the torch in 2018.

Thon Maker, Isaac Humphries, Shea Ili, Majok Deng, Mitch Creek and Ben Simmons all rate a mention, read on to find out why.

Next week I'll celebrate a few more worthy souls from other areas of basketball Downunder.

Rookie of the Year

2017 - Thon Maker
Yes, I know, you can call me out on a technicality here because the Sundanese-born Maker began his rookie year in 2016. But given he had played only a tick over 50 professional minutes for the Milwaukee Bucks when 2017 hit, I'm claiming him as my rookie of the year.

There aren't too many super-athletic seven-footers around who can hit the three-ball in the mid-to-high thirties, and with Thon indicating he is keen to play for the Boomers, he could certainly add a new dimension around Ben Simmons into the future.

Given he's scored 28 points in his first two NBA games of 2018, perhaps the future is now. Were there not so many other Aussies making noise in the NBA he would already be a household name on these shores, but hopefully that time will come.

2018 - Isaac Humphries
It's been a tough welcome to professional basketball for one of the absolute superstars of the 2014 FIBA U17 World Championship. Given he averaged 24.8 points, 13.5 rebounds and 3.3 blocks in the four games leading up to the Final, it's clear this guy has the potential to play at the highest level.

He chose the Sydney Kings to start his pro career with, a club with inexperienced coaches, poor culture and no defence, perhaps the area he most needed work on.

Still, he's stuck at it, showed improvement, and one big tick to coach Andrew Gaze in a horror year is he has benched Humphries whenever he has slipped back into boy habits, and one of the Boomers' most exciting centre prospects for post-2020 has improved because of it, albeit slowly. May 2018 bring big things.

Emerging star

2017 - Shea Ili
Not much has to be said about Shea, he was the number one point guard at the FIBA Asia Cup with 15.4 points and 5.8 assists per game and, had he not been injured, the Tall Blacks may well have come home with a bronze medal.

Ili continued that emergence with the Breakers in the NBL, averaging 12.2 points and 3.3 assists in his team's nine-game winning run. Even though he has slowed down a little in recent weeks, he looks right at home competing with the competition’s world-class guards.

His next challenge is to put his stamp on the Tall Blacks like he did in Beirut, rather than settling for the fact he will be Tai Webster's back-up. He certainly has the talent and mental outlook to be more than that, and those two could make quite a tandem.

2018 - Majok Deng
Sure, this one may have been prompted by Deng's incredible 16-point final quarter against the first-placed Perth to open 2018 in style, but that is just the icing on the cake of impressive strides the Adelaide big man has been making.

Long and athletic, the 6ft 10in (2.08m) Sudanese-Australian has great ability to hit from the outside, or put the ball on the deck and finish inside. He recently described his offence as his blessing, but has been made to earn his minutes hard by Adelaide coach Joey Wright due to his regular, but now diminishing defensive lapses.

In fact Wright is now using his length in some defence-specific line-ups, and this week said he believes Deng has the potential to play in the NBA someday if he can transition his game to the three-spot.

Whether he can find a niche in the Boomers post-2020 remains to be seen, but there is still a huge amount of improvement in the raw 24-year-old, so let's just see where 2018 takes him.

2017 - Mitch Creek
We had waited patiently from junior days and Creek delivered in spades last year. It started with a breakout NBL season where he was the quiet mastermind behind Adelaide's defence-inspired sprint to the minor premiership, especially his ability to guard positions 1-5 at different times.

Then he was the do-it-all man who was the best player on the best team as the Boomers romped their way through the FIBA Asia Cup, and was certainly worthy of tournament MVP honours with his 14.7 points at 69 per cent, 5.2 boards, 2.3 assists, 1.8 steals and several lockdowns of key opponents.

His form has gone up another level this NBL season, where he is as valuable to his team as any player in the comp, and if his form at both ends continues he will be a no-brainer for the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019, where his versatility alongside Ben Simmons could be a scary proposition.

Given Creek is only 25, he has two World Cups and two Olympic Games coming up in his prime, and we can only pray the injury gods have done their worst with him in his early years and we get to see lots of green and gold Creek over the next six or seven years.

2018 - Ben Simmons
I can't really add to everything that's been said about Simmons, who has constantly set marks as an NBA rookie that have him compared with the likes of Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, the greatest all-around players the world has ever seen.

Hopefully in one of the off-season windows Simmons will step back into the Boomers program to start his preps for next year's World Cup in China, and to give the profile of the national team an enormous boost in the land of Aus.

It's probably fair to say Basketball Australia could schedule that game at any stadium in the country such is Simmons' growing standing in our broader sporting landscape, not just amongst hoops fans, which is something only the great Gaze and Lauren Jackson have really achieved.

Something will be wrong - or very good in the case of his performances being surpassed - if Simmons is not Australia's MVP for many, many, many years to come.

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

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