Playoff seeding is complete and the play-in tournament starts tomorrow.
It’s awards time, starting with the league’s biggest individual awards, before we get to the All-NBA teams:
MVP
Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets)
Luka Doncic (Dallas Mavericks)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC Thunder)
Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks)
Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics)
This is one of the toughest and most interesting MVP races in recent memory. It’s a three man race and all three are deserving. You’ve got Jokic in his absolute prime, probably playing the best basketball of his career. You’ve got Doncic on a real contender, averaging absurd statistics and carrying a massive load. You’ve got Gilgeous-Alexander, the steely maestro of a college-aged 55-win team.
I wanted to give it to Doncic or Gilgeous-Alexander. I really did. They would be first-time winners and they have had excellent seasons that deserve to be rewarded.
But Jokic is too unstoppable and I don’t think there’s any convincing argument that he’s not the MVP. All the statistics point toward him, like usual; I don’t need to recite them. The Nuggets are an all-time juggernaut when he plays, and worse than the Charlotte Hornets when he’s on the bench.
Every time Denver has the ball, Jokic is involved and doing something to create a good shot. He’s setting screens at the top of the arc, brick-walling defenders to free shooters. He’s running either end of a pick-and-roll and flowing into silky floaters that never miss. He’s cutting off the ball, sprinting diagonally across the court and causing palpable anxiety for the poor behemoth center who has to chase him.
Or, if it’s absolutely necessary, he will bully and ultimately demoralize other large human beings in the post. Teams devise complicated schemes to help out whoever’s guarding him, only for Jokic to solve them immediately and render them irrelevant.
Last season, Jokic missed out on a third straight MVP in part because of his defensive downturn post-All-Star break. He didn’t play much defense for a good stretch of last season, opening the door for Joel Embiid. Not the case this year. Jokic has been good defensively, containing ball-handlers in multiple defensive schemes (including high drop coverage) and, as always, keeping his hands constantly in the passing lanes.
Doncic and Gilgeous-Alexander are close; I nearly chose SGA. But Doncic is playing 37 minutes a game and averaging 33.9 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 9.8 assists. Sometimes the box score stats tell the story.
Luka has kicked into gear in the most important part of the season, carrying Dallas out of the play-in tournament. He doesn’t care if you contest his shot as much as humanly possible without blocking it; in fact, he invites it. His stepback three is going up regardless and it’s going in a lot of the time. He shoots 10 threes a game and makes 38 percent of them.
Like Jokic, he digests complex coverages instantly and picks them apart. He leads the league in both isolation possessions and pick-and-roll possessions. There’s no reason for the Mavericks to do anything other than let either Doncic or Kyrie Irving dictate with the ball, and they do literally nothing else. Mostly it’s Luka. (Though the two have done a great job of enhancing each other.)
Gilgeous-Alexander does not have the pure box score stats that Luka does. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. A key part of OKC’s success is that SGA picks his spots well; he does not dominate the ball, and he empowers his teammates by driving and kicking — getting off the ball early. Often, the advantages he creates with his drives lead to a good shot for the Thunder, but only after a few more passes. SGA doesn’t always get the assist.
Of course, he still averages 30 points and six assists. Nobody can handle his stop-and-go slithery drives. He beats defenders with a quick first step, and he also burrows into them, muscling them away before stopping on a dime for soft-touch midrangers. His handle is so tight that he can weaponize behind-the-back dribbles in a crowd of handsy defenders, using them to get separation.
He rarely turns the ball over despite constantly operating in a crowd. His relentless drives are the engine for OKC’s elite offense; give him any sort of slight advantage, perhaps by having a slick-shooting guard screen for him, and he will glide into the lane, hiding the ball and softly laying it up with one hand. He is a joy to watch.
His defense is well ahead of Doncic’s. Gilgeous-Alexander is the preeminent expert in stealing the ball from the opponent and unleashing fast breaks. If his man has the ball, SGA’s gangly arms are reaching into his handle, trying to coax a mistake. Players get off the ball to avoid being cleanly swiped.
SGA is mostly positioned in the passing lanes, digging into drivers and intercepting passes. If you try to post him up, good luck; he is stealing the entry pass and there is nothing you can do.
The final spot, for me, came down to Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brunson. Brunson is everything for the Knicks — their offensive lifeline, and heliocentric creator. But Tatum is the leader for the juggernaut Celtics, which is one of the best regular season teams the NBA has ever seen. Tatum’s also better defensively. He deserves it.
Honorable mentions: Jalen Brunson
Defensive Player of the Year
Rudy Gobert (Minnesota Timberwolves)
Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio Spurs)
Herb Jones (New Orleans Pelicans)
Wemby is amazing. He accumulates blocked shots more than most players accumulate assists. His arms are ridiculous and opponents get spooked when they see him. I get it.
But Gobert is fear-inducing, too. The Wolves are two points better than the second-best defense in the NBA, and Gobert’s patrolling of the paint is the biggest reason. They’re one of the best teams in the league at keeping teams away from the rim, both in terms of shot frequency and field goal percentage.
When Gobert is on the court, teams attempt a shot at the rim just 25 percent of the time, compared to 30 percent when he’s off.
Like he was in his best Utah years, he is a drop coverage menace, requiring little help from his teammates when guys try to drive at him. Opponents shoot just 51.8 percent when Gobert contests their shot at the rim, one of the best numbers in the league.
His ability to hold up by himself allows the Wolves to stick to their matchups on the perimeter — sealing off advantages that most teams concede. Gobert can guard the league’s best players on an island. Against the Thunder, for example, Minnesota would let Gobert handle Gilgeous-Alexander in the midrange, with SGA’s defender peeling away to take Chet Holmgren on the perimeter. Not many centers can handle that.
As good as Wembanyama is, it matters that the Spurs are 20-60 and 22nd in defense. Obviously, Wemby is far from the culprit. But major awards value players who drive winning at the highest level. The Wolves have a historically great defense and the Spurs haven’t played meaningful basketball in months.
With that said, Wemby is an exception to all rules, and he will be for the rest of his career. He does stuff that nobody else can do. He envelops drives just by having long arms and impeccable timing on blocked shots. His closeouts seem impossible; a guy has an open shot, except here comes this alien who is also a gazelle and is somehow creating his own personal eclipse of the basket.
The Spurs are seven points better defensively per 100 possessions with Wemby out there. His teammates are mostly quite bad at defense (and, uh, offense) and make mistakes all over the place.
Wemby is hurt by the first 20 or so games in which he played power forward next to Zach Collins, muting his defensive influence. He also is still figuring out how to best weaponize his impossible abilities. Sometimes he recklessly overhelps, double-teaming somebody for no reason and opening gaps.
He makes up for it by blocking shots that statistical tracking systems classify as “open.”
I wrote about Jones in my All-Defense teams. He is excellent.
Honorable mentions: Bam Adebayo, Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis
Sixth Man of the Year
Naz Reid (Minnesota Timberwolves)
Malik Monk (Sacramento Kings)
Bogdan Bogdanovic (Atlanta Hawks)
Two factors matter a lot to me in the Sixth Man discussion: propping up bench units without the team’s primary option(s), and adeptly playing with a team’s starters, either as an injury replacement or as a closing option.
Reid is the best candidate. The story with him, of course, is going to be how well he’s filled in for Karl-Anthony Towns, keeping Minnesota in the race for the top seed in the Western Conference. He’s been an admirable Towns facsimile, popping for threes and rolling downhill against closeouts.
The defense might be more impressive. Lineups with Gobert and Reid in the front court, and without KAT, have an absurd 103 defensive rating. The KAT-Gobert pairing, with Reid on the bench, has a defensive rating of 112.
Per NBA.com’s lineups tool: Reid and Gobert have the best defensive rating of any pairing of two teammates who’ve played at least 800 minutes together.
Monk is a great spark plug for Sacramento, though a late-season slump and now injury hurt his case. His pick-and-roll with Domantas Sabonis is deadly. With that said, the Kings have been drawing dead for a while now when De’Aaron Fox rests, and the Monk-Sabonis combo struggled to offset that.
Bogdanovic launches threes with abandon for the Hawks, and converts 37 percent of them. He leads the league in points per game off the bench. The Hawks have been way better with him on the court all season. They’re plus-two per 100 possessions when he’s out there, and minus-eight when he’s not. It’s dramatic.
Honorable mentions: Norm Powell, Caris LeVert, Bobby Portis, TJ McConnell
Rookie of the Year
Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio Spurs)
Chet Holmgren (OKC Thunder)
Brandon Miller (Charlotte Hornets)
I covered the rookies, and Miller in particular, in my All-Rookie team article.
Wembanyama has taken this award and ran with it. His defense, as mentioned, is generational. Offensively, he’s carrying this porous Spurs team. Since the All-Star break, he’s averaging 23 points, 12 rebounds, and five assists. He looks more and more comfortable darting passes around the court, hitting cutters and picking apart double teams.
He’s shown growth with his three-point shot, and gone through hot stretches, though his percentage remains low (32 percent). He’s already one of the league’s better isolation scorers; when the Spurs shoot directly from a Wemby iso, they score 1.07 points per possession — 25th out of 117 qualifying players.
Obviously, San Antonio has struggled. But the Spurs have played 800 minutes with Wembanyama, Devin Vassell, and Tre Jones (their three best players) on the court, and they have a plus-10 net rating in those minutes. That’s promising!
Holmgren is key to OKC’s success. He’s incredibly polished for a rookie. (Of course, he does have the advantage of being in the NBA last year while injured.) His shooting opens the floor for OKC’s drives, and his rim protection has been the biggest reason for their top five defense. He’s getting better at converting on drives when teams run him off the line.
Honorable mentions: Jaime Jaquez, Cason Wallace
Most Improved Player
Coby White (Chicago Bulls)
Tyrese Maxey (Philadelphia 76ers)
Jonathan Kuminga (Golden State Warriors)
White is the type of candidate that this award is made for. In his fifth season, he’s completely changed the trajectory of his career. He averaged nine points last season in 23 minutes per game, then averaged 19 in 36 this season.
His three-point shooting has opened up his game; he launches seven threes a game and makes 37 percent of them. Teams honor his shot as he flies into pick-and-rolls, opening up pocket passes and drives. White, partially as a result of Zach LaVine’s injury issues, is now one of the league’s highest-volume pick-and-roll ball-handlers.
Maxey has taken on a ton of offensive workload this season in Philly. After the departure of James Harden, he took on the point guard sidekick role with Joel Embiid and formed a deadly two-man game. When Embiid went down, Maxey had to do everything, and he managed things pretty well. He’s averaging 25 per game a season after averaging 20.
Kuminga became a high-level starter midseason. Amid constant drama in Golden State, Kuminga transformed into an essential piece, going from a fringe bench player to, at times, the Warriors’ second-leading scorer. For the season, he’s at 16 points per game, often scoring from bruising drives that serve as a nice complement to Golden State’s Splash Brothers offense.
He is a big reason that the Warriors’ lineups with Draymond Green at center have worked so well. The Warriors are plus-12 per 100 possessions in nearly 600 minutes with Stephen Curry, Kuminga, and Green playing together.
OKC’s Jalen Williams is a contender here too, but he’s a second-year player. To me, second-year players almost always improve. Either he should win the whole thing, or he shouldn’t be in contention as a second-year player, compared to mid-career guys who took a leap. I went with the latter.
Honorable mentions: Jalen Johnson, Miles McBride, Isaiah Hartenstein, Duncan Robinson, Jalen Suggs, Aaron Nesmith, Deni Avdija, Peyton Watson, Derrick Jones Jr., Rui Hachimura
Coach of the Year
Mark Daigneault (OKC Thunder)
Jamahl Mosley (Orlando Magic)
Joe Mazzulla (Boston Celtics)
Good luck with this award — as usual, there are a ton of great candidates.
Daigneault runs the most unique offense in the league, and teams have not figured out how to stop it. He gets the most out of his young stars and his role players. He varies his rotations while still getting buy-in from everybody — and is constantly testing out new combinations. OKC plays in-sync, sophisticated defense despite being mostly under the age of 25. They have the best vibes of any team I can remember.
You can’t possibly give Daigneault enough credit.
Even still, Mosley and Mazzulla are very strong contenders. Mosley is getting the best out of a young Orlando team, especially defensively — they play hard every night, and they run great coverages. Their offense isn’t great, but Mosley has an underrated playbook of actions that free Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner off the ball.
Mazzulla might be the most interesting tactical coach in the NBA. He’s constantly up to something with his collection of All-Star caliber players, messing with defensive matchups and switching around his schemes. The Celtics have been dominant.
Honorable mentions: Ime Udoka, Mike Malone, Chris Finch, Willie Green, Jason Kidd, Tom Thibodeau, Taylor Jenkins
All-NBA First Team
Luka Doncic (Dallas Mavericks)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City Thunder)
Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics)
Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks)
Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets)
All-NBA Second Team
Jalen Brunson (New York Knicks)
Anthony Edwards (Minnesota Timberwolves)
Kevin Durant (Phoenix Suns)
Kawhi Leonard (LA Clippers)
Anthony Davis (LA Lakers)
All-NBA Third Team
Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors)
Devin Booker (Phoenix Suns)
De’Aaron Fox (Sacramento Kings)
LeBron James (LA Lakers)
Zion Williamson (New Orleans Pelicans)
Honorable mentions: Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown, Paul George, Rudy Gobert, Domantas Sabonis, Jalen Williams, Tyrese Haliburton, Paolo Banchero, DeMar DeRozan