My Officially Unofficial NBA Awards Votes: SGA for MVP

Well, folks... here we are. It's essentially the end of the regular season, which means it's finally time to get to awards picks. Once again, we’re breaking each of the awards down by category, starting today with the individual awards and finishing up on Friday with the All-NBA, All-Defense, and All-Rookie teams.

As usual, my votes are officially unofficial. In other words: I don't have an actual ballot. But given the time and resources I put into the covering the league and the fact that you have been following along with me throughout the season, I’m going to lay out how I would have voted, if I’d been afforded a vote.

Lastly, before we begin, it is — as always — important to remember that if I didn’t vote for your favorite player (or elected to place him lower on the ballot than you would have), it’s not because I hate and/or didn’t watch your favorite team. It’s because I hate you, personally.

Without further ado…

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Most Valuable Player

1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
2. Nikola Jokic
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo
4. Jayson Tatum
5. Stephen Curry

As a reminder, here's how I decide my MVP vote:

The MVP criteria I like to use is admittedly somewhat amorphous. I try to identify “the player who made the greatest individual contribution to his team’s ability to win basketball games during the regular season.”

I specifically say “greatest” rather than merely “best” or “most important” because I think it allows for the combination of those things, while also affording you the opportunity to consider differences in playing time, which I do think should matter. If two players played at roughly the same level but one played 500 more minutes, the one with the larger minute load almost certainly made a greater contribution.

I also try not to reward or penalize players for the relative quality of their teammates, and I try not to live in alternate realities where the reasoning depends on counterfactuals that are both unprovable and unfalsifiable. I take the season as it actually happened and base my conclusions on the actual facts.

It's a two-man race for the top spot, as we know.

It takes something truly special to overcome an historic Nikola Jokic season, which is exactly what he's put forth. In a career full of outragously-productive seasons, this has been Joker's most prolific yet: 30.0 points, 12.8 rebounds, and 10.2 assists per game. He's even added 2.5 stocks (steals plus blocks) a night. He's shot 63% on twos and 41.5% from three. His 29.9% usage rate is at its highest point in three years, and his true-shooting mark is actually up from a year ago, giving him the second-best figure of his career. Even his assist rate is up from last year, while his turnover rate is down. He won the MVP last season, and he's been better — at least offensively — this year.

And yet, I keep finding myself wanting when searching for reasons he should check in ahead of SGA, who is — and I do not use this term lightly — doing Michael Jordan shit this year.

Only two other players have ever averaged at least 32 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, and 1.5 steals per game, as Gilgeous-Alexander has this year: Jordan twice, and James Harden twice. Throw in the additional requirement of a block per game and nobody has ever accomplished what Shai has this season. Among that group, by the way, SGA has recorded the highest effective field-goal percentage and the highest true-shooting percentage in one of those seasons, which is truly insane when you think about to whom he is being compared.

He's done it while averaging 2.5 fewer minutes per game than either MJ or Harden did in any of those seasons, and he's done it while playing for a near-70-win juggernaut that absolutely annihilates all comers (plus-16.1 points per 100 possessions) whenever he is anywhere close to the floor and whose offense completely falls apart the second he moves an inch toward the bench. (The latter is also true of Jokic, obviously.)

Then there's the other end of the floor, where each player often gets attacked by the opposing team. The difference is that Jokic gets attacked defensively because he has real weaknesses that can be exploited, while Shai gets attacked defensively because nobody on the Thunder has real weaknesses and teams want to at least try to tire him out so he can't be as effective on the other end.

This has been a bad defensive season for Jokic, at least in comparison to where he's been during his recent MVP runs. His rim protection took a major step backward and he's been more of a turnstile when defending ball screens than he has been in years. I don't personally buy the argument that SGA is one of the very best defenders in the NBA, but he's a very good one — and far better relative to his position than Jokic is at his, not least because he is so good at getting his hands on the ball. The gap between them is pretty significant.

Add it all together and I find it difficult not to land in Gilgeous-Alexander's corner.

I'd be willing to hear arguments for Tatum over Giannis for the third spot on the list, and they'd largely center around the fact that Tatum has played a lot more minutes. That's important to me. Per minute, Giannis has been the better player, and probably more central to his team's success. But Tatum has played almost 400 additional minutes. That's a lot of minutes.

Has Giannis been overwhelmingly good enough to account for that gap? I think he has. He's basically averaging 31-12-6 while collecting over 2 stocks per game. He is a physical force unlike any in the league, and when he is rolling he is truly impossible to deal with on any level. This hasn't been his best defensive season, but he's still a great defender — and because of his role, probably still a more impactful one than Tatum, who is obviously no slouch himself on that end of the floor.

I do want to make sure not to short-change Tatum himself, though. It's pretty absurd to think there could be a basketball player that has no real weaknesses, but I think he qualifies as such. He's somewhere between good and great at everything. Truly. And even more this year than last, he is the engine driving the Celtics' success — it was less of a utilitarian operation than last year, when everyone proactively sacrificed individual responsibility and statistics in pursuit of the title they eventually claimed. With all the injuries they had to weather this season and with Jaylen Brown not having his best year, the C's leaned on Tatum a bit harder. And he was up to the task in every way imaginable. It's only by virtue of several historic seasons that he doesn't end up inside the top three for me.

I ended up changing the final spot my ballot from the one I submitted for Tim Bontemps' final straw poll, in which I picked Donovan Mitchell. I had a really tough time narrowing it down and sort of defaulted to a Cavs representative because it's not like Bontemps gives us all two weeks to do our research and decide. I don't typically operate that way, though, and am not going to stick with that pick here just because I didn't follow my normal process when firing off a quick text message response. (I also wasn't 100% sure he was the best option on the Cavs, anyway.) I went through the full process and came out on the other side with a different opinion.

I was deciding in the end between Mitchell, Curry, and Jalen Brunson, who I did not think would qualify for the minimum games played requirement but now looks like he will. (He has to play in three of the Knicks' four games this week to do so.) The three players have remarkably similar candidacies, each centered on their offensive contributions. Their production on a per-36-minutes basis was pretty close to identical, when you take a look at it, and they've all played just about the same number of total minutes.

Mitchell is obviously playing in the best team and offense, while Brunson is perhaps most directly responsible for his team's offensive success. But I just think Curry very slightly out-performed them on offense, and none was good enough defensively to create a wide gap that Curry had to make up. Given that he both shot 45-40-93, once again leading the NBA in threes made and attempted per game; and that he carried his largest playmaking burden in years, with a 31.4% assist rate that is its highest since the 2015-16 season (excluding the 2019-20 campaign where he only played five games), I felt obliged to give him the final nod.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Jalen Brunson, Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, LeBron James, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley
Preseason Prediction: Luka Doncic

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Defensive Player of the Year

1. Evan Mobley
2. Dyson Daniels
3. Jalen Williams

I struggled with this award maybe more than any other. It really felt like there were 8-10 guys who could realistically deserve to be on the ballot, but none of them felt like slam-dunk, no-doubt choices for even the top-three, let alone the No. 1 spot. Alas, you do have to narrow things down eventually, and this is where I landed.

Mobley's versatility as both a big-man defender and big-wing defender is rare. There aren't many guys can just as readily guard a center and a perimeter creator. He did good work defending both ends of ball screens this season, and a fantastic job as a team/help defender. I think this was has best season to date in that latter area, and that helped nudge him over the top for me in the end. (According to Second Spectrum, there are 22 players that provided help on at least 750 drives this season, and he was the most effective among them in terms of points allowed per direct drive against his help.)

Daniels is just an outrageous individual defender and playmaker. As I wrote last week, "I can't remember who exactly it was, but someone on Twitter told me last year that the best perimeter defender on the Pelicans was not Herb Jones, but Daniels. I immediately dismissed it, and I'd just like to say that I was wrong to do so. Not because I was wrong about how great a defender Jones is — but because Daniels is just that good." His stock production is almost literally unbelievable. The distance between Daniels and the next-closest players on the steals and deflections lists is unfathomable. And all that is before we get to things like deterring drives, preventing easy shot attempts, and the difficulty of the matchups he's been tasked with taking on. He'd certainly be a worthy winner, if you decided to go in that direction.

I'm not 10000% sure Williams is the best defender on his own team. But I'm pretty damn sure he was the best among them this year. The guy is so strong, so long, so versatile. He filled in for several weeks as a center (while Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein were both injured) despite standing just 6-foot-6 and the Thunder defense did not drop off at all. He obviously benefits from the presences of Holmgren, Hartenstein, SGA, Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, and even Cason Wallace, but the way he smothers wings and bigs alike and works as a team defender is just special. Were this award just "who is the best at guarding the man standing right in front of him," I might have Dort here; but I think Williams has a bit more overall responsibility due to his role in the scheme, and so he gets the nod for the third spot.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Lu Dort, Draymond Green, Jaren Jackson Jr., Amen Thompson, Ivica Zubac
Preseason Prediction: Victor Wembanyama

Rookie of the Year

1. Jaylen Wells
2. Stephon Castle
3. Zaccharie Risacher

I honestly don't feel that great about any of these votes. There's no slam-dunk pick like there was last year, or in a lot of years. In many ways it reminds me of the year Malcolm Brogdon won. Joel Embiid was the best rookie, but he just didn't play a lot. Jared McCain was pretty clearly the best rookie this year, but he's been out since December. He played fewer than 600 minutes this season.

If Wells hadn't had a downturn in his three-point shooting over the second half of the year, I'd feel more solid about this vote. Despite that downturn, though, I think he has indeed been the best rookie who played enough to be in consideration for the award. As I wrote in the best newcomers post from last week:

Wells has been pretty unequivocally the best value pick in the draft. The Grizz got this guy at the top of the second round and he's going to finish in the top three of Rookie of the Year voting. He might even win the award outright.

It would be a kind of Malcolm Brogdon-style win because there hasn't really been a breakout rookie star, but Wells' two-way contributions to a playoff-bound team have been incredibly important. He's getting up a ton of threes as a complementary offensive player, and he's been challenged with premier defensive assignments all season and passed the test with flying colors.

According to BBall-Index, Wells has taken on the sixth-toughest defensive matchups of any player in all of basketball. He's also spent the fifth-largest share of his possessions defending "Tier 1" usage rate players. Only Daniels, Andrew Nembhard, Lu Dort, and Jaden McDaniels have done so more often. To earn that kind of trust from a coach (even one who eventually got fired) in the first year of your career is really impressive. And he's done it on what for most of the season was a top-10 defensive team.

He unfortunately broke his wrist in that scary fall last night, but he had a really good season for a good team.

I had a tougher time separating my second- and third-place finishers from the next few guys on the list than I did settling on Wells at No. 1. Castle has been extremely inefficient for most of the season, as well as for the season as a whole. The same goes for Risacher, albeit to a lesser extent. I went with the former over the latter because I think the highs have been higher and more indicative of a true impact player, even if the lows were similar.

That said, you could easily swap these two and I'd have no real issue with that order of finish. You could even swap either or both of them for one of the honorable mentions listed below and I'd have no problem with that, either. I don't feel like I'm splitting hairs between equally good options as much as I feel like I'm searching for a reason to put any of these guys on the ballot at all. It's just been that kind of year.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Donovan Clingan, Zach Edey, Kel'el Ware
Preseason Prediction: Zach Edey

Sixth Man of the Year

1. Malik Beasley
2. Payton Pritchard
3. De'Andre Hunter

Much in the same way I ultimately decided this award last year, I came down on the side of Beasley here due to his centrality to the Pistons' success. Once Jaden Ivey went down, he became Detroit's clear-cut No. 2 scorer and also its only high-level shooting threat, something the Pistons desperately needed around Cade Cunningham. This guy hit more than 300 threes — becoming the fifth player ever to do so — while coming off the bench. It's one of the greatest shooting seasons of all time, considering both volume and accuracy.

Pritchard was similarly incredible this season. He shot just as well as Beasley from deep on close to the same amount of volume (10 threes attempted per 36 minutes as opposed to 12 per 36), and he brought more to the table as a distributor and defender. But his contributions, while obviously important, were more ancillary to Boston's recipe for success than are Beasley's to Detroit's. This is a ridiculously close call, and that factor is enough to tip the scales.

I thought long and hard about Hunter's teammate, Ty Jerome, for the third spot. It's hard to give a player who may or may not be the best bench guy on his own team, and Sixth Man of the Year vote. But Jerome's lack of minutes (I'm honestly not even 100% sure he qualifies for end-of-season awards) compared with the other candidates for this award made it easier to stomach a vote for Hunter, whose contributions in Atlanta were wildly important in any degree of success the Hawks had, even if they were a bit less central once he got to Cleveland. (His outrageous shooting with the Cavs does help make up for that fact.)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Santi Aldama, Ty Jerome, Isaiah Joe
Preseason Prediction: Malik Monk

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Most Improved Player

1. Dyson Daniels
2. Cade Cunningham
3. Christian Braun

I feel very similarly about this award to the way I did last year, when I went with Jalen Suggs ahead of Jalen Brunson:

I almost went with Brunson for Most Improved. But then I remembered that I’m deciding on the player who improved the most — not the player whose improvement was most important. And I think Suggs improved to a slightly greater degree than did Brunson. Elevating from borderline All-Star and All-NBA to MVP candidate is a much more impactful jump than the one from “sort of a rotation player if you squint” to All-Defense lock and knockdown shooter. But the latter jump is a larger one, I think, and that’s why I went with Suggs. 

Daniels was barely a rotation player last season. This year he is an All-Defense lock and arguably the Defensive Player of the Year, who also showed great improvement as a shooter and distributor while taking on a significantly larger role in the offense. Cunningham is a good deal better than he was a year ago, and his rise to arguable All-NBA player was obviously crucial to the Pistons' dramatically exceeding expectations (more on that in a second). But the gap between his 2023-24 and 2024-25 performance is not as large as it is for Daniels, I don't think.

Braun was one of the things I got most wrong this season:

Braun has been fantastic in just about every area of the game, and significantly better than KCP has been in Orlando.

The shooting numbers from last season have carried over, as he’s knocked down 38.7% of his threes (albeit on only 2.8 attempts per game). Braun has also done a better job of converting his self-created opportunities, making 55.1% of his shots after two or more dribbles, compared with just 40.8% last season and 49.5% as a rookie.

He's finished really well at the rim (74.4%), and gotten there more often (42.7% of his shot attempts) as he's developed the same type of cutting chemistry with Jokic that everyone else in the starting lineup has. Plus, Jokic-Braun dribble hand-offs have actually been more efficient this season than Jokic-Murray hand-offs (though obviously on significantly less volume), per Second Spectrum.

Braun has also acquitted himself nicely on the defensive end of the floor. He’s graded out as a positive defender in catch-all individual metrics like D-LEBRON (BBall-Index), Defensive RAPTOR (), and Defensive EPM (Dunks and Threes). He’s done particularly good work navigating screens on and off the ball, and he’s done a decent enough job getting his hands into passing lanes.

In short, he’s been what the Nuggets expected him to be, and what I didn’t think he would be.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Santi Aldama, Deni Avdija, Tyler Herro, Evan Mobley, Norm Powell, Amen Thompson, Ausar Thompson, Ivica Zubac
Preseason Prediction: Jalen Williams

Coach of the Year

1. Kenny Atkinson
2. J.B. Bickerstaff
3. Mark Daigneault

I had Atkinson written in pen for the No. 1 spot for almost the entire season. The Pistons' surge from the play-in to the playoffs proper gave me some pause on that, and over the last few weeks I gave serious consideration to bumping Bickerstaff up.

Now that I come down to it, I think a vote for Bickerstaff feels more results-relative-to-expectations-based than it does reflective of the actual coaching job each coach did this season. Bickerstaff's ability to get the best out of meh-ish personnel on defense has been highly impressive, but the centrality of Atkinson's offensive innovations to Cleveland's success wins the day for me. Cleveland has essentially the same personnel as last season, and yet it went from 18th in offensive rating to not just first, but one of the 15 best offenses of all time when adjusted for era. Bickerstaff's coaching certainly helped Detroit in a major way this season, but a big part of the Pistons exceeding expectations can also be attributed to Cade Cunningham's improvement and the acquisitions of Malik Beasley (more on him later), Tobias Harris, and Tim Hardaway Jr., among others.

The results-relative-to-expectations approach to this award is a fine one, but I try to zero in on the actual contribution of the coach to the results, rather than merely attributing the entirety of the result to the coach. And that leads me to Atkinson.

I considered five different coaches for the final spot on this ballot, but ultimately went with Daigneault not just because the Thunder are going to win damn near 70 games, but because of things like his rotation management and willingness to adjust his approach to fit a specific opponent. The roster he's been afforded obviously plays a big role in that, but he did as good a job maximizing the talent on hand as anybody in the league this season.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Ty Lue, Joe Mazzulla, J.J. Redick, Ime Udoka
Preseason Prediction: Mike Budenholzer (whoops!)

Executive of the Year

1. Rob Pelinka
2. Sam Presti
3. Koby Altman

The Luka Doncic trade is possibly the single-best transaction of my time covering the NBA. It's certainly the best in-season transaction, and it's not particularly close. That move, on its own, is easily enough to merit the EOY award for Pelinka. I don't even have to get into things like Dorian Finney-Smith or Jordan Goodwin or hiring J.J. Redick. I'm not sure there's anything that any other executive could have done to surpass him on this list.

That's exemplified by Presti's placement at No. 2 on the list. The Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso acquisitions were each master strokes to the point that the Thunder built one of the best defenses in the history of American professional basketball, and those moves also diversified their offense in extremely important ways. Were it not for the Luka deal, they might be the two most important roster moves in the championship picture. (As it is, they might be second and third.)

Altman hired Atkinson, who became my Coach of the Year. The Ty Jerome signing worked out about as well as humanly possible, and the De'Andre Hunter trade did as well. In a crowded third-place field, the volume of extremely-impactful moves put Altman over the top.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical by last name): Mike Dunleavy Jr., Lawrence Frank, Trajan Langdon