2023-24 NBA Awards, Part 1: DPOY, COY, MIP, and ROY

In other words, the easy-ish ones

It’s officially awards season! I’ve already started with my All-Rookie and All-Defensive Teams, but now we get into the trophies. We’ll begin with the 2023-24 NBA Defensive Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, Most Improved Player, and Rookie of the Year.

Coincidentally, these are also the easy ones (at least this season).

Part II is coming soon with the remainder, including MVP. No more preamble; we’ve got enough to talk about.

Defensive Player of the Year

1. Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves

2. Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

3. Alex Caruso, Chicago Bulls

Gobert will be the Defensive Player of the Year for the fourth time this year, and the voting won’t be close.

Wembanyama mounted a hell of a case over the last two-thirds of the season and might have surpassed Gobert as a defender at this point. There are still times when you see Wembanyama wrong-footed in the pick-and-roll. Other times, he fails to help when he should. But he’s so long, so coordinated, so instinctual that it simply doesn’t matter.

Players are already terrified of him lurking in the paint, even when he’s nowhere nearby. In fact, he’s such a deterrent that it can backfire:

Whoops!

The Spurs recover 68% of Wemby’s league-leading 3.5 blocks per game, the highest percentage of leading shotblockers. Those 3.5 blocks are more than second-place Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo combined. He’s also adding 1.3 steals per game, too.

If you want graduate-degree alphabet soup metrics, Wemby’s third in DBPM, first in eRAPTOR, fourth in D-EPM, seventh in D-DPM, and first in D-LEBRON. All of those silly-sounding acronyms attempt to capture defensive value differently, and all have flaws. But if they also all say the same thing, they’re probably on to something.

While the Spurs’ defense is terrible overall, that’s not Wemby’s fault: San Antonio is a well above-average defense when he’s on the court.

I went longer on Wemby’s DPOY case a few weeks ago, and it’s only gotten stronger since. Frankly, the statistics make a very compelling case that Wemby is the Defensive Player of the Year, although my ocular orbs can’t help but notice how he could be even better.

Wembanyama might need a new wing of his house for the defensive trophies he will collect over the next decade. This feels like the last hurrah for other defenders.

Gobert, of course, is the anchor of the league’s best defense by a metric mile. When he’s in a defensive stance, arms everywhere, legs splayed wide, it’s hard not to see some nightmarish, seven-foot spider. No wonder fewer than 30% of opponent shots are at the rim when he’s playing — I wouldn’t want to go near that, either.

Gobert only allows 48.3% of the few rim attempts he faces to go in, too, a league-leading mark and nearly 15% lower than expected. Not even Wembanyama puts a forcefield on the basket like Gobert. Gobert’s right around the rookie in all the advanced metrics, too.

Something that’s harder to quantify: Gobert puts a lot of work into the small things that make a defense tick. He works his butt off and seldom makes an error. He’s loud and an excellent communicator. He always keeps his arms out in a proper defensive stance. Have you tried holding your arms out? It gets exhausting after two minutes!

This play from early in the season has never left my mind. Watch as Gobert directs teammate Kyle Anderson, cuts off a Chris Paul drive after Mike Conley is tripped up on a screen, and sprints out for a game-saving block on a corner shooter:

Gobert has been fantastic right out of the gate while Wembanyama was still warming up (and playing out of position!), and his season-long dominance makes him the winner.

Third was tough. Centers are inherently more valuable to defense than perimeter players, but at what point does value over a replacement defender matter? My next grouping of centers (Bam Adebayo, Anthony Davis, Brook Lopez) is fantastic but a tier below my top two guys.

So, I went with Alex Caruso for third place. I’m not a huge believer in on/off stats, but the Bulls are an elite defense every single season when Caruso is on the floor and execrable when he rests (a pattern that was true in Los Angeles, too). And he’s spent most of his Bulls tenure propping up lineups featuring Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic, who range from mediocre to “Oh god, my eyes!” on the defensive end. He’s also at the top of the advanced metrics leaderboards every year.

Caruso disrupts the rhythm of opposing offenses like an irregular metronome. He’s the league’s best at skittering around screens, and few are better at help defense. He’s strong enough to battle forwards and quick enough to corral point guards. His hands are everywhere. Naturally, he leads the league in deflections.

One of the reasons that the best rim protectors are so important is that they can anchor a functional defense no matter who surrounds them, as we’ve seen with Gobert in Utah and Wembanyama this year. It’s much rarer to see that effect with perimeter players, but Caruso is the exception that proves the rule.

Coach of the Year

1. Adrian Griffin Mark Daigneault, Oklahoma City Thunder

2. Jamahl Mosley, Orlando Magic

3. (Tie) Chris Finch, Minnesota Timberwolves/Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics

Coach of the Year is often the hardest award to give out, and it typically goes to one of two archetypes: someone whose team is trouncing the competition or someone far outperforming expectations.

Mark Daigneault fills both criteria. He’s taken the second-youngest team in the league to the top of the Western Conference with a unique offense and inventive playcalls, and I suspect he’ll be an easy winner.

Daigneault gets the most out of each of his guys’ talents, whether it’s drawing up wacky inbounds plays to take advantage of Josh Giddey’s passing, running the famous ghost screens with Isaiah Joe and other shooters to spring Shai Gilgeous-Alexander open, or trusting the beanpole rookie Holmgren to defend in the post without help.

Head coaches probably get too much credit for player development, something that’s more often assigned to staff further down the pecking order. Still, it’s worth noting that every rotation player on the Thunder except Joe and SGA is home-grown (and both of those players blossomed in OKC).

We aren’t really capable of judging coaching from the outside. We only have the barest scraps of unreliable intel on how coaches handle mercurial personalities, how much of the playcalling responsibilities lie with them instead of assistants, and what sort of motivator they are. We’re judging icebergs solely by what lies above the water. But Daigneault was my runner-up for this award last year, and he’s the clear winner this season.

Second place belongs to Jamahl Mosley. We will learn a lot about Mosley and his ability to make playoff adjustments in just a few short weeks, but the Orlando Magic have grown tremendously this season. If you had the Magic in contention for the second seed before the season started, stop lying.

Orlando has a flawed roster with minimal shooting whose best- and second-best players are 21 and 22. Mosley has gotten some of the team’s most potent offensive weapons to accept smaller roles without a word of complaint. The players universally seem to love and respect him, including Paolo Banchero, the team’s superstar-in-waiting. Banchero’s improvement on defense, especially, is a massive credit to the young coach and his staff.

I couldn’t pick between Mazzulla and Finch for my last spot. Ties are a cop-out, but both deserve praise. Mazzulla has the most loaded roster we’ve seen since the Durant-Curry juggernaut, and he has lived up to expectations by running away with the best record in the league. But as I wrote in my third-quarter awards, this man is coaching coaching. The Celtics have the cleverest defenses in the league, and the offense has kept a lot of hungry mouths sated while looking more prepared to weather an off night in the playoffs. Mazzulla isn’t perfect, but he’s damn good.

I was high on the Wolves entering the season, but there were a lot of reasons to be unsure about their fate. Finch, however, steered the good ship Minnesota past numerous shoals and whirlpools. Karl-Anthony Towns gracefully accepted playing second fiddle to Anthony Edwards (a major credit to the big man, too); the KAT-Gobert pairing dominated when they played together on both sides of the ball despite fit concerns; and the team hasn’t missed a step since Towns went down with injury, staying in the fight for the first seed in the West.

The Wolves entered the season as a boom-or-bust kind of team, and it was easy to see them floundering even if you were as optimistic as I was. Finch has had this team operating close to its best-case scenario all year.

(And I joke about Adrian Griffin, but it’s not like Doc has done much better!)

Most Improved Player

1. Tyrese Maxey, Philadelphia 76ers

2. Coby White, Chicago Bulls

3. Deni Avdija, Washington Wizards

One can reasonably argue that the MIP should go to the person who has the most improvement on an absolute basis, which will almost invariably be a top pick entering his second or third year.

It’s a very literal interpretation, but it goes against what I consider to be the spirit and history of the award. Top players should be getting better at that stage. And I hate the idea of MIP being a springboard award for future superstars progressing upon their preordained path to greatness. Ja Morant winning it a few years ago was such a joke that he literally shipped the award to his teammate, Desmond Bane.

Thankfully, we don’t have any cases quite so egregious this season — Alperen Sengun is the only player in consideration who is in year three (although Jalen Johnson deserves a shoutout, too).

So, with that in mind, Deni Avdija nabbed the bottom spot on my ballot. It’s been a long rebuilding season for Washington, but Avdija’s emergence has been a bright spot. He’s played his usual strong defense on a team that’s mostly been going through the motions, but he’s also setting career highs in scoring efficiency (1.2 points per shot is well above average), three-point percentage (38%), points (14.3) and assists (3.8). He’s markedly more aggressive, particularly in transition, which has opened up the rest of his offensive game and turned him into a legitimate two-way wing.

Coby White is my second choice, and he might top many people’s ballots. He’s earned a ton more minutes this year (even when Zach LaVine was healthy), and he’s responded with both the highest volume and best efficiency of his career to date, thanks to an uptick in free throws and three-point percentage.

It’s even more impressive considering White runs far more pick-and-roll than before. He now finishes 31.8% of his possessions vs. just 17.7% last season from that action, which typically drags down a player’s efficiency (it’s far easier to score on a per-shot basis as a spot-up shooter or in transition than as the ballhandler in the pick-and-roll). Despite that (and a recent shooting slump), White is still right around league average in most efficiency metrics.

It’s hard to go from a reserve to the number-one option on some nights. White pulled it off. I’d have no problem with him snagging the award, although I dinged him slightly for falling off on defense.

But in my book, Tyrese Maxey has been the wire-to-wire leader, and he narrowly beats out White.

The trade of James Harden opened up a vacuum at guard for Philadelphia, and Maxey stepped in with aplomb. For the season, he’s averaged 25.8 points (up from 20.3 last season), 6.3 assists (up from 3.5), and 3.7 rebounds (up from 2.9) while ramping up his (still quite poor) defense.

While his remarkable efficiency last season has declined overall, that’s only because of Embiid’s absence. In the roughly half the season that Maxey has shared the court with the big man, he’s actually put up better counting stats while remaining far more efficient than the average bear:

(True shooting takes into account the value of free throws and three-pointers. The average point guard’s TS% this season is 56.6%; Maxey’s at 57.2% overall, about the same as White on higher volume.)

The better a player is, the harder it is to improve. Maxey’s ability to scale up this season compared to last year’s 20-point campaign has been impressive, even with a dip in shooting percentages while Embiid’s been hurt. The playmaking is what stands out the most. He’s learned how to leverage his quickness to create defensive panic. Once a defender leans the wrong way, he pries open the cracks for pretty passes:

Even with increased defensive attention, Maxey has improved his scoring at the rim. Maxey doesn’t rely upon an outrageous bag of English-laden trick shots, like Kyrie Irving or other below-the-rim finishers. He’s simply super-duper fast and can finish at top speed, something few in the league can do. His handle is significantly improved, and he knows when to turn that speed off and on. Nobody can stay in front of him. Even building a wall isn’t enough if he gets there faster than the bricklayers:

Most players would respond to an uptick in role with an uptick in turnovers, too. Not Maxey. His 6.8% turnover rate is the lowest of any point guard in the league, and his stinginess with the ball is an underrated point in his favor. Not too shabby for his first time playing the position full-time!

Rookie of the Year

1. Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

2. Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder

3. Brandon Miller, Charlotte Hornets

I just did my All-Rookie teams, so we’ll save some word count here. There are very clear-cut gold, silver, and bronze medalists. Wemby is among the greatest rookies we’ve seen in the modern era. Holmgren slots in as the second-most-important player on a championship contender — we haven’t seen rookies perform this well on this level of team since Ben Simmons in 2017-18 and Tim Duncan in 1997-98.

Brandon Miller is the clear-cut third choice. He’s drilling shots, playing defense, screaming at lazy teammates, and generally looking like a winner despite being on one of the league’s losingest teams.

There’s a big drop-off after those three, although Dereck Lively (who will earn a smattering of third-place votes) and Jaime Jaquez deserve a shoutout for playing big roles on playoff teams.