2025-26 Q3 NBA Awards

Featuring a surprising new name at MVP

It’s time for our last set of 2025-26 NBA quarterly awards!

For this batch, I’m only looking at games played from January 13th to February 27th. As always, these aren’t predictions of the real end-of-year winners; I’m only considering performance within these quarterly confines except for where additional context is necessary.

To qualify for the official awards, players have to play in 65 games, approximately 79.3% of the full 82-game season. I use the same threshold for quarterly awards for consistency.

Rookie of the Quarter

Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

Player I’m Talking About Instead

Dylan Harper, San Antonio Spurs

With Cooper Flagg not qualifying for quarterly awards, Knueppel is the easy choice (and he might’ve won anyway; the point is, I didn’t have to think about it!). But I’ve talked about Knueppel plenty recently, so I wanted instead to highlight a rookie I haven’t dug into yet: Dylan Harper.

Harper is in a unique position. He was the near-consensus choice as the number-two pick in this year’s draft behind Flagg, but he was drafted by a team in San Antonio that A) is really good, something not usually true of teams picking second, and B) already has a young guy with similar strengths and weaknesses in Stephon Castle.

Most number-two picks would be getting the ball constantly and encouraged to see what they can do. Harper, on the other hand, is a role player coming off the bench who is trying to find himself while fitting in. That’s a hard balance for any rookie to strike, much less one who turns 20 in a couple of days.

Harper’s role is further muddled by playing off the ball more than he ever has. His 3.8 assists per game won’t blow anyone away, but he’s doing that as the second or third ballhandling option at any given time.

The three-pointer is broken right now, although he’s at least willing to take it. But Harper is getting more than half of his shots at the rim. There are times he seems bored at the prospect of an easy layup and decides to put the game on hard mode instead. Watch his hands here as he surprises Max Christie:

Harper is already an advanced ballhandler and boasts NBA-ready pace and push. He’s patient but bursty. While Harper’s perimeter shot is horrific, his trademark might be the TJ McConnell-esque six-foot jump shot he uses instead of a floater. These sorts of pogo-stick jumpers are a dying breed in the NBA:

Defensively, Harper is making plenty of rookie mistakes, but he’s already a net positive on that end with a strong upward trajectory.

While his role coming off the bench for a good team constrains Harper’s raw counting stats, there’s a lot to like about what he’s been doing.

Most Improved Player of the Quarter

Jarrett Allen, Cleveland Cavaliers

As a reminder, my MIPotQ is strictly about how a player has improved from Q2 of this year to Q3; I’m not comparing them to their play last season. A lot of quarterly MIP candidates will pop thanks purely to shooting luck and/or increased opportunity, but I try to take that into account while looking for players who really do look like they have turned a new leaf in the last 20ish games.

So while there are plenty of players who have made bigger leaps in quarter-over-quarter scoring, I just keep coming back to the same guy: Jarrett Allen.

Allen had been looking dangerously creaky for a 27-year-old. It wasn’t just a decline in his numbers; he was a step slow on both ends, and his vertical juice was in short supply. (For what it’s worth, coach Kenny Atkinson blames Allen’s offseason wedding for a lack of early-season conditioning. Where’s the love, Kenny?)

But Allen found his groove, and it’s not just from High School Musical.

Much has been made of the James Harden/Allen connection, which has sparked immediately. Darius Garland is an elite pick-and-roll player; Harden is an all-time great.

In seven games with the new guy, Allen has averaged 20 points and 11 rebounds while shooting 77% from the floor. Harden’s presence, combined with a bigger opportunity when Evan Mobley missed a handful of games, clearly energized the big man.

And that offensive improvement bled over to his defense. Allen averaged twice as many blocks per game in Q3 (1.2) as in Q2 (0.6). He also allowed the third-lowest FG% at the rim in the entire league, a paltry 45.3%.

Lest you think that’s all thanks to Harden or Mobley’s absence, I’d remind you that Allen actually dropped 40 points against Portland a few days before the Bearded One joined the team, 27 in a Harden-less game a few days ago, and 25 last night without Harden and with Mobley.

No, he probably won’t average 18 points per game when the team is fully healthy, as he did this quarter. But he’s been so much better that he earned a new nickname. “Black History Month Jarrett Allen” helped carry the team through a weird February to arguably its best month yet. He has once again become a fundamental part of the team’s success on both sides.

Perimeter Defensive Player of the Quarter