Third Quarter Awards for the 2024 NBA Season
From the easy (Wembanyama) to the surprising (DiVincenzo) to the impossible (MVP!), we hand out hardware
It’s time to hand out the last set of quarterly awards!
For this article, we’re counting the third quarter as the ~20 games played since Jan 18th, so the statistics cited have been pulled from that sample whenever possible.
You don’t need a lengthy introduction. Let’s do it.
Most Improved Player of the Quarter: Donte DiVincenzo, New York Knicks
My Most Improved Player of the Quarter is given to the player who improved the most from the first half of the season to the third quarter; this is not a reflection of the actual award, which looks at play this year compared to last year.
Usually, I try not to put too much weight on someone who simply plays more minutes and, therefore, puts up bigger numbers. Sometimes, though, those numbers get so big they can’t be ignored. In that spirit, I want to acknowledge The Big Ragu himself, Mr. Donte DiVincenzo.
DiVincenzo averaged 11/3/2 in his 22 minutes per game for the first 41 games of the season. But the Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, and RJ Barrett trades and injuries to OG Anunoby and Julius Randle opened up both minutes and shots for the taking, and DiVincenzo was ready to swipe them. His role started to expand in January before exploding in February.
For the third quarter, DiVincenzo averaged 21 points (!) in 35 minutes (!!), but that doesn’t tell the full story. DiVincenzo ramped up his three-point shooting to an absurd degree, hitting 39% of his 11.6 triples per game.
To put that in context, Steph Curry is averaging 12.1 triples per game for the season on 41% accuracy; Luka Doncic is second, putting up 10.2 attempts on 38% shooting. In other words, if DiVincenzo had been doing this all year, he’d be the second-best three-point shooter in the league. Nobody else is even close to that level of volume and accuracy.
Three-point shooting quality rarely holds as sample sizes get bigger. As someone starts jacking up more and more triples, the difficulty of those shots increases, which should drive down percentages. Not so in DiVincenzo’s case.
He is hunting long balls with abandon. They’re rarely bad shots, but they certainly are aggressive. Look at him shake Herb Jones (a feat in itself!) and put up a moonball that soars juuuust past Jones’ lengthy fingertips:
DiVincenzo’s playing with the confidence of a high school Mean Girl, and he’s just as ruthless. Is he pulling up for three in a 1-on-5 situation with 21 seconds on the shot clock in the third quarter? Hell yeah, he is:
The Knicks have some fascinating rotation questions to answer when everyone returns to full health.
Shoutout to Deni Avdija, who also garnered consideration for this award (along with many others). I’ve got a lot more coming on him soon, in case you’re a sicko who wants to read about the Wizards.
Perimeter Defensive Player of the Quarter: Kris Dunn, Utah Jazz
All season, I’ve broken the Defensive Player award into perimeter and interior categories. This reflects my belief that, while interior defensive players are way more important in the aggregate, perimeter guys deserve some shine, too.
(I have no idea what will happen with positionless All-Defensive teams this season, but there will be a lot of centers involved, I suspect.)
Perimeter defense, more than any other awards, is about feel and eye test. Box score metrics are inadequate, and advanced stats haven’t advanced our understanding of perimeter defense nearly as much as interior defense.
So if you want to pick Herb Jones, or Jalen Suggs, or Derrick White, or Alex Caruso (my winner last quarter), or any other number of worthy defensive options, be my guest. There’s little tangible ammo to argue with, much less to mount a winning campaign. And to be entirely honest, I’ve talked about most of those guys this season; I wanted to highlight the fearsome Dunn.
The on-ball stuff is what makes highlight reels. Many players pretend to play full-court defense; Dunn doesn’t pretend or play. Watch him strip De’Aaron Fox one-on-one in the backcourt here:
Dunn might be the league’s best transition defender (he inherits the crown from Draymond Green). He has an uncanny ability to get his hands on the rock as opponents start to gather, knocking it out of bounds and allowing the Jazz to set up their defense. Look at him blow up this transition play twice while his fellow Jazzmen casually jog back:
He’s one of the best at chasing foes around picks and staying attached to shooters’ hips. Watch Klay Thompson be the tail to Dunn’s dog here, as Dunn refuses to lose him around two different screens:
Outside of the occasional shoutout on The Lowe Post, Dunn doesn’t get nearly as much national recognition as his peers. Let’s all try to change that.
Interior Defensive Player of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama
I just wrote a whole bunch about Wemby’s unheralded case for Defensive Player of the Year, so you should have seen this coming. One quick updated stat: Wembanyama averaged 3.9 blocks and 1.7 steals per game in the third quarter, for a total of 5.6 stocks.
The players in second — Walker Kessler and Chet Holmgren — are only averaging 3.4 stocks. To be fair, Kessler played just 23 minutes per game, while Holmgren and Wemby hovered around 30. He’s had an underrated defensive season off Utah’s bench. But even normalizing for minutes, nobody is within Wemby’s zip code as a defensive playmaker.
While box-score stats aren’t everything, they sure are something when the gulf is this wide. Rudy Gobert remains the overwhelming frontrunner for the award, given his dominance and Wembanyama’s acclimatization to NBA action, but this might be the last year that anyone besides the Spur wins for a long, long time.
Rookie of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs
Rookie I’m Talking About Instead: Brandin Podziemski, Golden State Warriors
Like I said, I’ve talked a metric ton about Victor Wembanyama this season. What seemed like a close two-man race to start the year between Wemby and the (outrageously good!) Chet Holmgren has become a blowout, and Wemby is getting better by the minute. Brandon Miller is a distant but deserving third.
But since we’ve already discussed many of the most deserving rookies, I want to highlight Brandin Podziemski, Golden State’s bulldog guard.
Before Podziemski’s back injury last week, he had usurped Klay Thompson’s place in the starting lineup. He’s certainly not the triggerman Thompson is from deep, but he stays within the offense without being gun-shy, an important distinction.
Of note: Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, and Draymond Green have played approximately 300 possessions each with Klay Thompson and Podziemski — a small sample, but not nothing. In those ~300 with Klay, the lineup has a net rating of +8.6 points per 100 possessions — not bad! In the ~300 with Podziemski, the lineup is +21.2, an elite mark. Much more goes into that than Podz’s mere presence, of course, but it’s at least a directional sign that the lineup switch has been successful.
Podziemski is a ridiculous rebounder for his size. His ability to control the glass as a guard (5.8 rebounds per game and a ridiculous 15.3% defensive rebounding rate that looks more like a power forward stat) are part of the reason the Warriors have successfully been able to run out more lineups with Draymond Green at center this quarter. When a shot goes up, Podziemski is an attentive boxer-outer and aggressive high-pointer (snagging the ball at its highest reachable point):
Is that rebounding clip arguably the most boring “highlight” I’ve ever embedded? Undoubtedly. But it’s illustrative! Look at how he checks his man, Scoot Henderson, to make sure Henderson’s not crashing the glass before ripping the ball out of the air in traffic. Textbook.
Podz is smart, feisty defensively, and an effective secondary playmaker. He can play either guard position, but he’s physically strong enough to play some small forward in a pinch. That positional versatility is important for a Warriors team that thrives on flexibility.
Sixth Man of the Quarter: Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves
Honestly, it’s an underwhelming crop of Sixth Men this quarter. My pick would have been Bogdan Bogdanovic, except he started in 10 of 20 games this quarter. The rule is that a player has to come off the bench in >50% of games played to qualify for the real award, and that’s what we’ll hold to here.
Therefore, my Sixth Man of the Quarter is Wolves big man Naz Reid.
Reid’s ability to shapeshift gives the Wolves more lineup flexibility than people realize. He can replace either Karl-Anthony Towns or Rudy Gobert, and his shooting (43% from deep on more than four attempts per game) ensures that the team can keep two bigs on the floor at all times without sacrificing spacing. Big men with legitimate shooting — not just decent accuracy on two attempts per game — are extremely rare. Big men who can shoot and hold up defensively are rarer still.
The stat line for the quarter of 12/5/1 and a block doesn’t pop, but it undersells how useful his skillset is for this Wolves team. Reid has dramatically improved defensively this season. He’s become fleeter on the perimeter and a legitimate shotblocking threat in the paint. He gives the Wolves some switchability, something they don’t like to do with Gobert or Towns as often.
Reid also loves to push the ball in transition, something the Wolves don’t do a lot of otherwise (they are last in the league in transition frequency). At times, the Wolves’ sometimes-stagnant offense needs his jolt of adrenaline. Reid has a nifty handle for a 6’10” guy, and he’s eager to use it:
The ideal Sixth Man is someone who can both slot into his team’s existing strengths and provide an off-speed pitch. Reid’s improved defense and aggressive mindset check both those boxes, and he takes the quarterly crown.
Coach of the Quarter: Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics
The Celtics were a league-leading 16-3 in this timeframe. It was a relatively easy schedule, but the Celtics’ +14.6 net rating in this timespan is half again as good as second-place Minnesota’s +9.3.
There were statement games aplenty. Boston pantsed Golden State the other night in an epic demolition, obliterated Dallas, and even beat Miami twice. The only bad loss was to a then-surging Clippers team.
Boston has had good health and boasts the most talented rotation in the league. The latter, in particular, almost guarantees that Mazzulla won’t win the Coach of the Year award — there’s a sense from many that any Joe could have these guys atop the league. But this specific Joe’s third quarter deserves love.
Mazzulla is coaching. From bespoke offensive game plans to take advantage of individual defenses to wild Jrue-Holiday-at-center defensive lineups to some of the most elaborate switching schemes in the league, Mazzulla isn’t just sitting on his hands and watching his dudes play. He’s even calling the occasional timeout!
Most real coaching happens behind closed doors; a big part of it is personnel management and personal touch. On the outside, we can only judge coaches by results and what snippets of process we can glean. It would have been easy for the Celtics players and management to quit on Mazzulla after last season (and maybe they would have if the Heat had finished them off in four or five games). Instead, the rotation improved, the players bought in, and Mazzulla has the Celtics miles and miles ahead of the rest of the pack.
Players aren’t the only ones who improve; coaches do, too. Mazzulla has shown greater flexibility and more creativity in his second season at the helm. The playoffs, of course, are the ultimate test, but it’s hard to ask for much more from a regular season performance.
Clutch Player of the Quarter: Max Strus, Cleveland Cavaliers
Listen, I did zero research for this. You can save all your arguments about FG% in the last few minutes of five-point games, etc. The answer is Max Strus:
And while the half-court game-winner rightfully gets all the attention, he also went five-for-five from deep in the last four minutes to cap off a ridiculous Cavaliers comeback.
That’s clutch.
Most Valuable Player of the Quarter: Luka Doncic, Dallas Mavericks
In the third quarter, Doncic averaged a silly 36 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists on 52/39/79 percent shooting splits. WTF is that? While he’s comfortably the worst defender of the top MVP candidates, he even averaged 1.6 steals per game.
Advanced stats are similarly rosy. Out of the four major MVP candidates (Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic), he had the best Estimated Plus/Minus for the quarter, although SGA was close behind. I asked
of (go subscribe!) to help me find Wins Above Replacement over this period, and he was gracious enough to oblige: Doncic slightly edges everyone else in WAR per game, too. Both the traditional and advanced stats usually favor Doncic for this period.Other teams won more games during this stretch. But none of the other candidates had to deal with the bevy of injuries and trades upending half of the rotation like Dallas did.
Doncic whines too much to officials and teammates and still takes the occasional play off. It’s distasteful, at best. His 15 technical fouls this season mean he’s one away from a suspension (with more suspensions for subsequent techs a looming threat). The Mavericks, as a whole, have felt disjointed of late while losing four of their last five following a seven-game winning streak.
But Doncic is also putting up a historic combination of efficiency and volume while rebounding like prime Westbrook and putting forth career-best defensive efforts. It’s hard to put too much blame on him.
People have very strong opinions about MVP, and that’s great! Despite the plethora of statistical evidence people have to back their preferred candidate, at this point, it’s largely down to a matter of taste. If you’d prefer the metronomic dominance of Jokic and his eye-popping box scores, Shai’s slicing and dicing (32 points on 50/50/85 percent shooting is ridiculous), or Giannis’ steady two-way play (30 points on Shaq-like shooting while regaining his defensive form since Doc took over), that’s fine. The fun of MVP is that everyone can look at the same candidates and come to different conclusions.
For the record, Luka is the least likely of this foursome to actually win the award for a variety of reasons, but his incredible third quarter deserves acknowledgment.