2023-24 RealGM All-Season Awards Voting Thread (voting completed)

[Doctor MJ]

This will be the official voting thread.

Please, until votes are tallied, no posts other than actual votes in this thread - Continue to use the Discussion thread for discussion.

Below are a list of voters that are pre-approved based on voting history and/or current participation, but know that this comes with an expectation of being nice & respectful to each other even when you disagree. There was some borderline stuff in the Discussion thread prior to this - don't push your luck.

Approved Voters:
AEnigma
Ambrose
ardee
Bob8
Clyde Frazier
Colbinii
Doctor MJ
Dutchball997
eminence
falcolombardi
Fundamentals21
Heej
igggymcfrack
jalengreen
LA Bird
lessthanjake
MyUniBroDavis
OhayoKD
PaulieWal
penbeast0
Perigrine01
rk2023
Special_Puppy
STTGLDRILL
Texas Chuck
The-Power
therealbig3
trex_8063

A reminder about the basic process from the Discussion thread's OP:

It's that time!

Every season the RealGM PC board does it's All-Season awards for the NBA.

"All-Season" means we factor in both the regular season and the playoffs - and we generally do this about a week after the Finals end.

The awards we give are:

Player of the Year (POY) - most accomplished overall player of that season.
Offensive Player of the Year (OPOY) - most accomplished offensive player of that season.
Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) - most accomplished defensive player of that season.
Rookie of the Year (ROY) - most accomplished rookie of that season.
Most Improved Player (MIP) - player whose improvement was the most noteworthy accomplishment.
6th Man of the Year (6MOY) - most accomplished player eligible as a 6th man that season.
Coach of the Year (COY) - most accomplished coach of that season.
Executive of the Year (EOY) - most accomplished GM/front office leader of that season.

POY has a 5-man ballot, all others have a 3-man ballot.
Only full ballots will be counted, and each ballot must be given some reasoning in the voting post.
For voters, POY is mandatory, all others are optional.

For reference, here's the list of previous award winners. Note that all years prior to 2009-10 were done as part of the Retro Player of the Year project, while later years were done after the season in question. All specific votes are listed in theoriginal Retro POY thread first post. Note also that beginning in 2014-15 we added the non-POY awards.

If you'd like to geek out about award shares, you can find the total tallies for POY, OPOY & DPOY here.

If you have any further questions, consider quoting me in the Discussion thread (not here), or you can PM me.

Cheers,
Doc

[AEnigma]

Executive of the Year
1. Brad Stevens
Slam dunk choice. Built an all-time team with two brilliant preseason trades that required only mild expenditure of resources.
2. Nico Harrison
Massive turnaround with smart drafting and some unheralded midseason acquisitions that several would-be contenders could have obtained for themselves. Interested to see how the Mavericks build on this incredible chemistry next year. 2025 EDIT:
3. Tim Connelly
Delayed reward for the Gobert trade. Conference finals, first series win since 2004, second-best team in franchise history, and first road series win in franchise history. Hefty investment for that result… but then I look at the Kings, Wizards, and Pistons, and I remind myself that some teams would be willing to trade more for much less.
(HM: Kevin Pritchard)

Coach of the Year
1. Mark Daigneault
Won the official award in the regular season, and I have no specific criticisms of his coaching in the Mavericks loss. Coaching is tough to judge, and I am open to hearing criticisms, but coaches can only direct their players, and I felt the issues with the Thunder were more about lessened play across the board from an inexperienced team.
2. Chris Finch
Strong regular season, and excellent approach to the Nuggets series for at least four games (I do feel he may have cost them Game 3, but it ultimately worked out). Mavericks series was a blemish though.
3. Jason Kidd
I respect how he incorporated new pieces to the team, but I do not know to what extent the Mavericks succeeded because of specific adjustments Kidd made half to half, game to game, or series to series. Again open to commentary, because I could be letting prior assessments excessively colour my interpretation here.
(HM: Joe Mazzulla, for being the Jayson Tatum of coaches)

Rookie of the Year
1. Victor Wembanyama
Maybe the worst team result from an ostensibly top 25 rookie season, but I do feel he was a better player than Chet and that the Thunder would have been a better team if those two had been swapped.
2. Chet Holmgren
Second-best player on a 7-SRS 1-seed is rarefied air for a rookie. Hope he keeps developing into a true superstar.
3. Dereck Lively II
Earned this by his postseason play, although I expect he is not far off his ceiling.
(HM: Brandon Miller)

Most Improved Player
1. Tyrese Maxey
The leap is a bit exaggerated by raw numbers, but he elevated impressively in the absence of Harden, and raising shot volume without meaningfully losing efficiency is the mark of a star.
2. Coby White?
Similar to Maxey in increasing his volume without meaningfully losing efficiency, but less relevant and not as good.
3. Donte Divincenzo
Finally became a legitimately good starter.
(HM: Jalen Suggs?)

Sixth Man of the Year
1. Trey Murphy III
Appreciate Doc mentioning him. Was one of the best players for a reasonably stout Pelicans team, and then led the team in minutes during their playoff series. Not often that a team has a third option talent as its sixth man.
2. Jaime Jaquez, Jr.
Will credit this vote to Doc as well, although more indirectly. Jaquez was never going to be on my rookie of the year ballot, but the bar for sixth man is much lower. Jaquez played a lot of minutes for a sixth man — second-most on his team for the season! — and that is a significant value add for me. He was one of the most important rotation pieces for a playoff team, providing good defence and mild frontcourt spacing. If he had been better in the postseason, I may have even considered him for #1 — and wanting to acknowledge the quality of his rookie season is the reason I decided to submit a ballot for this award, because initially I was just going to skip it entirely.
3. Naz Reid
A fair exception to my usual higher minutes principle; not his fault two of the top three players on his team play the same position. However, while that means he would be more productive in other environments, it still ultimately caps his value, and he was not on-court for even half the game in the postseason. I also do not buy him as a sufficiently compelling talent where I might overlook that; the bench results he did provide were nothing exemplary.

Defensive Player of the Year:
1. Rudy Gobert
Most valuable regular season defender with little question. There are better postseason defenders, but not by a significant margin, and none advanced farther than he did.
2. Anthony Davis
Can be the best defender in the world. Usually is not. Wish he could defend Europeans.
3. Bam Adebayo
Only real limitation is being a lesser rim protector compared to larger players. Outstanding mobility though. Not sure what it would take for Riley to part with him, but Presti should be making some offers.
(HM: Victor Wembanyama, Jonathan Isaac)

Offensive Player of the Year:
1. Luka Doncic
The Wolves series decided this for me. Best creator in the league, lethal against most doubles, and I think his capacity to feed multiple rim threats is (and proved to be) a significant advantage compared to what we saw from the Nuggets, posting a better postseason relative offensive rating overall despite having only Kyrie and a bunch of extremely one-note role-players.
2. Nikola Jokic
Not yet the greatest offensive player I have ever seen, but he was tested against the Wolves and should now have a clearer picture of what he needs to develop to better earn that label.
3. Tyrese Haliburton
I do not think there is a better “traditional” point guard in the league. Said it before: was on pace to finish first at the IST, and a hampered hamstring can only drag him down so far when the end result was still a(n admittedly lucky) conference finals run. Looking at the entirety of the season, I think he had the highest on-court offensive rating of any star player. Understand the arguments for Brunson/Shai, and agree it was close, but realistically I think Haliburton’s ceiling is much higher even if Brunson/Shai do have the advantage when asked to shoulder a heavy scoring volume.
(HM: Jalen Brunson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)

Player of the Year
1. Luka Doncic
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
3. Nikola Jokic
4. Jayson Tatum
5. Anthony Edwards
The short of it is that I feel these players were the most emblematic of the 2024 season. Each represents one of the top five teams this season, and the top three were the clear cut lead MVP candidates all season. Ultimately, the defining figure for this season will be Luka — his first real foray into serious MVP contention, finally captaining an elite team, vanquishing the top two SRS teams in the conference on the road, bringing his team to the Finals… Excited for more to come.

Shai was phenomenal, and if we could include international play then I may have given him the win, but for me he did not do enough in the NBA to justify a Player of the Year win as a second round exit (which I have only ever given to 2010 Lebron and 1978/79 Kareem). Same for Jokic, with an added penalty past Shai and Luka because the Nuggets were less accomplished, less relevant, and more disappointing.

Spoiler:

Random thoughts tracking post ups on Jokic

Jokic basically isn’t stoppable 1 on 1, which we all knew

Jokic absolutely cooks at finding strong side and cutters/dunkers, his ability to find weakside players is good but he doesn’t throw it with the same velocity as Bron does so defenses can recover

In 205 post ups, if the open player is on the strong side, or cutters, nuggets are like 1.2-1.3ppp (forgot which was which)

If it’s in the weakside, it’s 0.66, and most of the time the possession resets

They’re organized though and if you throw the same look they know how to beat it, credit to Jokic for being so consistent finding them but yeah these counters are extremely built in too

If you double Jokic before he gets deep into the paint (a bit further out than the edge of it so he might just set up to deep) and he picks it up, and you make sure the cutter and the strong side pass isn’t there, and you have someone coveraging both guys on the weakside, the nuggets offense resets unless [a defender] f***s up.

EDIT for posterity.

Jokic is the worst but most important defender on the Nuggets due to the fact that he's involved in the most defensive plays. It is what it is. He's big man Steph to me. Their offense will greatly outweigh their defense, and outside of getting targeted in PnRs they're both generally positive in other aspects of what constitutes defense. The problem for both is that PnR is the most common playtype in modern basketball so it's a pretty sh**ty weakness to have. The nuggets needed to sell out to stop Ant due to Jokic being unreliable as a backside rotator or in containing him in the PnR. The nuggets were forced to give up a free 4 on 3 every possession that Ant touched the ball and that math is impossible to win against when both teams have equivalent levels of talent. Jokic wasn't remotely good enough on defense nor offense to tilt the math back towards the Nuggets' favor. And the subpar offensive creation fed into them having less possessions with a higher EV set defense.

There are valid criticisms to be made of Jokic as well in regards to fading away during crucial stretches of the game and generally getting his creation schemed out by the Wolves. He was still able to put up gaudy box score numbers, as he's probably the most effective box score stuffer we've seen in a very long time. But he wasn't consistently generating an onslaught of advantages every possession for his teammates to finish the way we've seen him do before. That matters. These teams weren't all that uneven talent-wise imo. People are gonna blame MPJ for shooting poorly but that dude is a pure 3&D guy who subsists off Jokic and Murray creating for him, and in this game Jokic wasn't creating many high quality looks for teammates or converting at a high rate on his own.

When KAT is in the game and not in foul trouble the Wolves can get back to the tried and true Jokic stopping scheme: high strong side double in the post with bump overs and X-outs on the weakside. From what I remember in Cranjis McBasketball's discord, the BBallIndex guys were tracking Jokic's PPP vs specific coverages and the one coverage he tracked under 1.0 on was the one I mentioned with high side doubles and rotations on the backside where he clocked in at a pretty poor 0.80. The Lakers honestly were just badly coached and often panicked and went away from the coverage that was working even with suboptimal defenders. The wolves are just on another level from the Lakers coaching and personnel-wise so it looks impossible to replicate but it's really not for most contender level teams.

Jokic being a high-assisted guy is a double edged sword because in the playoffs vs contender level defenses the threshold for playmaking competency is raised significantly so the same connectors who can widen advantages for Jokic to finish are suddenly reduced to record scratches. When that happens, a superstar is expected to increase their playmaking load to get back to generating 2 on the ball situations.

I'm not fully convinced Jokic clears that threshold once teams throw the Ham defense at him in the post and require him to create from outside or sling laser beam skip passes like Bron, Harden, and Luka do. That's actually been something that stood out to me watching the Ham defense work its magic on Jokic because one of the better counters would be to sling a rope over the defense right into the shooting pocket of a corner shooter the way Luka, Lebron, Harden, and even Curry on occasion does. It is a little weird to me that Jokic with all his size and arm talent isn't ever really punishing teams with his skip passes. And it makes me appreciate guys like LeBron and Luka who have all time pace on their passes and can get them to shooters one step faster than nearly anyone in league history. I'll likely have to re-evaluate how high I place him on my list of all-time passers because this is a pretty glaring "weakness" if you will compared to other GOAT level offensive engines.

Functionally Jokic isn't breaking down defenses from the perimeter and is wholly incapable of doing so against swarms anyway once he makes 1 or 2 dribbles because he often gets stonewalled at the nail and has to reset whenever he tries. I find Embiid a more useful ballhandler because he has a disgusting face up game that can be activated from the nail which makes it much harder for teams to swarm him the way they've done Jokic postups the last 2 series'. Teams are actively aware of what Jokic's tendencies are attacking closeouts. You're not generating consistent offense putting the ball in his hands out there and asking him to make a play (even on keeper plays) which is precisely what Ohayo harps on regarding his sub-par ballhandling relative to other offensive greats.

The Ham defense seems like it'll always work on Jokic. This is where Jokic's relatively poor ballhandling compared to the offensive greats he's linked to ultimately limits him. He just doesn't have that last layer of versatility to make him truly unsolvable on offense vs a guy like Magic or LeBron where your only hope is to mix up coverages and hope they miss.

It seems obvious to me that Luka created better shots than Jokic did. Rim attempts are better than anything, and the way he was creating dunk after dunk for Lively and Gafford, after the hype the Wolves defense had just received, was just insane to watch. On the other hand, we saw a pet action of the Nuggets, the Jokic/Gordon lob, get completely taken out of the series, a play they've dominated with since they've been teammates. Also, because of the lack of ball handling, Gordon had to bring it up and initiate the offense at times, which takes him away from around the rim, which is his strength, and isn't optimal for how the Nuggets want to play. I was skeptical before of the Jokic ball-handling criticism, but that's what sold me on it.

The "Taylorian" point that off-ball skills and players with lower time of possession "fit" better than helios on high-level teams is too simplistic, it really just depends on the team. Jokic having all those off-ball skills but not being a lead ball handler forced a player like Gordon out of his optimal position near the rim to use possessions getting the ball up the court. That matters.

Meanwhile, Luka's over here handling all that ball pressure with ease and just tossing lobs right over Gobert and KAT's heads over and over again. I mean, Lively literally didn't miss a shot in the series thanks to the spoon-feeding. Maybe I'm missing something, but watching one guy create a bunch of easy shots at the rim and optimize his teammates while the other's limitations played a part in forcing his teammates out of position means a lot to me. I was a skeptic of the ball-handling criticism, but these two series won me over. Let's go more into why with how they get into their sets.

Why did Luka feast out of pick-and-roll while the Jokic/Gordon connection was completely neutralized? Usually, the Nuggets get into the action with a pick-and-roll or DHO, and thanks to Murray's gravity and three-point shooting, they trap him like Steph. So he hits Jokic on the short roll, which draws the big, leaving Gordon open for the lob from the dunker's spot. Gobert was able to completely shut this down because Jokic couldn't get him to commit either way, and the ground he had to cover was small because Jokic was getting that pass inside the three-point line, so he could stand there and wait while Jokic was coming at him. How does this differ from Luka?

The Mavs set the screen way out high and put Gobert directly in the action forcing him to backpedal from beyond the three-point line instead of just waiting in the paint and playing a guessing game. (Where he could load up his jump instead of jumping out of a backpedal.) They could do this because Luka could handle the ball pressure, be patient, and probe with his dribble with a defender on his back forcing Gobert to commit while trying to backpedal at the same time making it much harder on him. If Jokic could run pick-and-rolls 30+ feet from the basket and pressure the rim that way, forcing Gobert to backpedal, they would've diminished his impact. That's a ballhanding limitation on Jokic and the guards that while Gobert was on Gordon they couldn't bring him directly into the action with super high pick&rolls. I mean, we saw how successful it was all Mavs series, if the Nuggets could've made that adjustment they would have. (This is also the difference between pick-and-rolls and DHOs, by the way. You can't run DHOs 30+ feet from the hoop.)

This is why I still lay some of the blame at Jokic's feet. He's the best player, and pick-and-rolls are generally the most efficient half-court action. The fact that this was taken away and the Nuggets couldn't adjust, with Jokic generally being a big part of those plays' success, means he bears a lot of the responsibility, especially when we're picking nits at the highest levels of offense.

I do not mind people praising Kyrie for having maybe the best series of his career [against the Timberwolves]. What I mind is using it as a tool to minimise how Luka is performing, just like I mind Murray being weaponised in opposition to any measured criticism of how Jokic performed against what we all now see, and what many of us were saying, was still a distinctly mortal defence. To whatever extent we want to say it is simplistic to say as the stars go, so the team goes, it is just as simplistic — and less justifiably accurate — to say as the secondary stars go, so the team goes, and especially not when the Mavericks just survived their secondary star having the worst full series of his postseason career [against the Thunder].

There seems to be a sudden reflex to characterise the postseason as mere random chance and noise. “Luka won last round because, Kyrie aside, his team performed well. Jokic lost last round because, Gordon aside, his team did not perform well.” That is excessively simplistic in a league where stars are given more responsibility than ever for ensuring offensive success. Yes, you can swing the results of plenty of series if you significantly boost the performance of meaningful rotation players. Yes, it hurt the Nuggets that they had the worst depth of any top five team — which we all already knew. To me, that is all a distraction from the fact that the Nuggets lost Jokic’s minutes too. They lost his minutes for four games, and in those four games he was never especially close to winning his minutes either. And despite the narrative many are pushing, he very much bears some responsibility for those losses.

By contrast, Luka won his minutes. We do not need to gesture at off-court performance to explain why one team is winning. If both teams held serve when their superstars went to the bench, the Nuggets would have lost and the Mavericks would have won. Bench disparities are not the reason why Luka, Kyrie, and a handful of roleplayers comfortably outperformed the Nuggets’ starters, and I would indeed rather focus on the two figures in discussion for Player of the Year than speculate about what a series might have looked like if the Nuggets defied known depth problems.

I am not sympathetic to ease of assessment of secondary stars as a reason to ignore how against a common opponent one PotY candidate had long stretches of failed play while the other did not. Luka is creating better offence against the Timberwolves despite worse spacing and what should be a worse individual matchup (oh, but I suppose I am forgetting to factor in how Jokic struggling against doubles means the Wolves have a uniquely elite recipe to beat the Nuggets ). Luka provided more scoring lift, more creation lift, and more individual spacing, all while being notably less healthy.

All three have a strong edge over Tatum, who merits recognition as the best player on an all-time champion, and Edwards, who is here almost solely for his two-way excellence in dethroning the defending champions. Will stress this is distinct from who I see as the five best players, but the three other quarterfinalist candidates missed postseason games because of injury, and I am reluctant to reward first round exits without a truly spectacular season to accompany it (although the IST MVP is a better than usual consolation prize).
(HM: Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Brunson, Lebron James)

[Ambrose]

POY
1. Nikola Jokic-In my opinion, he's the best, most impactful player in the world, coming off a clear best regular season, and arguably best postseason. I don't see this as particular close. No one did nearly enough in the postseason to close the gap on him. No need to overthink this one.

2. Luka Doncic-I had him slightly ahead of Shai in the regular season, and then after a brutal start to the postseason, he mostly finished strong, especially with a fantastic series against a really good Wolves team and defense that he made appear helpless against him. If he wasn't banged up he might have had the juice to get to #1.

3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander-Phenomenal regular season, and postseason was similarly so. Difference is, he didn't have as many chances to move up as Luka did, and I had him behind after the regular season.

4. Jason Tatum-Pretty big gap between the top 3 and #4. He was great this year, and while he had some scoring hiccups in the postseason, he played well overall, and won a title.

5. Jalen Brunson-If he had gone further or hadn't gotten injured I probably would've had him over Tatum. A truly outstanding season, especially for a small guard, and especially doing it with the team he had around him.

OPOY
1. Nikola Jokic-He's the best offensive player in the world and had the best offensive season. If someone wants to pass him, they have to outplay him for more than one series.
2. Luka Doncic-Considered him for a moment at #1, but the entire body of work isn't there. Injuries, missed games, and off nights are simply more common for him. Next year might be his year.
3. Jalen Brunson-The offensive load he had to carry, and how he managed to perform impressed me greatly. Th

DPOY
1. Rudy Gobert-He was the most important part of the best defense in the NBA. He did a commendable job on the best player in the NBA. It's a shame people are going to blame him for some of what happened for Dallas, when a lot of that was other guys not doing their part. He has some issues, but I don't think anyone was as good as he was from start to finish this year defensively.
2. Bam Adebayo-His versatility is unbelievable, and had they made a run, could've had a shot at finishing first. Such an immensely talented and adaptable big. His switchability is truly something else.
3. Victor Wembanyama-He was extremely impressive as the year went on. Some rough patches early on, but you can already see the force he is on that end. He's going to own this award for a long time.

ROY
1. Victor Wembanyama-He was a borderline All NBA player. By the end of the year, he was one of the most impactful players in the NBA. We expected the defense, but his offensive game developed so much, he's way ahead of where he should be as a passer and decision maker, etc. The dude is special.
2. Chet Holmgren-One of the better rookie seasons we've seen. His offensive and defensive versatility is exceptional, and he looked like a vet out there. He wasn't Wemby unbelievable, but you can't ask for much more from a rookie big. His skillset is perfect for the modern NBA, and I can't wait to see him grow.
3. Dereck Lively-His value to Dallas was evident this postseason. An exceptional lob threat, a talented rim protector, has the ability to guard the perimeter, and was a nice passer out of the short roll. He was everything Dallas could have hoped he'd be.

[Dutchball97]

Player of the Year:
1. Nikola Jokic - To start on a more negative note this is probably one of the weaker #1s but there is no real runaway best player in the league this year and overall I think Jokic had the most impressive showing. While not as clearly ahead of everyone as recent years, he was still leading most advanced stats in both the regular season and play-offs. I had Jokic at #1 going into the play-offs and nobody did enough imo to move past him. Tbh that's a trend that's consistently going to be there on my POY ballot, the 5 I ended up with were pretty much all already in this position before the post-season with the exception of Giannis falling out of contention due to injuries. To address the elephant in the room though, Jokic faced some of the best big defenders in the play-offs and still had the highest OBPM by quite a margin so I don't see the argument as him faltering offensively as all that realistic. Defensively he's obviously not one of the best players in the league but I don't think it was big enough of a deficit to move him down.

2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - After Embiid's injury almost halfway through the season, SGA took over my top spot for a good chunk of time and in the end I have him behind Jokic by only a hair. SGA leading EPM is a pretty impressive feat, especially when he's also a good defender for his position. Outplaying Luka head to head is a big part of why he's still ahead of the Slovenian finalist on my ballot. What mainly keeps him from the top spot is that I wasn't that impressed by Shai in the first round and like with Tatum, I'm not someone who gives credit for not playing up to their own standards because their team is winning anyway.

3. Luka Doncic - Making the finals, which means playing 2 more rounds than both Jokic and Shai, is a big plus here but I don't think he capitalized on it as much as he needed for me to put him at #1 here. I had Luka as a clear top 5 player in the regular season but still firmly behind the latter 2. Then considering the only round where Luka actually lived up to MVP caliber play in the post-season was against the Wolves. Admittedly his performance in the Wolves series was very good, if he had been able to keep up that level against the Celtics it'd have been enough but it wasn't to be. I don't want to be too harsh on him when he was dealing with injuries but on the other hand we still have to judge on what actually happened, otherwise Giannis and Embiid would've made it as well.

4. Jalen Brunson - The most unexpected entrant on this list but a well deserved one in my opinion. Brunson led the Knicks to relevancy again this year and while not a serious MVP candidate, I had him leading the Tier 2 group. His post-season also started out incredibly strong and he's definitely made his mark there although his momentum started to slow towards the end due to injuries to both himself and most of his team. I had him here after the second round and I don't think any of the guys who played in the conference finals and beyond (beside Luka) did enough to pass him by.

5. Jayson Tatum - I was close to leaving Tatum off my ballot entirely but he had a strong regular season and a long, succesful post-season even though his shooting was off. While I criticize him as a "best player in the league" type of guy, he was overall the most consistent on the Celtics, while the other stars were more streaky. That consistency, backed by his strong +- numbers in both the regular season and post-season makes a strong enough case to keep Tatum on my ballot, although just.

HM: Anthony Edwards, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Rudy Gobert

Offensive Player of the Year
1. Nikola Jokic
2. Luka Doncic
3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

HM: Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Brunson

Jokic and Doncic were a clear top 2 offensively in the regular season and while the second tier of guys did all play well in the post-season I don't think any of them did enough to get into that top 2. SGA, Haliburton and Brunson were really close going into the play-offs and even there it's a hard call but I think SGA was the most consistent towards the end of their respective play-off runs.

Defensive Player of the Year
1. Rudy Gobert
2. Bam Adebayo
3. Evan Mobley

HM: Anthony Davis, Jarrett Allen

This category has been Gobert and then the rest for a while now but it's deserved when he was far and away the best defender in the regular season and then silenced some doubters by still having a significant defensive impact throughout the play-offs. I also had Bam as a clear second in the regular season due to a combination of individual impact and team performance. While he didn't do much to further his case in the post-season, it was a pretty tough ask for Bam to lock down the Celtics with the help he had. As my 3rd I went Mobley as he really held together the impressive Cavs defense well even when Allen went out.

Sixth Man of the Year
1. TJ McConnell
2. Naz Reid
3. Obi Toppin

This was Al Horford's award to lose but an often injured Porizingis meant Horford didn't qualify. The rest of the Celtics bench also had a case but were all too on and off in terms of impact in the play-offs. Naz Reid had been a strong candidate all year but didn't have the best send-off in the WCF. Meanwhile in the east the Pacers bench was working their way onto my ballot. Toppin has been consistent all year and has really thrived in this bench role but McConnell was the most impressive this year due to the way he stepped up.

Rookie of the Year
1. Victor Wembanyama
2. Chet Holmgren
3. Derrick Lively

Chet started out stronger but halfway through the season Wembanyama passed him by and didn't look back. Holmgren still had a chance to take the top spot with a convincing performance in the post-season but I don't think he did enough for that. Lively wrapped up a competitive final spot with an important role for a finalist.

[eminence]

ROY Votes
1. Chet Holmgren
2. Victor Wembanyama
3. Dereck Lively
HMs- Jaquez, Podziemski

Victor is the better prospect, and I expect he will be better quite soon if he isn't already. But Chet was the better player this season and has plenty of upside himself. Victor pulled a bit of a Westbrook and 'broke' a bunch of the box-based stats/priors with statlines we've never seen before, but the impact simply wasn't there for me to put him above Chet. Chet was great from the jump and is a big reason why the Thunder won the #1 seed this season. #2 on a contender is not something you see often from a rookie. A more developed and more appropriately deployed offensive skillset being the primary separator over Victor. Victor spent much of the season tanking an already bad offense even further. Lively was a very solid #3, not particularly close to the top 2. Plenty of other good rookies this season as well, including a few others who were more flashes than production, but did show flashes.

RPOY Votes
1. Jayson Tatum
2. Nikola Jokic
3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
4. Luka Doncic
5. Rudy Gobert
HM - Jalen Brunson

RS #3. I get box-score folks not buying Tatum. I don't get eye test or impact folks. He continues to look great on film, doing damn near everything at a high level (I especially find his distribution skills underrated), and his impact stats continue to look strong. This season he had a great team around him and they went out and accomplished something great.

RS #1. Jokic, felt similar to last season, but A) ran into a worse matchup and B) Murray not showing up. Overall it's a step down for Jokic in a POY type race even if he was quite similar.

RS #2. SGA arrives with a strong showing. Jumped all the way to the top of the standings (obviously not alone), and I thought he was the best individual player in both of his PO series. Very much looking forward to seeing more of him.

RS ???. Luka until the trade wasn't seriously on my radar for POY, another season of huge box-score numbers and underwhelming impact. And then they made the deals and the team took off with Luka leading the way, so Luka shot up the charts. Never gave me the impression he was a clear step up from the top 3 guys even post trade, so the complete season guys get a leg up on him.

RS ???. Rudy is my top Timberwolf, though it took some reflection to arrive there. Ant is a very exciting player, and I hope to see him take the steps to be a top guy in the coming seasons. He is certainly the player pushing them emotionally. But this season everything the Wolves did successfully on the court was built around Rudy (apart from one magical game in Denver).

Shoutout to Brunson, perfectly fine #5 pick, might've been mine if he hadn't broken his hand.

[lessthanjake]

Player of the Year

1. Nikola Jokic - This is a bit of an abnormal year, where the championship team doesn’t have a guy really in the running for best player in the world, nor does it even have a guy who may not be in that running in general but played like it in the playoffs. So I think it has to go to someone on a non-title team, and the question is who. For me, I thought Jokic was MVP in the regular season (as did the MVP voters, of course), and out of the top 3 guys I thought he was probably the best overall in the playoffs too. SGA wasn’t actually super far off in the regular season. There’s even some data that has him ahead (EPM being the primary example). But the balance of various data sources has Jokic being the better and more impactful player, and that comports with my eye test as well. I don’t think it’s totally irrelevant that SGA’s team finished with the 1st seed, even though their teams’ record were the same. The 1 seed does matter! But Jokic’s team also dealt with more injury issues and still ended up with the same record. Meanwhile, when we get to the playoffs, none of the top 3 was perfect, especially when they faced bad matchups. But I thought Jokic was probably the best, with SGA being 2nd best. Playoff EPM bears out Jokic being the best (by a clear margin, though it has Luka slightly above SGA), though obviously that’s reliant on low-sample-size data. To me, though, the playoffs isn’t really decisive this year, because we have a a clear top 3 that all lost and looked good but notably not perfect while they did so. So I’m left with my baseline view that Jokic was better in the regular season and is just a better player overall.

2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - A lot of my reasoning here is in the above. I have SGA over Luka, but it’s definitely close. I thought that, start to finish, SGA had a better regular season than Luka. And while Luka’s team beat SGA’s in the playoffs and made the Finals, it’s hard for me to nudge Luka ahead because of that when I thought SGA was better in the series that he lost to Luka.

3. Luka Doncic - There’s not a lot more to say here that isn’t in the above. Luka is clearly in the top 3 this year. I have him below the other two, in large part because I thought he was the #3 guy in the regular season, and while his team did better in the playoffs it wasn’t really due to him playing better IMO.

4. Jayson Tatum - I think #4 is an appropriate spot for Tatum. I waffle a bit between how to order my #4 and #5, but ultimately I’m convinced Tatum should be #4 when I just think about how historically great this Celtics team was. To me, it is one of the greatest teams in NBA history, and Tatum was their best player. No, he wasn’t super great in the playoffs, and he’s not in the running for best player in the league. But I think this season will be remembered for the singularly great Celtics team that Tatum led, and so that’s enough for me to put him #4 in my POY ballot, just below the clear top 3 guys.

5. Jalen Brunson - That leaves Brunson. Overall, I just think he played the best this year out of anyone else. Every time I watched him I was impressed. Impact data backs up that he was elite (for instance, he was 6th in EPM, behind only either guys above him on my list or guys who had major injuries). When the Knicks had some modicum of health with their current roster, they were incredible (they were something like 20-3 with OG). The team couldn’t stay healthy, but I thought Brunson fought very impressively in the playoffs with a undermanned team.

Offensive Player of the Year

1. Nikola Jokic - The reasoning for this is essentially the same as the POY, given that Jokic’s greatness is mostly centered on the offensive side of the ball. He’s the best offensive player in the world.

2. Luka Doncic - Luka takes 2nd here instead of the 3rd I have him for POY. This is basically in recognition of the fact that I thought he was very close to SGA in POY, and SGA is a better defender. Luka nudges ahead of SGA on the offensive side of the ball specifically.

3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - I really like SGA’s game offensively. It’s a real throwback and it’s great to see it work in today’s game. I don’t think he’s quite as good as Luka or Jokic offensively, and I did think about putting Brunson here but SGA still nudges ahead on this for me.

Rookie of the Year

1. Victor Wembanyama - Early in the year, I think I actually would’ve had Chet ahead, but the way Wembanyama finished the year—as genuinely one of the best players in the NBA—tips the balance pretty decisively for me.

2. Chet Holmgren - Chet had a great rookie season, as probably the 3rd best player on a contending team. He was a strong defensive player, while being a genuine positive on the offensive end as well, due to his shooting and ability to put the ball on the floor. A great player. Not as good as Wembanyama, but should be a very important player for the Thunder moving forward.

3. Derrick Lively - Lively cemented this in the postseason where he was clearly an extremely important player for Dallas.

I may edit this to add ballots for more stuff (which I’d have to think about more), but for now that’s what I’ve got. In case I don’t end up doing a full ballot on this, I do want to just second AEnigma’s shout out for DiVincenzo for MIP—he’s a guy that really stuck out to me in that regard, so I’d encourage people to think about voting for him on their ballot for that.

[trex_8063]

Player of the Year
1. Nikola Jokic
I know a lot of people disagree, and that's fine. I know for a lot of people the fact they were eliminated in the 2nd round is a near-automatic disqualifier; and while I disagree with that methodology, this also is fine.

For myself, I simply have a hard time looking at a guy who led the entire league in PER, WS/48, and BPM----for BOTH the rs and playoffs (and by handy margins in some of these)----and led all players >700 rs minutes in on/off [+20.0], and [I think] all major-minute players in playoff on/off [+20.8] as well.......and coming to a conclusion other than this guy is likely the best in the league.

His defense comes under scrutiny [at least in the playoffs]; and to my eye I've seen arguments that seem to go too far in BOTH directions [praising and denigration]. I personally do not feel that his impact on defense can possibly be LESS than, say.....Luka Doncic. Sometimes I feel this is acknowledged but then shrugged off by noting that defensive deficiencies in guards are far more forgivable than such deficiencies in a center.
However, if the expectation is that a center is supposed to have greater defensive impact [than a guard], is that not counterbalanced by a premise or expectation that the guard is supposed to have greater offensive impact [than the center]?

And if not, then we must be saying that the ceiling for impact is greater for a center than it is for a guard. And from that standpoint we might suggest that Jokic is further from the absolute ceiling [for his position] than one or more guards are [at their positions]. But that hardly matters [to me] if he is STILL greater in output/impact in absolute terms.
i.e. I won't penalize or discount his greatness because of his size or the position he plays. If big guys have greater all-around potential, so be it. That's the game.
The deliberate hyperbole of counterpoint to such a practice would be to ask what you'd do if some team had a player 5'0", who obviously wasn't that good/impactful by NBA standards (because it's basically impossible at that height) but was managing a low/moderate standard of usefulness.......should we declare him the best in the league just because he's getting the most out of his size-potential (the Muggsy Bogues parable, perhaps)? I wouldn't; even if it were basically true, I wouldn't.
I likewise will not dock tall players simply for being tall.

It also felt at times that he was being eviscerated for a "bad" offensive series against Minnesota, with some posters expounding that Doncic had fewer weaknesses/was more unstoppable/had more counters for anything the defense could throw at him, etc. And maybe Doncic does have more counters or whatever. Though let's compare Jokic's Minny series to Doncic vs Boston....

Jokic vs Minnesota: 29.0 ppg @ 59.6% TS, 7.9 apg, 3.4 topg, leading a disappointing 108.9 team ORtg
Doncic vs Boston: 29.2 ppg @ 53.0% TS, 5.6 apg, 4.6 topg, leading a barely different 109.4 team ORtg (despite teammates shooting collectively better than Jokic's did)

Well, I'm just going to leave it at that.


2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Monster year: tremendous offensive output with almost absurdly low turnover rate and strong shooting efficiency; anchoring the 3rd-best offense with his best help on that end being Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, and Josh Giddey (though their offense stumbled a bit in the playoffs, while their defense stepped up). wrt the latter, though, I'd rate SGA as a plus defender at the PG position. He's very disruptive, generates a lot of turnovers without undue gambling, and has not looked like a sieve to me.

Lost to Luka's team in the 2nd round, though imo he outplayed Luka in the series.
I had SGA as 2nd in the rs, and given Luka did not appear bullet-proof throughout the playoffs and was outplayed by SGA in a head-to-head, I can't find reason to remove him from that 2nd-place standing.


3. Luka Doncic
With explanations above, I feel this one is self-explanatory. Given all the missed time for Embiid in the rs, and Giannis missing the playoffs, I just don't feel there's anyone else in serious contention for top 3: these three guys felt like they had comfortable separation from the rest of the field this year. So Luka is it by default; a superb year from an MVP-tier player.


4. Jalen Brunson
His year was a big surprise to me. I knew he was good, but I was not expecting this year that he just had. The guy is just tough and was ballin' almost all year, really stepped up on an injury-depleted cast in the playoffs (32.4 ppg and 7.5 apg; shooting efficiency was sort of meh, but produced all that with just 2.7 topg and the defense having preciously little else to pay attention to [with Randle out, OG missing 4 games in the playoffs too]). Really just kinda epic, bringing the Knicks within 1 game of the ECF.


5. LeBron James
I know he's not going to get much support for this year with a 1st-round exit, but he was a strong contender for my top 5, so I'm going to give him a little love.
26/7/8 on good efficiency in the rs, just about 28/7/9 on almost identical all-around efficiency in the playoffs; had the team's strongest on/off during the rs.........just absurd he can still do these things.


I feel a little gross leaving Tatum off my ballot (and may decide to switch that); but I've no doubt Tatum will get his share of consideration (and is likely to finish 4th in the results). Also considered Haliburton, Embiid [>40 missed rs games was just too much, though], Giannis [missing playoffs entirely was just too much, though: likely cost them the series; and since I was only feeling him for 4th during the rs....], Gobert and Edwards. EDIT: And Anthony Davis, too. Kawhi, between mostly missing the playoffs [cost the series??] and 14 missed rs games is just too much missed time to get serious consideration (because he only arguable as a fringe top-5 player when he DID play this rs).



Defensive Player of the Year
1. Rudy Gobert
I don't think this pick is at all controversial and likely doesn't require a ton of explanation. He's a defensive monster, always has been. His mere presence turns away so many drives, his shot defense near the rim has resulted in broadcasters referring to "the Gobert Effect", helps control the boards, his defensive impact signals are near-bonkers.......yeah.


2. Victor Wembanyama
Distant 2nd, fwiw. Even though they were poor defensively (the Spurs), I see a sizable -5.8 defensive on/off and >3.5 blocks per game.......hard for me to not give that some consideration.


3. Bam Adebayo
idk. Wasn't sure who else to really laud in this category. Bam is versatile, has a strong defensive on/off on the 5th-rated defense while playing a significant 34 mpg. Doubt he can be a bad pick.

Also considered Anthony Davis, and want to give a shout out to Alex Caruso, who I truly think is a very special defender.


Offensive POY
1. Nikola Jokic
Somewhat baked into the pie of arguments above.

2. Luka Doncic
Sort of splitting the 2/3 spots between he and SGA. Gave SGA #2 above, so I'll give Luka #2 here; and in a way this feels OK to me because while Luka had his moments defensively in the playoffs, over the course of a full season I'm comfortable suggesting Shai was the better defender.

3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander


Rookie of the Year
1. Victor Wembanyama
Close though [imo].

2. Chet Holmgren

3. Derrick Lively
He sort of cemented this spot for me with his playoff performance.



Doc, is it OK if don't vote on Coach or Executives? Wasn't sure based on wording of "full ballot". I don't feel like I know enough to render much opinion on those.

[mikejames23]

Votes, in order.

POY

Luka Magic
Jayson Tatum
Nikola Jokic
Shai Gilgeous Alexander
Jalen Brunson

Luka has the strongest year of them all. In the playoffs he dismantled every team he came across, it wasn’t easy around him. Certainly, he enjoyed some help from Kyrie Irving. And while a ton of people criticize Kyrie, Kyrie still has a lot of winning game in him. Luke regularly posted 30 point triple doublish numbers and came up relatively well against tough competition.

Jayson Tatum had a good run winning the championship. The supporting cast was ultra stacked, but Tatum did just about everything within his power to get there. 4 easy series in the playoffs, 1st in SRS, Net Rating, and O-Rating. Mostly, he has the feel of a lesser legend in a good Boston situation to win. He reached the ECF at a young age, and has some knack at playing the game that seems pretty rare.

Nikola Jokic - The stats leader this season, Jokic kills in all categories PTS, REB, W/S, PER, AST, etc. He had an outstanding numbers season before Denver fell off in the playoffs. Repeating isn’t easy and I see that as the main problem Jokic faced this season. Still has an argument for best in the league, based off of how dominant his numbers look.

SGA - The league’s top scorer and admirable in leading OKC. He has some excuses as the team looks relatively young. Mostly, seems like an unstoppable guard who held his own against Luka.

Brunson - I just have one praise for this guy, I didn’t see him being quite this good. To his credit with the Knicks success, the supporting cast seemed solid. A defensive big in Hartenstein and some great action from Anunoby/DDV. Some big performances in the playoffs and he certainly looks ready to make top tier impact in the league.

HM: Ant, Gobert, Haliburton

OPOY

Luka Magic
Nikola Jokic
Tyrese Haliburton

Luka and Jokic have to be the first two, challenging each other for best offensive player with high numbers columns. Haliburton comes in at #3 for leading a top offense in the league, and interesting PG with extreme talent at running an O.

DPOY

Rudy Gobert
Anthony Davis
Evan Mobley

All 3 have put in solid defensive work all year. I almost rewarded Gobert a top 5 spot, had a great year defensively and dethroned Denver. AD was stuck on a bad team, looked as good as always, and Mobley has always been a top defensive big, though CLE still has work to do if they want to be elite.

ROY

Wemby
Chet
Lively

A clear Wemby hero for the year, I hope the Spurs pull off something nice for him. Chet looks like a ready made HoF’er and LIvely played a role in the Mavs success this season.


COY

Finch
Mazulla
Kidd

Finch did a great job pulling the wolves together. Kidd looks like a lower grade coach, but I think this was his year to pull something off. Mazulla had the easiest job of the 3, but he gets some credit for pulling it off.

EOY

Stevens
Presti
Connelly

Stevens easily takes this one, his moves made a ton of sense at the time. Porzingis, White, Holiday are all easily some of the best roleplayers in the league. Presti and Connelly are back to back. Presti gets some credit for player development and Connelly made good moves with the Wolves.

[OhayoKD]

Player of the Year

Will finalize/finish justifying and formatting later, but as a place holder

1. Luka

Frankly injuries probably mean he didn't provide as much CORP as Shai, but I'm inclined to follow unibro's lead and give credit for how he played with those limitations. Ultimately he did make the final with a team that has been bad without him and a best teamamte who has historically struggled to impact winning.

He is also the best creator in the league and as Unibro and others have highlighted well, he performed much better than the actual MVP against the same opponent. Healthy, I think he's the best offensive player in the league, and as a guard his defensive is easier to cover for.

So he gets POY

Solid argument for being the best regular-season player, solid argument for being the best playoff player, led the best regular season team of the 3 main POY candidates, led the 2nd best playoff team, did that all with a very young team and maybe the worst coach of the 3 poy candidates.

2. SGA

Provided the most value of anyone over the course of this season I think and deserves credit for outplaying my POY head to head. Hard to decouple him from chet in terms of how much of the turnaround should be put at his feet, but leading the second best regular season team and the second best western team in the playoffs(top 4 overall) with the youngest 1st seed in history is an impressive achievement probably worthy of a POY inofitself.

3. Embid

Embid was the clear #1 in the regular season on a per-game basis and for all the slander it's not clear to me he was worse than Jokic on average this postseason despite being greatly hampered by injury. While not as clean, he also recorded the biggest large-sample impact signal since Lebron left cleveland this year, and was on pace to lead a team comparable to the Celtics despite his best teammate leaving in the offseason.


4. Jokic
How good or not good he has been these playoffs has been hotly contested an, but as someone who voted him POY last time and prematurely declared him as clearly ahed of everyone else, I have much bigger questions of both his defense and his offense now and ultimately the final outcome was wildly disappointing given he had a healthier and more talented team than the players ranked above(with better fit).


5. Tatum

Brunson is tempting but Tatum was the clear best player on the clear best team, isn't appreciated enough for what he offers outside of scoring and has been top 5 statistically for multiple years now on a very successful team. Brown winning finals MVP is dumb to be honest.



DPOY

1. Gobert

Great regular season and postseason for the league's best paint-protector. Lots of credit is due for making it work with towns, and I was very impressed with his man defense, especially vs the Suns and the Mavericks.

2. Wemby
Team results dissapointed but he's already a very good help defender, paint-protector, and man defender. Even as someone rooting for him to surpass everyone ever, I was shocked how polished he already was, especially defensively. I for one, would love to see the a second coming of Russell dominate the league for a decade or so. Still work to be done.

3. Anthony Davis
Best player on what was a pretty good Lakers team in large part to his unprecedented combination of paint-prowess and versatility. Did a great job on Jokic on both ends, if the Lakers had done a bit better these playoffs I'd probably have voted him top 5.

[falcolombardi]

I am unsure if i can vote but just for fun here would be my ballot

POY

1-luka
Didnt necesarrily have a better level of play than shai/jokic over the whole year and playoffs, was slowed down in boston and irregular at okc (regardless of potential injuries it still counts as underperforming)

But the victories over two strong teams like minnesota and clippers (unusually good 1st round rival even without kawhi) had some impressive play amd the regular season was as good as anyone else

2-shai
I think in a world where jokic is not the 2 time mvp defending champion and shai is less of a "new guy" in the nba spotlight we could kinda see that shai led a team to a better record and srs than jokic did without a better roster (most people would have picked jokic supporting cast before the season)

This is not everythingh but it should give people pause to anyone who auto-picks jokic as the more impactful player-year in 2024. Okc season was just more of an accomplishment than denver was

And then in the playoffs shai play showed less weak points in their specific losing matchups compared to a jokic who was a clear target defensively and could be succesfully stopped from draggin nuggets to even decent offense (let alone good offense) with his individual boxscore kinda hiding how contained he was by minnesota

3- brunson
He could be hit or miss and when it missed his heroball could be so ugly as the worst of kobe but the degree to which he carried knicks was awe inspiring when it was hitting. Even in a fair chunk of the playoffs

I would go as far as saying that some of brunson stretches of games against philly and indy were better than anythingh we got of jokic this year

4- jokic
I thought about tatum above but i couldnt think of any out of 4 series where tatum played better than jokic did in his own underwhelming playoffs

I think he was hit or miss already on a deceptively close lakers series. Then a fair dissapointment in the 2nd round on top of a year where i already thought he didnt go all in

5-tatum
Still the best player on a monster title team. Albeit i dont think any of his 4 series even against thr weaker sides was particularly good and that is hard for me to move past even when giving him his flowers for defense, rebounding or gravity

The awful scoring across the whole postseason capped him this high for me

[Colbinii]

Player of the Year (POY) - most accomplished overall player of that season.

1) Nikola Jokic
2) Luka Doncic
3) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

These 3, plus Embiid+Giannis, were the clear-cut best 5 players in the NBA this season [when playing].

For Jokic, his season ended as he went up against the DPOY and an ATG Defensive team in Minnesota. Luka and the Mavs were able to cruise through Minnesota by squeaking out 2 extremely close games and it cemented the series at 3-0.

Denver finishing 2nd in the West with Murray playing only 59 games is impressive, and it was on the back of Jokic's 79 games. The Nuggets beat who I considered a Top 5 playoff team in the Lakers in 5 games [albeit close games] and Jokic was phenomenal. Jokic was also terrific against Minnesota--and replacing Murray with Kyrie and we may very well have a different NBA Champion this year

SGA had an excellent season. He made the jump to MVP caliber like Embiid did in 2021. It's an incredible jump, and his scoring resiliency and skill-set was on full display in the post-season.

4) Jayson Tatum
5) Rudy Gobert

Not a whole lot to say here. Gobert was the best defensive player in the NBA by a significant margin, he absolutely wrecked top-tier offenses led by Booker/Durant and Jokic/Murray.

Tatum is the full-package of a player. He has no real weaknesses, though he is far from perfect as a basketball player. Complete season and dropped the Kobe-Mentality for the better of the team.

Offensive Player of the Year (OPOY) - most accomplished offensive player of that season.

1) Nikola Jokic
2) Luka Doncic
3) Jalen Brunson

No surprises at the top, but Jalen Brunson [along with Haliburton and SGA] were in the running for #3. When I look at it holistically, Brunson wasn't on a 5-out offense [See SGA and Haliburton] and nobody on New York could replicate what Brunson did. Meanwhile, the small mark on Haliburton is the Siakam/Non-Haliburton offenses were excellent.

Brunson, in the post-season extended his usage to an incredible degree, and the modern-day Allen Iverson came to life.

Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) - most accomplished defensive player of that season.

1) Rudy Gobert

Back to his Prime-self. Never thought he would be able to move so well on the perimeter. Best drop big I have ever seen [understanding other bigs could have been better had they done more of it like David Robinson]. An absolute menace in the Regular Season with minimal drop-off in the post-season.

2) Bam Adebayo
3) Victor Wembanyama

I am a big Bam Adebayo truther, especially on the defensive end. There wasn't a ton of defensive talent on Miami but Bam held down a Top 5 Defensive in the NBA. Slowed down the Celtics offense in the playoffs while the Non-Bam minutes got absolutely lit-up against the C's.

Victor, his award for the next decade


Rookie of the Year (ROY) - most accomplished rookie of that season.

1) Victor Wembanyama
2) Chet Holmgren

These are the two most prominent and separated themselves throughout the regular season from the Brandon Miller and Dereck Lively's of the world. Victor ended up peaking so high during the season it relegated Chet to 2nd. Chet had a tremendous post-season, and it was J-Dub, not Chet, who folded in the post-season. Chet was better than expected in the post-season.

3) Dereck Lively

Surreal post-season. Incredible improvements throughout the season.

Most Improved Player (MIP) - player whose improvement was the most noteworthy accomplishment.

1) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

He made the most important jump--All-NBA to MVP tier. Already touched on his scoring resiliency in the post-season.

2) Isaiah Hartenstein
3) Jalen Brunson

Both Knicks made incredible improvements. Hartenstein in particular went from a bench-big to a high-impact starter. Brunson's volume and turnover economy rivaled Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Coach of the Year (COY)

1) Rick Carlisle
2) Jason Kidd
3) Chris Finch

I think what Carlisle and Kidd did was tremendous by implementing higher-impact players mid-season and figuring things out on the fly. I prefer what Finch did to Phoenix and Denver over Daigneault post-season adjustments and strategies.

One note regarding Finch: Really disappointed in the Dallas series. I understand he was bench-ridden, but Minnesota was the better team, but some of the choices in the series really swung the series in Dallas' favor.

Executive of the Year (EOY)

1) Brad Stevens
2) Nice Harrison
3) Kevin Pritchard

Nico Harrison making the right moves, drafting Lively to the deadline deals to the Kyrie Re-Signing is huge. Brad Stevens acquiring Jrue and Porzingis really help put Boston over-the-top. Acquiring Siakam for low-tier pick(s) and salary filler is big-time stuff.

[Doctor MJ]

I am unsure if i can vote but just for fun here would be my ballot

Okay so please folks, don't make a voting post "for fun" here. You can do it in the Discussion thread, but I want this thread to be as clean as possible when I do the tallying - after which y'all can post how you want here.

Second, even if you're a previous voter like falco, please PM me to ask to vote and get approved before posting here.

All that said, falco, you're a previous vote in good standing, and I'm not so pedantic to make you re-do what you've just done. I'll add you to voting panel and count your vote when the time comes.

~Doc

[MyUniBroDavis]

I like to view things by if a guy did all he could, and how he fought through adversity, as you may remembver from the giannis wade thread awhile back, so luka gets a big boost


POY 1
Luka -

Luka played through a strained achilles, back, and knee, and led the Mavs to a finals berth. He struggled a bit in the finals because they were completely overmatched going against the best offense and defense in the league, but i’m of the belief in the playoffs its showing up in moments and games. His clippers performance wasnt great but he was so hurt and the clippers are not a serious team without kawhi so Im not too mad at that, was fine vs OKC considering injuries and the dorture chamber.

The series he had vs minnesota was likely the best single series someone has played since probably Giannis in the finals, especially with a dude like jaden mcdaniels. although Curry’s over the Celtics would clear because of the stakes of that series and everything of course. Series vs the celtics was a bit more rough, but all things considered he got to the finals with a pretty poor cast outside of Kyrie, and thought he was just missing some good looks in game 5, they were just SOOO overmatched. I dont really think dallas is good at all lol. Not a flawless season but a resilient one. I think minnesotta's perimeter defense is much scarier than their big man defense, and Luka simply destroyed them, it was insane.


POY 2
Shai -
In an empirical sense probably the best season? MVP candidate and honestly I thought it was a 50-50 if he should have won it personally, probably outplayed luka head to head granted luka was hurt and lu dort was in a the oklahoma shade of blue, and teams did more to stop luka, but he didnt shrink when it mattered most or anything they just couldn’t rebound lol

Probably one of those players that is genuinely in the BITW conversation while never seeming quite as unstoppable as Luka, Jokic, Giannis, etc on offense (and obviously not as good as giannis defensively)



POY 3
Jalen Brunson -
Jalen Brunson in his fist playoff run as the man, at the guard position no less, was dropping 36-8 on 2 TOs a game, was crazy. Great offensive impact data too in the RS, but in general completely carried by that playoff run.


POY 4
Jaylen Brown
- I feel weird putting a player i dont consider top 10 this high, but after an ECF mvp and a Finals MVP i thinik he has to get it by default, criteria and all of that.

POY 5
Tyrese haliburton

I was thinking about Jayson Tatum a bit more and honestly the fact that every time the going gets tough as a fan against him you can rely on him to mess up but everyone else was just too damn good this time meant I felt weird having him too 5

Then I saw his clutch stats and oh my god it was so bad lol so Tyrese Haliburton gets here by default for the absurd offense he led and him playing through injury as well as he did


HM1
Jayson Tatum

So hes likely he best player on a dominant title, team, but its hard to kind of put that together when Jaylen Brown won both the ECF mvp, the finals mvp, and tatum was one of the worst scorers on the team, and 100% the only reason why any team would have a chance against boston is whent he going gets tough you know he wont show up.

I mean even in the finals they won comfortably, but the moments games got tight where they needed him, game 2 and 3, he completely sucked lol. He was like what, 2/12 in the fourth quarters of game 2 and 3 combined with 4 fts made? With 2 free throws from end of game fouls or something like that, and those makes being a C&S three and an assisted cut

The literal only reason the Celtics are beatable and not like a top 3 team ever or something is because other teams know theyll have the best player on the floor…
But tatum was the best player on an amazing team, so he likely is number 1 here
He just had a team good enough to carry him


HM:

Giannis - Would have made the list if not for the injury, honestly had a crazy year on offense, despite lillard’s struggles, but its hard to beat Doc Rivers.

Jokic - Obviously have to spend a big chunk justifyfing leaving him out; Would have been a good shout for the top 3 of the list if his postseason play was better, but honestly was hugely disappointing. In the lakers series he was great offensively but was basically hunted by AD on offense, lebron missing a few easy finishes over him on defense that he was barely contesting or fouling on too.

Its been touched on a bit but honestly for a poor defender who a team has to knowingly build around to hide (so think of a implicit negative impact defensively as a center) he was really poor against aggressive help this playoffs. Even against the lakers when you go through is postups he was only effective when the lakers would stop whats working which they literally always do, and the lakers are also kind of a horrible defensive team that matchup poorly vs the nuggets (although AD did better than last year I think, idk hes trying to guard jokic 1 on 1 though lol).

I thought his minnesota performance was pretty awful all things considered, its not one of those things where you can say its a fundamental tactical issue or roster issue why they lost.

I lurked a bit on here and there were talks about Minnesotta having the best defense of all time, or the best frontcourt defense ever or something and its just like, huh?


Like i dont know, I think the entire basis of Jokic is that “hes this unstoppable offensive force, with the right team around him you CANT slow him down, if you guard him to hard the offense is too good because of his passing!”

And its like, okay, I understand this from the basic level of its probably way harder to make jokic inefficient than some other players, but thats separate from being impossible to slow down the overall team offense.

2021 - Suns - 103.2 on court off rtg
2022 - Warriors - 110.0 on court off rtg
2023 - Miami - 111.6 on court off rtg
2024 - Wolves - 110.8 on court off rtg

These numbers aren’t particularly great for an engine’s on court off rtg, i mean this is bottom 5 for most teams I think overall, and an off rtg with a star on the court should be higher than when they are off it for obvious reasons. Im saying this because I think theres an overadjustment to, "He should be unstoppable/is, so therefore he must have done well" I frankly thought this was probably the worst series by a top tier player in awhile given context of both teams, true practical impact versus raw impact and all of that

Now the issue with averages is they do not paint the whole story…, because I understand looking at box scores and saying its all on murray or the cast but I dont really agree with that at all…

A series isnt about having the highest average performance its about winning 4 games… in that context the nuggets supporting cast did do enough in my opinion. As long as you include jamal as part of that cast, I think the nuggets clearly did enough to win game 1, 3,4,5, and 7. I think that comes from a mix of either situation, or just their raw numbers.

Game 1: 24/50, 11/22 from three, 5 turnovers (Jokic had 7).
Team off rtg jokic on court 105.1 jokic off court 114.3
Game 3: 33/62, 13/26 from three,
Game 4: 30/53, 12/24 from three,
Game 5: 29/58, 7/16 from three,
Game 7: 21/55, 6/23 from three

Contextually, I think games 2 and 6 were the games where the cast didn’t give Jokic a chance to win… but this wasn’t a Lebron 2018 losing after going insane or anything, he was limited just the same as his teammates were, he was 5/13 in game 2, and 9/19 in game 6 with 3 turnovers, 2 assists…

Now within each of these games, I think games 4 and 5 he was fantastic… but games 3 and 7 I think both deserve a look at…

In game 3, the lead peaked out at a 23 point lead with 7 minutes left in the third quarter.
At this point in time, Jamal had scored 20 points in a bit more than a half of play, on 15 shots with no free throws. Jokic was 3/9 at that point, with 7 assists, and a turnover
Of course you can talk about Jokic having 7 assists, but what were they?

Short roll, pass to KCP for midrange spot up, Short Roll, Drawn up Set for MPJ, pass out to Jamal who shot a crazy fadeaway contested middey going out of bounds, A second pass after KCP penetrated and KAT helped off Jokic to Jamal, and finally a pass to Aaron Gordan who was open from three because of an off ball screen for Jamal and Gobert sagging off of him…

So not really the most valuable assists there either…

Jokic went crazy AFTER they went up 23 in what was essentially glorified garbage time, but its obvious that you cant look at that the same way as building that lead in the first place

Game 7 had a different story where I felt the same situation occurred but Jokic couldnt bring them home.

The nuggets lead peaked out at 20 points with 11 minutes left in the third quarter.

Jokic had 13 points, 5 offensive rebounds, 5 assists, although 3 of those offensive rebounds were off his own misses, but overall it was a very solid first half.

Jamal had 29 points by this point on 18 shots though and was clearly the driving force of the offense that half (I mean he was damn near on a 50-60 point pace by this point)...

In the next TEN minutes The wolves cut it down to a 2 point game, the nuggets scored 3 points, Jokic himself went ½ from the free throw, a turnover and 3 missed shots in those 10 minutes. Damage was done…

Now he did do well in the fourth quarter, scoring 14 points, but even looking at those points its not as if its Jokic creating everything, some of them are from guys leaving him wide open on pick and roll as a popper (and he missed a few of those too FWIW), 6 points in the last 2 minutes and 4 in the last minute after the wolves already built the lead including that dunk at the end of the game when it was over…

The box score stats are pretty but honestly he wasnt providing timely impact, the only time he started actually scoring off his own actions and not honestly playing like an off ball big nearly was when the game was virtually over…

To me, it was a prettier version of the 2011 lebron finals (Where if I could have voted he would have probably dropped to 4th or 5th that year for that chokejob), but there wasnt really a clear coaching/tactical issue or a personnel issue here… ‘

I believe a season should be evaluated based upon expectations to an extent, not to say just because someone didnt do as good as expected they should be lowered, but the nuggets came into this season as favorites essentially, although I doubt they beat boston. They largely failed because of their offense struggling despite them being built around an offensive anchor and hiding his weaknesses defensively, for me that is enough to drop him to where Giannis is.

I think the cast in the context that jamal is considered part of the cast, did enough that it was the driving force for 2 potential wins (3, 7), and did great in 3 others (1,4,5). I think they were horrendous in games 2 and 6, but Jokic himself was unimpressive those games either.. Its not just about if you score, its when, the situation and all of that.


Overall, maybe im overadjusting from the “GOAT Offense” talk to that not remotely matching the results when you think about the ideas of team construction and alignment, I do think hes still got a reasonable case for best offensive post big ever though, which is big. But that + How the team is constructed around him defensively to hide him. Also I dont get the GOAT Defensive frontcourt talk, Naz and KAT are both considered average or below average defenders, although provide size, Gobert is great but his strength isnt post defense at least compared to his help. The timberwovles themselves were 23rd in post defense in the regular season as a roster...

I think had this occured in the finals after a dominant run throughout that would be one thing, but a second round after essentially a bye in the fist round because the lakers are mentally terrified of the nuggets and constantly stop doing what works really doesnt move me at all here. I thought this was a series where my thoughts were, if Jokic showed up when they needed him they would have won and that just wasnt the case, in a 7 game series he only really had 2 games where he was the driving force to a win, in 2 he was poor like his teammates, in 2 he simply didnt show up in a timely manner, and in 1 (arguably 2 considering g7) jamal was the driving force putting them in a strong position

OPOY 1
Luka - Dominated minnesota, was very impressive, great RS
OPOY 2
Tyrese haliburton
- I genuinely completely forgot this man existed, but led such an absurd offense despite his hamstring injury, not the best roster and very coaching driven but still, have to give credit where credit is due
OPOY 3
Jokic - massively dissapointed by his playoffs, but I think him over shai is still fair (since people seem to be unhappy with my vote).


ROY 1
Wemby
I thought he was the best defender in the league already, but clealry the best rookie by far right now.
ROY 2
Chet
Maybe the highest impact rookie on a contending team weve seen in a very, very long time


DPOY 1
Wemby
The defensive stats are nutty, if he had good players around him on defense it would be scary.
DPOY 2
Gobert
I wasnt that moved by his playoffs, I dont think anything really changed so I dont think the run was a "gotcha" moment or anything. I think in that wolves series in terms of defending Jokic there were multiple players who would have similar success within the role and gameplan they had
DPOY 3
Bam
Kind of by default

EOY
Brad Stevens - the celtics are unfairly stacked rn lol

COY
Mark Daigneault - what he did with that young OKC team was insane
Jason Kidd - I thought Kidd coached teh mavs very well on both ends, many adjustments and was very smart
Mike Malone or Joe mazulla - Mazulla felt like he was able to bring together that locker room well, malone just is a top 3 coach though so its weird leaving him out
Spo is always the BITW here but playoffs they just got hurt and thats where he normally shines

[Doctor MJ]

Doc, is it OK if don't vote on Coach or Executives? Wasn't sure based on wording of "full ballot". I don't feel like I know enough to render much opinion on those.

Absolutely. By "full ballot" I mean you can't just vote for your #1 and leave the rest blank.

[therealbig3]

POY:

1. Nikola Jokic
2. Luka Doncic
3. SGA
4. Tatum
5. LeBron

I think Nikola was once again clearly the best player in the league this year during the RS, earning a well-deserved 3rd MVP in 4 years. In the playoffs, he just dismantled the Lakers, despite really impressive performances for the most part from LeBron and AD. Yeah, he had noted struggles against the Timberwolves, who were almost custom-built to stop him, and he still played well enough to win. He's got flaws that can be attacked, but that was the case for everyone, there's no true perfect player this year. I don't think his defense was nearly the same liability that Doncic's was, and offensively, he's still the best in the league for me.

Luka had a great season and really shined in the playoffs...until the Celtics series. Still, leading an underdog team past 2 excellent teams in OKC and Minnesota is super impressive, and he had his good moments against the Celtics, although his defense and his ball-dominance was quite bad. Still, I think he outplayed the rest of the competition here.

SGA had a great two way season, led the best team in the RS, and was a strong top 3 MVP candidate. Didn't disappoint in the playoffs either. I think there's a pretty big gap between SGA and Luka/Jokic offensively though, moreso than on defense.

Tatum is the best player for the best team in the league, and although he's got legitimate offensive limitations, especially against playoff defenses which reared its ugly head again, he found ways to contribute in other aspects, including with his defense and his rebounding, which are excellent. His passing has also taken a jump, just based on much better decision-making and reads. All in all, he's a level below Jokic/Doncic/SGA who I see as a clear top 3, because he's not as offensively consistent.

I think LeBron has officially become "he's old and on a mediocre team, so he's not that good any more" level of underrated. Put together his first reasonably healthy season in a while, and although the Lakers themselves weren't that great this year, if you look at their roster, outside of LeBron and AD, they don't have a whole lot going for them. Reaves, DLo, and Rui are the next best players, and although I'm a Reaves believer...at this point in their careers, you need to give LeBron and AD a lot more than that. Especially with how deep the West is, I think 47 wins and quite honestly the closest sweep I've ever seen against the 2 seed is pretty impressive. And in that series, although Jokic to me was still the best player, there were times I was questioning if it was still LeBron. He was that good.

HM to Brunson and Gobert, but I still think LeBron is a better player than either.


DPOY:

1. Gobert
2. Bam
3. Wemby

Not too much to discuss here. Gobert came in and anchored the best defense in the league which proceeded to wreck havoc on the Suns and the Nuggets. Yeah, they got beat by a Mavs team whose two best players are maybe the two best in the league at hitting tough shots, which is what the Minnesota defense wants you to take. Felt like Minnesota's failing in that series was mainly because their best offensive players didn't show up (Edwards and KAT).

Bam has consistently been one of the best defensive players in the league for years now, and I think will go down as one of the best defensive players to never win DPOY, ala Duncan.

Wemby is just a freak talent and will own this award soon enough, feel like he really cemented himself in the latter half of the season as that dude.


OPOY:

1. Jokic
2. Doncic
3. LeBron

Not much to explain for Jokic and Doncic, again I get back to LeBron being underrated now. He's still one of the best offensive weapons in the league, especially in the playoffs. He's lost a lot defensively, but offensively, he had one of his best shooting seasons ever actually, is still one of the best passers in the league, and still a dominant scorer that can get it done from all areas of the court. I think LeBron is still capable of being the centerpiece for an elite offense with the right players around him. The Lakers just don't have that outside of AD and a couple of shooters.

COY:

1. Joe Mazzulla
2. Mark Daigneault
3. Jason Kidd

The Celtics got underrated all year, or even a token "yeah they're great, but..." kind of dismissal, just because we've seen them have great seasons before but come up short in the playoffs. But this year, they dominated all year, had one of the most impressive RS of all time, and despite all that, were STILL doubted in the playoffs and other teams got way more attention. The Timberwolves-Nuggets series was touted as the real championship, until it wasn't. Then it was the Timberwolves-Mavs series that was actually the real championship, until it wasn't. Then in the actual championship, the Mavs got way more attention...until the Celtics spanked them too. They followed up a 64 win season with a 16-3 playoff run. They were so good, it didn't matter if Tatum played well or not, if KP even played or not...they still just kept winning, with stifling defense and a nearly unstoppable 3pt barrage. If it not for a "yeah we took this for granted" game 4 blowout loss to the Mavs, we'd be looking at them in even more awe. And I give a majority of the credit to Mazzulla for the performance they put together this season. Not even objectively great coaches like Stevens or Udoka were able to get them over the hump, often times losing when on paper, they had better talent. Mazzulla was the first one to actually realize the potential of that talent.

Daigneault took a young Thunder team built around SGA and led them to the #1 seed in the West. They're poised to continue contending for years and maybe even break through like the Celtics did at some point. Don't really have a complaint for him this year, SGA continues to rise and I thought he did a great overall job.

Kidd gets a lot of crap, including from me in previous years...but the Mavs this year were ridiculously impressive. He tamed Kyrie and had him playing some of the best basketball of his life, he unleashed Luka, he got great performances out of a rookie center like Lively, he integrated trade deadline acquisitions seamlessly like Washington and Gafford, and then in the playoffs, his team beat 3 straight 50+ win teams without HCA and were underdogs in two of those series. And they did it in pretty impressive fashion. There was no question they were better than the Thunder and the Timberwolves. Ran into a buzzsaw of a Celtics team but I don't think there was much that he could do against a clearly superior opponent.

[OhayoKD]

Found Unibro's post pretty compelling. WIll have to reconsider somethings. I sort of also like the "overcoming adversity" point, may champion Embid higher.

[The-Power]

I'm a bit pressed for time and the deadline is approaching, so let me get in my votes (without as much detail as I would have liked) even as I continue to be open to changing them.

POY

1. Jokic
2. SGA
3. Doncic
4. Brunson
5. Tatum
HM: Gobert, LeBron

Jokic, to me, had the best RS out of everyone and only SGA was particularly close to him before losing some ground towards the end. And he had a strong playoff showing as well all things considered despite a second-round exit, and so nobody really managed to bridge the gap. Similar reasoning applies to SGA. He managed to pull ahead of his competition for the RS and continued to perform in the playoffs. I won't fault him for a second-round exit when he was the overall best player in that series and outperformed his direct competitor. Doncic solidified his 3rd place towards the end of the RS – making the best use of the talent influx on his team – and with a good playoff run. His series against the Timberwolves was incredible and perhaps the best of the entire playoffs. Had this been the norm for him during the playoffs he probably would have been my #1 but that was not the case, and his playoff performances overall have not been nearly dominant enough to bridge the RS gap IMO. After that I had three main candidates in Brunson, Tatum and Gobert, with LeBron also deserving an honorable mention. Ultimately, I was incredibly impressed by Brunson's elevation of the Knicks offense as the clear offensive force in both the RS and the PS. I am not the biggest fan of his play style but this has no effect on my vote. Looking at the results and his contribution, I do think he deserves a top 5 finish. I also ultimately decided to place Tatum in my top 5. It was difficult to compare Brunson and Tatum due to their very different team contexts and roles, so I am not firm on the order. But I do contend that Tatum was the Celtics MVP and best player – by a healthy margin – and the Celtics did play like an ATG team as we all know. I also do believe that Tatum has been the Celtics MVP over the last two series combined despite having no individual award to show for it; he was still the Celtics main offensive creator as well as key to their defensive scheme. Gobert is the unlucky one out as I am considering his limitations in comparison to the others. I do have him as my DPOY and the T-Wolves' best player, however.

OPOY

1. Jokic
2. Doncic
3. Brunson
HM: Haliburton, SGA

All of the three I have chosen get their value primarily or even exclusively from their offensive impact. Thus, the reasoning outlined for POY applies here as well. Jokic and Doncic are the two best offensive players in the league with Jokic still having a leg up on Luka (more efficient and more versatile, even as Luka has advantages over Jokic in certain match-ups (as the Minnesota series showed) – but that also holds true vice versa). Third spot I decided to give to Brunson for what he managed to accomplish with the Knicks on offense – that was a true carry-job for the most part. SGA is close as well but the separation between the two players is much more due to defense than offense. Haliburton deserves an HM as he was in the running for OPOY until his injury. He was just never the same after that and while it's not clear how much of that was due to lasting effects from the injuries versus reverting back to the mean or having to adjust to the playoffs (odds are that it was a combination of both), he still was near the top of all players when it comes to offensive impact over the course of the season.

DPOY

1. Gobert
2. Wembanyama
3. Caruso
HM: Adebayo

The first two were obvious choices for me. Gobert edges out Victor as he had his team play some of the best defense in recent memory with him at the helm. Individually, Victor may already be as good as, or even better than, Gobert but the fact that the Spurs never really played for anything and Victor could not prove himself in the playoffs means I am more reluctant to put him as the DPOY just yet. Still, Victor's has been marvelous on defense and I don't think there has been a single player who was as disruptive to opponents as him. He was the sole reason that the Spurs were not at the very bottom of teams on defense. For the third spot, I had two main contenders: Bam and Caruso. It's tough to compare these two due to their roles being so fundamentally different. I am normally very skeptical of awarding smaller perimeter defenders in this category as I believe their impact to be considerably less than those of the best big men – but Caruso has really been a revelation. He elevated Chicago's defense to an extent we normally only see with the best defensive big men and there is really nobody else I can point to in order to explain that impact signal away. At the same time, Bam anchored an elite Miami defense and we know that this is not a fluke with him either. Since Bam seems to be the choice for most people, I decided to give Caruso his flowers and let him receive some well-earned DPOY shares.

ROY

1. Wembanyama
2. Holmgren
3. Lively
HM: Miller

Victor is the easy choice. One of the best defensive players in the league already and he flashed a ton of offensive talent. His impact has not been great on that end but that is also due to him getting to experiment a ton, which I will not hold against him. I think he has already shown that he has the ceiling of an offensive star and it is easy to see that he can be highly impactful off the ball, and terrify defenses, when the situation is right. Chet would be ROY in most years. He has been incredible overall. Not as good on defense as Victor but still one of the top defenders in the league already. He has also been excellent on offense in a complementary role as his versatile skill-set was on full display throughout the season (shooting threat, lob threat, connective passer, and flashes of self-creation). Lively made my ballot after all. I had Miller #3 after the RS but Lively in the same tier (very different roles and situations make it difficult to choose for this category at times), and Lively's impact in the playoffs just pushes him ahead. He was a terror on defense in some match-up and genuinely elevated the Mavericks en route to the Finals – that's an impressive feat as a Rookie and deserves full recognition.

MIP

1. Avdija
2. Brunson
3. Nesmith

The most difficult ballot for me because there are so many different criteria that are reasonable to apply or focus on. Are we looking more at skill or impact improvement? Which jumps are the most impressive, and are we focusing more on difficulty or relevance here? How much do expectations of improvement factor in? Purely from an impact perspective, Brunson should be my #1 because I had him nowhere near the top 5 at any time before this year, and SGA should also be pretty high up there. But how much of their rise is based on inherent improvement versus being better utilized and being more comfortable in their role or with their teammates? How much does that even matter for the award? Maxey quickly found his way in a new role, and Sengün nicely adapted to a larger role. But how much of it is a result of actual improvement, or would they have already been capable of performing similarly well last year? Clearly the basic tools were already there. Avdija and Jalen Johnson firmly solidified themselves as genuine NBA starters, so that's a nice jump. Is that, however, enough to beat out those who made the arguably more difficult (and likely more relevant) leaps to All-Star, superstar or MVP-level player? What are we doing with someone like Nesmith who took a clear step forward and provided a lot of value for his team, but clearly continues to be the very definition of a role player. I think those players would be my primary candidates but they all rely on very different arguments. I have no idea what to do here, so I opted for a ‘potpourri approach’ for the time being and gave flowers to the diverse types of players I considered for this category. It's not exactly consistent but I'd argue that in lieu of a clear definition of the award, I might as well prioritize representation. I am very open to changing the list, though, and see this more as a preliminary list.

6MOY

1. McConnell
2. Reid
3. Bogdan Bogdanovic

Tough ballot as well. As I mentioned in a previous post, for me this award is about players who immediately change the dynamics of the game to the positive for their team when they enter the court, and/or about players who manage to cover well for star players helping their teams not miss much of their beat. All three above fit at least one of the two categories. McConnell I placed #1 despite his comparatively lower playing time, which gave and gives me some pause. But he not only played well individually but was also instrumental for the Pacers whenever their superstar sat on the bench or missed games. I like his resume the most, I think. Reid was part of a three-headed big men trio and filled in nicely next to as well as in place of either of them but I am not convinced that he elevated his team as much as McConnell. Bogdanovic is #3 as the more classic 6MOY archetype who, however, was legitimately one of the few bright spots on that Hawks team and managed to greatly elevate the line-ups in which he played. I was looking forward to potentially including Murphy III (perhaps the most talented bench player last season) and Exum despite them missing a number of games, but unfortunately their lack of playoff contributions made it almost impossible for them to bridge the gap IMO. Other players I considered were Russell Westbrook, Norman Powell, Bobby Portis, Isaiah Joe, Payton Pritchard, Malik Monk, Amen Thompson, Ayo Dosunmu, Andre Drummond and Brandin Podziemski – not sure which of them deserve an HM and which do not, though, so I'll refrain from naming anyone as an HM (at least for now).

COY

1. Daigneault
2. Carlisle
3. Thibodeau
HM: Spoelstra, Mazzulla

Tough choices here. Daigneault at #1 may have been the easiest for me. He led OKC to heights I did not think were possible at the start of the season. He had his young players fully buy in and execute his vision, and his signature was clearly visible on offense as well as defense. Then it gets very difficult. I opted for Carlisle as my #2. What he managed to get out of his team on offense has been nothing short of incredible and I want to give him full recognition for that. He also managed to integrate Siakam nicely in the middle of the season which is not an easy task for a team that plays such a loose and highly efficient style on offense that needed to be adapted. Thibodeau also worked wonders with his squad in New York, leading them to a top 10 offense and defense despite not having an elite roster available. It feels wrong to not honor Mazzulla here considering the Celtics historical season, so I decided to include him in the HM. At the end of the day, however, I was just not as sure how much of the success was directly tied to him versus the elite and balanced team in addition to their continuity over the years that led to these results (to be clear: I do believe he clearly had a positive impact and deserves his flowers). Spoelstra is always at least an HM for me and I will include him just on principle (but he did also, once again, get the most out of a very flawed team further limited by injuries and had them play great defense throughout the season).

EOY

1. Stevens
2. Harrison
3. Pritchard

So, the first two are clear to me. Stevens build this juggernaut and deserves a ton of credit for it. Not all happened within one season but this is the one in which it all culminated. And he made some tough choices along the way. First and foremost, they would not have been where they ended up without Jrue – of that I'm confident. So that alone propels him in addition to what he had done before that (adding White and Porzingis, not breaking up the wing duo, and consistently willing to trade players that helped them in the past to become even better). Harrison did something remarkable, which is taking a solid but flawed team and adding two players mid-season to elevate them to contender status (not just the playoff run; also the end of the RS was brilliant for Dallas). Adding Washington and Gafford in the middle of the season, drafting Lively, and signing Exum and Jones Jr. as contributors – that worked out perfectly and warrants a ton of credit. The last choice was difficult. I was not sure what to focus on and to be quite frank, I may not have put in a third name if it weren't been required for the ballot to be counted. I think Pritchard deserves recognition for being willing to add Siakam when he felt like the team was ready and it was still possible with their cap situation. Whether we'll look back at this as a good decision with the benefit of hindsight remains to be seen but nobody can take away the ECF run the Pacers had this year, and that's worth something to a franchise like the Pacers. Toppin contributed nicely as well and was a very good fit for their offense. Sheppard was also a nice find for them in the late first; I don't know what his future in the league will look like but he did positively contribute already in his Rookie season and that is worth something. I am very open to arguments for other candidates, though.

[falcolombardi]

I am unsure if i can vote but just for fun here would be my ballot

Okay so please folks, don't make a voting post "for fun" here. You can do it in the Discussion thread, but I want this thread to be as clean as possible when I do the tallying - after which y'all can post how you want here.

Second, even if you're a previous voter like falco, please PM me to ask to vote and get approved before posting here.

All that said, falco, you're a previous vote in good standing, and I'm not so pedantic to make you re-do what you've just done. I'll add you to voting panel and count your vote when the time comes.

~Doc

Ok, thanks doc

[therealbig3]

I wouldn’t go as far as dropping Jokic below clearly inferior players like Haliburton or Brown, or a guy who didn’t even play in the playoffs like Giannis, but I agree, unibro made some outstanding points about Jokic’s play against the Wolves.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Oh Jokic is above Giannis HM aren’t sorted