With perhaps the weirdest regular season in NBA history coming to a close, it's that time of the year where selected NBA media members fill out their ballots for the NBA's regular-season awards. Even though my hypothetical ballot won't count for anything, I still think it makes for a fun piece of writing.
Before we begin, I want to preface this by saying that these are my selections for whom I think deserves to win the award, not whom I think is actually going to win it when the awards are announced. With that being said, here are my selections for the 2020-2021 NBA Awards:
Most Valuable Player: Nikola Jokic
Closer to the midway point of the regular season I said that this could be one of the closest MVP races we have seen in quite some time, well that has changed dramatically. With basically all MVP calibre players such as Joel Embiid, James Harden and LeBron James suffering significant injuries and missing large chunks of time due to those injuries, the MVP race became a battle of attrition, and Nikola Jokic appears to be the last man standing.
However, that is not to diminish the season Nikola Jokic has had, the Joker has been a monster all season long. Jokic is unanimously regarded as the best playmaking center of all time, but this season from Jokic might be the best offensive season any center has had in the history of basketball. Per 36 minutes, Jokic this season has averaged 26.9 points,11.2 rebounds and 8.9 assists on 57% shooting from the field, 42% shooting from three-point range and 85% shooting from the free-throw line. His 131 offensive rating ranks fifth in the league and his 31.44 PER ranks ninth all-time, just a tick behind Steph Curry's unanimous MVP season.
Tim Bontemps, from ESPN, conducted a mock straw poll for the MVP award and Nikola Jokic got 90 out of the potential 101 first-place votes. While I don't make my personal selections based on the general public, those results just go to show that Jokic is the runaway winner for MVP in the eyes of the voters and I agree.
Rookie of the Year: LaMelo Ball
Going into the draft, I said LaMelo Ball was by far the best player in the draft and I would have selected him with the first overall pick, regardless of fit. But I have to admit, even I didn't expect him to be this good this fast. I loved the prospect of what LaMelo could turn into as a player, but I thought there would be some serious growing pains for LaMelo in his rookie year. I thought his jumpshot needed to be fixed, I thought he would struggle to adjust to the physicality and the pace of the NBA, you know like 99% of rookie point guards do.
However, from the very first game of the season, LaMelo Ball showed that he was flat-out special. His ability to adapt to different defensive coverages and his ability to dissect any defense thrown at him like he was a surgeon with next-level passes led to him quickly cracking the starting rotation for the Charlotte Hornets. In the 21 games he started, LaMelo averaged 19.5 points, 6.2 assists and 5.8 rebounds on 43% percent shooting from three. Those numbers are on par with Luka Doncic's rookie numbers.
I guess there was some debate when LaMelo went down with what we initially thought would be a season-ending injury and Anthony Edwards started to come around. I personally would have voted for LaMelo even if he hadn't played in another game this season because he was just so much better than every other rookie when he was playing. At the time LaMelo went down with his injury, he was leading all rookies in points, rebounds, assists, steals and most importantly his production was impacting winning, helping lead the Hornets to a .500 record. Fortunately, LaMelo has since returned to close out the regular season and regained his mantle for Rookie of the Year.
Defensive Player of the Year: Rudy Gobert
Rudy Gobert is by far the defensive player of the year, no matter what Ben Simmons tries to tell you. Even in today's perimeter-oriented and three-point shooting league, paint protection is the most valuable defensive skill in basketball and there is no one who does it better than Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert. Against Gobert, opponents at the rim shoot 52 percent, which is almost 10% below league average from that area of the floor. The fact that Rudy Gobert has been able to lead the Jazz to the fourth-best defense in basketball with only one other above-average defensive player in the rotation is one of the most underrated stories of this season.
Rudy Gobert is so dominant on the defensive end of the floor that with him on the floor, the Utah Jazz allow only 100.7 points per 100 possessions, which is 7 points better than the current best defense in basketball. To put that into perspective, 7 points is the difference between the first-placed defense Los Angeles Lakers and the twenty-third-placed defense Orlando Magic. But it doesn't stop there, with Gobert off the floor the Jazz allow 118.3 points per 100 possessions, which would rank twenty-ninth in the entire league! Gobert also ranks first in defensive winshares and defensive box plus/minus.
Gobert single-handedly turns the Utah Jazz from the second-worst defensive team in basketball to by far the best defensive team in basketball. Rudy Gobert is the only player in basketball who can turn any team, regardless of the defensive talent around him, into a top 10 defense and as a result of that, he is the most impactful defender in the league during the course of the regular season.
Also, if Rudy Gobert wins the DPOY award this season, which in all likelihood he will, he will become just the fourth player in NBA history to win 3 or more DPOY awards, joining Dikembe Mutombo, Ben Wallace and Dwight Howard and placing himself amongst the greatest defenders to ever play the sport.
Most Improved Player: Joel Embiid
This is most likely not the place you expected Joel Embiid to feature on the list, but allow me to explain. Last year Joel Embiid had a disappointing season by his standards, averaging 23 points and 11 rebounds on 59 TS% and didn't even make an All-NBA team. This season Joel Embiid is averaging 30 points per game and 11 rebounds a game on 64 TS% and in my opinion was the best player in the regular season on a per-minute basis. So just by looking at the traditional stats, Joel Embiid had one of the biggest jumps in production, increasing his scoring average by 7 points per game.
However, Embiids improvement goes deeper than just the traditional box-score stats, Embiid has one of the biggest shooting improvements I have seen in recent history. Last season Joel Embiid shot 33% percent from three-point range, this year he is at 38%. The crazy part is that's not the biggest improvement in his shooting. Last year from mid-range Embiid shot just 40%, this year he is shooting 51 percent from that area. Last year on pullup jump shots Embiid shot an ugly 32.3%, this year he is at a scorching 57% on pull-up jump shots. Embiid has also reached Shaq levels in terms of free-throw attempts, the only difference is teams fouled Shaq because he sucked at free-throws and Embiid shoots 85% on them.
This brings me to my point about value. Julius Randle, who is most likely going to win the award, went from maybe the 60th best player in the NBA to the 30th best player in the NBA and Joel Embiid went from the 15th best player in the NBA to the 5th best player in the NBA. So while Julius Randle had a larger jump in terms of magnitude, I would argue that Joel Embiid made the larger improvement because he went from an All-Star to a Superstar. Julius Randle took the leap to an All-star calibre player, but we have dozens on All-Stars in the league, there are only about a handful of superstars in the league. Therefore, I believe Joel Embiid made the most meaningful improvement in basketball this season and as a product of that improvement, he is my selection for the Most Improved Player of the Year.
Sixth Man of the Year: Joe Ingles
That is probably not the Utah Jazz player you were expecting to see, huh? I earlier stated that this is my selection for who deserves the award, not who is going to win it. The sixth man of the year award is where my criteria drastically differs from the criteria of the NBA because for some reason the NBA treats this award as the "who scores the most points off the bench award" and I just refuse to reduce the award to that, because while scoring is valuable, there is a multitude of other things a bench player can do to impact winning.
For why Joe Ingles deserves this award, Joe Ingles has been the best role player in basketball this season. Ingles is averaging 12.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists on 49% percent shooting from three. But those numbers don't even begin to tell you how impactful Joe Ingles has been this season. In the 2020-2021 season, Joe Ingles has a 72 TS%, which is the highest mark in NBA history. Remember when I told you that Jokic has the fifth-highest offensive rating in the league this season? Well, Joe Ingles is first on that list with an offensive rating of 134.1! That doesn't mean he's a better offensive player than Jokic because they have fundamentally different roles in the offense, but it is still an indicator of how great Joe Ingles has been this season.
Joe Ingles also effectively plays the point guard role for the Jazz's second unit and adds value in other areas such as playmaking and get this, defense! Whilst Jordan Clarkson appears as the runaway favourite to win the award because he is averaging 17.5 points per game, I believe Joe Ingles has not only been the best bench player on the Utah Jazz, but the best bench player in the entire league.
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