It is the middle of March in the 2016-17 NBA season. Let’s take a look at who the front-runners are for the major six awards in this week’s NBA Award Watch.
The NBA is getting ever closer to the home stretch. Teams are beginning to lock up playoff spots, while others are getting ready to enter the NBA Draft Lottery. Some organizations are gearing up for May and June basketball, while some clubs are eagerly awaiting which top prospects will sign in the NCAA Tournament.
As every team in the NBA has roughly 15 games left, let’s take a look at who are the front-runners for the six major awards. Here is this week’s NBA Award Watch.
Most Valuable Player: Kawhi Leonard
NBA MVP is quickly becoming a four-man race. This race is going to go down to the wire between Houston Rockets shooting guard James Harden, Cleveland Cavaliers small forward LeBron James, San Antonio Spurs small forward Kawhi Leonard and Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook.
For the second straight week, this award will end up going to Leonard. He may not have humiliated Harden in crunch-time like he did last week, but Leonard is asserting himself as the best player on possibly the best team in basketball.
He is a two-way player and his Spurs are poised to land the top-seed in the Western Conference Playoffs over the Golden State Warriors. Leonard is second in the NBA in PER (28.1), second in Win Shares (11.3), fifth in Value Over Replacement Player (5.0) and seventh in Box Plus-Minus (8.0).
Despite losing Tim Duncan to retirement after last season, the Spurs haven’t skipped a beat as a Western Conference juggernaut. If San Antonio wins well over 60 games and clinches the top seed in the West, it will be really hard to not give the NBA MVP to Leonard.
Defensive Player of the Year: Rudy Gobert
Defensive Player of the Year is quickly resolving into a two-man race out of the West Coast. Golden State Warriors power forward Draymond Green had been the front-runner until very recently.
The Warriors’ slide after Kevin Durant’s injury has allowed Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert to usurp him as the new front-runner for Defensive Player of the Year. Gobert’s Jazz are going to make the Western Conference Playoffs, either as the No. 4 or No. 5 seed. They’ll be a formidable matchup for Golden State or San Antonio in the Western Conference Semifinals should they get that far.
Gobert leads the NBA in Defensive Win Shares (4.9) and blocks per game (2.5). He is second in Defensive Box Plus-Minus to only Green at 4.4. Gobert has been the anchor of a strong Jazz defense that has a realistic, but finite Western Conference Finals ceiling.
Elite rim protection like Gobert offers can be undermined in the small ball era of the NBA. With the sluggish pace that Utah plays at, it allows Gobert to play unencumbered defense on the other end of the floor. He will be key in how far Utah goes in the 2017 NBA Playoffs.
Rookie of the Year: Dario Saric
With Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid seeing his rookie season come to an end after 31 fantastic games, we have to look at who else can overtake him for Rookie of the Year honors in the NBA this season.
Milwaukee Bucks point guard Malcolm Brogdon, Denver Nuggets shooting guard Jamal Murray and Dallas Mavericks point guard Yogi Ferrell all have a shot, but this award should now belong to 76ers power forward Dario Saric.
Philadelphia may be a bad team again in 2016-17, but Saric has been the club’s most consistent player this season. He is averaging 12.4 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 67 games played this season. Saric is making 41.4 percent of his shots from the field and 32.3 percent from beyond the arc.
To be fair, this is a very weak rookie class in the NBA. Saric emerged as a First-Team All-Rookie level player from opening tip. He should be rewarded for his consistency during his first season in the NBA with the 76ers.
Most Improved Player: Nikola Jokic
We thought we knew was going to win the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. Then again, things can change in a moment’s notice in professional sports. That’s why they are so entertaining.
From pretty much day one of the 2016-17 NBA season, Most Improved Player was Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo’s to lose. He emerged as an Eastern Conference All-Star starter in his fourth year in the league. The jump shot isn’t there yet, but Antetokounmpo is a star in the dairy land for sure.
Quietly moving mountains in the Mile High City of Denver is Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic. Denver has been in eighth place in the Western Conference for close to a month now. Jokic’s rise to borderline stardom for the Nuggets cannot be overlooked anymore.
He is averaging 16.1 points, 9.3 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game for Michael Malone’s Nuggets. Jokic has a slightly better PER over Antetokounmpo at 26.6 and 7.6 Win Shares on the season. Denver and Milwaukee are borderline playoff teams. Whichever team ends the year on a better note will likely swing the Most Improved vote.
Sixth Man of the Year: Lou Williams
It has been established that the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year will be a member of the 2016-17 Houston Rockets. While there was a brief moment where Eric Gordon was in the lead, the award has been Lou Williams for most of the NBA season.
Williams had been an early leader for Sixth Man with Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter during the first half. He had been the best player on a lousy Los Angeles Lakers team, but his sharpshooting off the bench had him poised to win his second Sixth Man in three seasons.
Kanter broke his hand in frustration and fell out of the race entirely. Williams was traded from the Lakers to the Rockets at the deadline and never looked back. He is a big reason that Houston might be the most dangerous team entering the Western Conference Playoffs.
Williams is averaging 18.0 points, 3.0 assists and 2.3 rebounds per game primarily off the bench. His PER of 23.1 is the best of a non-starter in the NBA. It’s insane that he is responsible for 5.5 Win Shares this season. The Lakers are terrible and he didn’t even start for them. Giving Sixth Man of the Year to anybody else would be a total travesty.
Coach of the Year: Erik Spoelstra
Who is the second best coach in the NBA today? We know who No. 1 is and that would be Gregg Popovich of the Spurs. Don’t think to hard on this, as it’s more obvious than you think. He’s won two NBA Championships and been to four NBA Finals.
It’s Erik Spoelstra and he’s doing an outstanding job with the 2016-17 Miami Heat team. Miami is 32-35 on the year and only half a game back of the Bucks for the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs.
In three years time, Spoelstra has lost all of The Big Three (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh) and still has the Heat vying for the playoffs. This team was supposed to rebuild, not push for the playoffs with guys like Luke Babbitt, Rodney McGruder and Dion Waiters.
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Miami probably won’t win a game against the Cavaliers in the first round of the 2017 Eastern Conference Playoffs, but being there in a total rebuilding year is a testament to how great of a head coach Spoelstra is. This was a 20-win team that might finish at or around .500.