2021 NBA awards: Final picks for MVP, Rookie of the Year and every other award
Most Improved Player
3. Michael Porter Jr., Denver Nuggets
2. Jerami Grant, Detroit Pistons
1. Julius Randle, New York Knicks
Like a few other NBA awards, the qualifications for Most Improved Player can be hard to decipher. Is it meant for someone we expected to make the leap from promising youngster to established star? Is it reserved for relatively unknown players who then made a surprising jump to being useful rotation pieces? And why is the progress of second-year players from their rookie seasons so easily dismissed as “expected development,” but third-year players win it so frequently?
While it can be difficult to narrow down the parameters, a look at the previous MIP winners over the last decade or so shows a lot of guys making the leap from good to great — not great to superb, which rules out MVP-caliber jumps like Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, or lesser leaps from established All-Stars like Bam Adebayo and Zach LaVine. Even Jaylen Brown and De’Aaron Fox might fit that same category, given the very good numbers they already posted last year.
Julius Randle, though, is the epitome of making the superstar leap, and he did so in the most unlikely success story the NBA has seen outside of Phoenix. That twinge of unexpected growth helps his case. Averaging 24.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game, Randle posted career highs across the board, but the drastic improvement extended to the eye test as well.
Randle’s role as a playmaker, ball-handler and all-around threat with the rock in his hands has never been so dynamic, and his night-and-day development as a 3-point shooter — 41.1 percent on 5.5 attempts per game — unlocked his fullest potential as an offensive threat who can bully his way to the rim, create for others or, improbably, drill step-back 3s off the dribble. Throw in the fact that he’s the best player on a playoff-bound New York Knicks squad that no one expected to be this good, and this award is a no-brainer.
From there it gets tricky. Guys like Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby are showing signs of making the leap but may still be a year away from doing so in the scoring column, where voters look first. Zion Williamson and Darius Garland showed tantalizing progress but will be dismissed as second-year players, especially since we already knew Zion was good and Garland had nowhere to go but up after his rookie year. Chris Boucher and Cameron Payne proved their status as on-the-rise, valuable rotation players who came out of nowhere, but they don’t have the statistical profiles to crack the top three. Christian Wood put up impressive numbers, but he did so on a terrible Houston Rockets team, missed too many games and was already being dinged for putting up similar numbers last year when he finally got bigger minutes with the Detroit Pistons.
That leaves Michael Porter Jr. and Jerami Grant among the frontrunners. MPJ is effectively a second-year player after missing his entire rookie season, so maybe we’re being a tad hypocritical here, but his immense growth as a legitimate go-to scorer on offense — as well as his improvement from being a defensive liability to at least passable on that end — cannot be ignored. Averaging 19.0 points, 7.3 rebounds and 0.9 blocks per game on spicy .542/.445/.791 shooting splits, Porter’s ceiling as a go-to bucket-getter on a playoff contender is materializing quicker than expected, and it’s a big reason why the Denver Nuggets haven’t fallen apart despite losing Jamal Murray.
However, since this is technically only his second year actually playing on an NBA court, we’re giving the edge for second place to Grant, who’s proven every single doubter wrong after he chose to leave Denver for an expanded role on a much worse team. On the surface, it may appear like he only validated his critics: He shot just 42.9 percent from the field, dipped from 38.9 percent from 3 last season to 35 percent this year, and the Detroit Pistons finished with the league’s second-worst record at 20-52.
But that’s ignoring the surrounding context. The Pistons had very little established talent outside of Grant, especially after dumping Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin. Grant put up a career-high 22.3 points and 4.6 rebounds per game, grew leaps and bounds as a primary option on offense and proved his production was more than just a byproduct of putting up empty numbers on a bad team. He’ll never be the best player on a contender, but even on a bottom-feeder like Detroit, that kind of individual growth and enormous responsibility shouldn’t be dismissed.