Since 1996, only one guard has won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) award, an honor now named after Hakeem Olajuwon. At least some would argue, the clear lean toward big men, or at least bigger players when included forwards, is for good reason. Simply put, it is easier to make a transcendent defensive impact as a player moves up the positional spectrum, and even if one could argue the criteria for the award could better account for that reality, the general is aim is to crown the best, or most impactful, defender in the league for that season.
Atlanta Hawks guard Dyson Daniels has an impressive case through the lens of his 2024-25 performance. In fact, his current statistical case is leaps and bounds better than the one guard (Marcus Smart) who did win the award over the last three decades. Still, a glance at the betting market indicates that Daniels is fighting an uphill battle with approximately one-third of the season remaining, and that remains the case even with the season-ending ailment for the previous frontrunner, Victor Wembanyama.
Victor Wembanyama's injury opens the door for Dyson Daniels
Prior to Thursday's news involving Wembanyama, the DPOY race seemed to be all but over. At every sportsbook available, Wembanyama was a dominant betting favorite, but he will no longer qualify for the award, simply because he will fall short of the NBA's 65-game threshold for inclusion. As such, the landscape radically changed, and Daniels was among a group of players that saw their odds improve drastically in a short period of time.
While the current betting favorites are Cleveland's Evan Mobley and Memphis's Jaren Jackson Jr., Daniels is now listed as the third-most likely player to win the DPOY award, ranging from 11-1 to 16-1 odds, depending on the sportsbook. Mobley and Jackson have the benefit of anchoring two of the top six teams in the NBA this season, but Daniels arguably has the best statistical profile of any remaining candidate after Wembanyama's exit.
Daniels owns a comfortable lead over the rest of the field in steals, sitting atop the NBA in averaging ?2.98 per game. That is the most by any player in the league in more than three decades, and Daniels is averaging more than one full steal more than any other player in the NBA on a per-game basis. In addition, Daniels has more total steals (152) this season than any player has had over a full, 82-game campaign since the 2018-19 season, and he will continue to build on that number.
While the production of steals is impressive in its own right, Daniels is also dwarfing the competition when it comes to generating deflections, averaging 6.1 per game with no other player producing more than 4.5 per contest. In fact, Daniels has more total deflections (311) this season than any player in the NBA has generated over a full season since 2017-18, and he has nearly one-third of the regular season remaining.
In addition to his excellence in generating steals, no player other than Wembanyama is averaging more "stocks" (steals + blocks) than Daniels in 2024-25. He is also graded by Basketball Index as the NBA player with the most difficult slate of defensive matchups this season, and Daniels is able to sustain his defensive playmaking against elite competition without fouling at a high rate. He is averaging fewer than three fouls per 36 minutes this season, staying on the floor and taking on a massive workload for an improving Atlanta Hawks defense.
Atlanta is enjoying its best defensive season as a team since the 2016-17 campaign, and Daniels is far and away the team's most valuable and important defensive piece. Despite the reality that the Hawks are retooling as a (very) young team, they have vastly improved from previous seasons, and Daniels' arrival has been a key factor in that collective uptick.
According to the betting market, Jackson Jr. and Mobley are in a different tier when compared to Daniels, albeit at an early stage of market maturity given the recency of Wembanyama's diagnosis. Still, Daniels is No. 3 on the list, and he seems to be more than capable of crashing the party. That is particularly if the Hawks can rattle off some wins over the final third of the season, which might help to change his perception in a world in which recent history points to players on winning teams garnering more respect.
On that end, it is somewhat difficult to project the voting body to peg Daniels as the winner as a guard on a team currently bound for the Play-In Tournament in the Eastern Conference. However, there has been a more recent willingness to at least consider perimeter-based players (i.e. the Marcus Smart win), and Atlanta's team-wide improvement coupled with Daniels' statistical excellence could form a darkhorse candidacy if the Hawks end the season on a high note.