NBA Roundtable: Who Will Be This Year’s DPOY?

Defensive Player of the Year may be my favorite award, despite the fact that it seems to be the same candidates every year lately. Despite that, our staff has many views on who their top candidate is for the award.

The Defensive Player of the Year award is always an interesting one in my mind, considering there is no award technically given for the “Offensive Player of the Year”. For this reason, the NBA has quickly adopted the belief that the MVP award should be given to the player who produced the best on the offensive end. Although I hate that definition that has been adopted, it is neither here nor there with this post so I will drop it for now.

The most recent winners of the NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards are as follows: Draymond Green (2017), Kawhi Leonard (2015 &2016), Joakim Noah (2014), Marc Gasol (2013), Tyson Chandler (2012), and Dwight Howard (2009-2011). As you can see, the big men of the NBA have historically dominated this award, but recent years have brought wings and forwards very much into the discussion.

Some of these names (namely the recent winners) will be represented in this list once again with a few new players who have been in the conversation recently but have not yet won the award. So who is going to win it?

The award, as mentioned above, falls essentially into two groups of thought: centers and everyone else. The center is a very important position, considered the last line of defense and the rim protector, centers will always be candidates to win the award strictly based on their usage around the rim. The rest of the players capable of winning the award make their case on individual defense, generally against other All-Stars and superstars.

Here are the staff picks for this year’s NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

Next: The Klaw Returns