NBA Defensive Player of the Year

That is too spicy.

What about Wemby to win defensive player of the year -340? Cam Boozer +300 to be the rookie of the year.

That's an interesting one.

It's not a bad rate if you think he just goes nuts.

Nobody was surprised when he was named All-NBA.

He was also Defensive Player of the Year that year.

He made the All-Star team that year, and he followed it up with a season that was, yes, it was injuries factored into what he was this past season.

But he followed it up with what I think is fair to call a disappointing season.

But you need a little bit more than that to be an all-NBA type player.

You need to be defensive player of the caliber.

And as I mentioned several times on this podcast and some other ones, like as long as Victor Wemenyama plays 65 games, I'm not so sure that Evan Mobley has another defensive player of the year award that's going to be sent to him in the mail.

But I do think that he can be better defensively than what he was, and if he's better defensively last year, that is.

How can that factor into the equation? And De'Ron Sharp is going to be a huge piece of this because the Nets, I think, have been at a disadvantage at the center position in a lot of matchups in recent years.

Like Nick Claxton obviously had that great 2022-23 season DPOY conversation, led the NBA in field goal percentage, battled some injuries after, and his play dropped off a good amount.

And he was, frankly... outplayed by dayron sharp who is now getting this starting opportunity so dayron's ability to give a little bit more than nick klaxon gave in recent years is going to be huge and a big question of that is going to be his conditioning you know he hasn't really played big minutes like the nets are going to be expecting him to play this year like the last two seasons dayron was in that like 14 to 18 minute per game range.

And now as a starter, you're probably asking him to play 25 plus minutes per game and you're asking him to do it against starting centers.

If you look at this team and you look at what other teams facing the Toronto Raptors are going to be looking at in front of them, is how do we get past Kawhi Leonard, Scottie Barnes, and Colin Murray-Boyles on the wing to be able to actually penetrate this defense? That's a very tough task at this stage.

And when you talk about Scottie Barnes potentially being a defensive player of the year, voter fatigue will happen with Victor Uemunyama, just like voter fatigue has happened with LeBron James and et cetera.

I think there are really, really good Players who play really great defense, both in the same position as Wemba Naomi, but then on the wing as well, where Wemba winning multiple year after year after year, I feel like we'll come to a point where it's like, look at what Scottie Barnes has done.

Look at how many steals Scottie Barnes is averaging this season.

But this is a team that I don't think anyone would want to see in a seven-game series.

Absolutely not.

Again, yeah, all three of those guys can be up in the running for all defense and defensive player of the year.

On any given moment, any given year, they can all have that opportunity potential to obviously Kawhi has already done it.

They were 27-7.

They returned their top seven scores and returned the Big Sky Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year.

I forget her name off the top of my head.

She won both Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year.

She's back.

That's going to be a game that you cannot, you know, the fans maybe, but they should not show up to carve around that and just go, oh, Montana State, Iowa should win by 20.

Um, the one issue with Bam defensively is that at the five, he's just a very limited rim protector.

You don't get the same type of shot blocking, uh, shot altering rim presence that you get with all of the other defensive player of the year candidates that we're going to talk about, or that we have talked about like last episode, Rudy Gobert.

Um, I brought up how players in the last two seasons have shot about 2% worse than their expected field goal percentage at the rim.

When Embiid is the one contesting, um, Bam players actually have shot 3% better than their expected percentage over the past two seasons with Bam contesting.

And that schematic versatility is a legit superpower.

He's also a pretty good rim deterrent, but doesn't have the signal of this massive rim protector, which when you're playing most of your minutes at the five, I do think is somewhat of a concern.

However, with that said my the miami heat and the bam era have always been an elite playoff defense and he's got a guy named yannis coming to town next season so um if there's anyone who could cover for him as a rim protector while he's at the five it's freaking yannis so maybe this is a non-issue maybe next year there's bam's defensive player of the year a year i don't know he's been really close a few times but there's also yeah

it might cause some offensive issues uh

I mean, we all saw him last year.

Fred Warner was in the middle of the Defensive Player of the Year conversation before going down with that injury.

But having Fred Warner, that grown man back on the field, it's almost like having an extra defensive coordinator on your defense.

Like, it was so nice just to see Fred Warner flying around and launching his body like a missile, taking out players from that Rams roster.

Remember, Bill Simmons did this a couple years ago with Marcus Smart.

There was no way Marcus Smart should have won Defensive Player of the Year.

Under no circumstance.

A hundred