NBA awards picks: Why Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is MVP, Amen Thompson is DPOY and more

New York Times

14-04-2025

Just like that, 82 regular-season games have passed us by. But thank goodness for Play-In Tournament week, a time for us to stop and collect our breath a little before a frenzied sprint to the NBA finish line in June.
One great thing about this lightly scheduled intermezzo (just six games in five days, all of which by rule must involve either the Atlanta Hawks, the Miami Heat or Jonas Valančiūnas) is that it affords us time to talk about what just transpired (the regular season) and what's about to transpire (the playoffs). It's also time to make nominations for all of the league's major awards.
Advertisement
This was not light work; in fact, 2024-25 is arguably the most contentious award season in league annals. I dare say there isn't a single category that was no-brainer obvious, and it's headlined by one of the best MVP races in NBA history.
I do not have a say in the league's official award balloting, so the following exercise is entirely theoretical. That said, I followed all the league rules on eligibility in filling this out and noted in each category the significant candidates who didn't meet the thresholds (playing at least 20 minutes in at least 65 games, with some allowances for special situations).
Here are my choices for 2024-25:
This year's MVP choice is an impossible conundrum, one that leaves the voter yearning to list two players in first place and none in second. There is no right answer, and there is no wrong answer, as long as you have the right two names first and second.
Let's split hairs as best we can. Jokić nearly broke the all-time mark for Player Efficiency Rating (PER), whatever that is, and completed the seemingly impossible feat of averaging a triple-double while playing center.
He led the league in PER for the fifth straight year and also led it in BPM, offensive win shares, EPM, SWAGGYP and VORP … all, again, for the fifth straight year. (One of those metrics might be made up, but he seriously led in all the others.)
This wasn't some statistical sleight of hand built off hoovering missed free throws or some other chicanery, either. If anything, efficiency metrics likely short-change Jokić due to his willingness to launch 70-foot shots just before the buzzer.
The Nuggets are an unstoppable offense with him on the court and collapse into dust without him, with an off-the-charts 125.6 offensive rating when he's playing and a laughable 104.1 when he's not. He has still never played with another current All-Star, yet entering Sunday, the Nuggets were the league's fourth-ranked offense and the only one that made more than half its shots. He's dominated the paint, slung dimes all over the court and shot 41.4 percent from 3. How could he not be the MVP?
Advertisement
On the other hand, dig a little deeper and you'll notice another PER mark: Gilgeous-Alexander is a rarity as a guard who cleared 30 on this metric, which tends to be more big-friendly. His 30.6 PER entering Sunday was the second-best mark by a guard this century, trailing only Stephen Curry's 31.5 in 2015-16.
Perhaps more importantly, Gilgeous-Alexander was the lone superstar on a team that had the best scoring margin in history and ran away from the Western Conference with 68 wins. How could he not be the MVP?
What's funny is that Jokić is more of a 'guard' than Gilgeous-Alexander in some ways; he's the league's best passer and ranked second in assists per game, while Gilgeous-Alexander was 14th. Amazingly, Jokić matched him with the same 2.4 percent steal rate; his hands-on defense might be his most underrated strength. And Gilgeous-Alexander, at times, seems more 'big' than Jokić. He blocked twice as many shots per possession (a fact I had to recheck three times) and drew nearly four shooting fouls per game, but shot worse from 3.
So, how to differentiate? One thing stands out to me: The Thunder's team defensive performance. Relative to the league, Oklahoma City had one of the best defenses in NBA history, allowing more than seven points below the league average per 100 possessions. Denver, meanwhile, was a disappointment on that end; one of many reasons for Michael Malone's late-season ouster was the Nuggets' 22nd-place rank in defensive efficiency entering Sunday.
Jokić isn't the liability some imagine him to be, but he's hardly dominant at this end — limited as a rim protector and uncomfortable in pure switch or drop schemes. It's hard to imagine him being part of an all-time great defense. Gilgeous-Alexander might be one of the Thunder's weaker links in most lineups, but he is pretty clearly a contributing part of an elite defense.
Advertisement
When we're splitting hairs this finely, stuff like this matters. Jokić is amazing, and if you think he deserves it, I'm not going to fight you. But I thought Gilgeous-Alexander was a bit better this season, and his talents might be a bit easier to slot into an off-the-charts dominant two-way team like, say, the one he's on.
After the top two names, I don't think there is much debate about No. 3 and No. 4 on the ballot; Antetokounmpo had a season that was MVP-worthy in other seasons, and he unfortunately just happened to have it in 2024-25. Tatum is a two-way force who, to my eyes, sacrificed some possession time to let his teammates thrive on a great team. Whom to put fifth is a minor source of controversy, and there are several names you could potentially select; in light of Mitchell's role on a 64-win juggernaut, he seems the most viable of several possible names.
First team
Second team
Third team
Once we eliminated all the ineligible players, there were only about 16 or 17 players in my consideration set. I took James over Mitchell for the fifth first-team spot even though I had Mitchell fifth on my MVP ballot; Cleveland won more, but I thought James' individual season was better.
My second team is guard-heavy, but hey, we're allowed to do that now. Mobley was the other player who perhaps had a case to be on the first team, given the role of his positional flexibility and two-way dominance in the Cavs' breakout season. Curry was brilliant in the second half of the season, Edwards carried a flawed Wolves offense while also contributing more on defense than most players of this ilk, and Brunson was a relentless offense unto himself at times.
Those names pushed four other deserving candidates — Williams, Cunningham, Jackson and Towns — onto the third team. Haliburton over Darius Garland and James Harden was my last decision, with Haliburton's re-emergence in the second half of the season and superior ability to drive elite offense via his transition passing and long-range shooting working in his favor. (Garland had an amazing year that probably isn't getting enough credit, and the 35-year-old Harden carried the Clippers offense until Kawhi Leonard came back.)
Is there anyone I'm snubbing? Devin Booker and Trae Young had off years by their standards. I suppose some might crow about leaving off Alperen Şengün in light of the Rockets' 52-win season, but his efficiency dropped off this season, and I don't think his defense at the center spot was particularly impactful.
Thompson's shutdown of Curry last week got a lot of attention, but I was leaning this way even before Houston suffocated Golden State.
Thompson is a vital cog in the league's fourth-ranked defense, one that pushed a clunky Rockets offense to 52 wins and the second seed in the West. He's a shapeshifting big/small hybrid who also erases transition opportunities simply by being so freaking fast that it vaporizes numbers advantages. Seriously, some of his recoveries seem superhuman, like film of prime Carl Lewis was spliced into the game tape. While Houston has other strong defenders, Thompson's nightly impact was palpable.
Advertisement
In terms of defensive roles, Thompson is actually two players. He guards the opponents' best perimeter scorer on many nights (Dillon Brooks takes this role too), but he also doubles as an elite rim protector. Thompson's 3.6 percent block rate was higher than that of Draymond Green, Ivica Zubac, Antetokounmpo or Jarrett Allen, among others. Only six players in the entire league played at least 2,000 minutes and blocked shots at a higher rate than Thompson, which is amazing, because he was shutting down the perimeter at the same time.
Thompson and Daniels, who is third on my ballot, are sooooo much better than the typical perimeter player that I feel they offer a defense a much bigger advantage than almost any elite rim protector could provide.
When you go deep on the alphabet soup metrics that are the best approximation we have for the hazy task of accurately measuring defense, the top of the lists are dominated by centers. The board for the LEBRON rating, for instance, lists seven bigs in the top nine players who qualify for this award … along with Thompson and Daniels. Similarly, EPM has five centers in the top seven to go with Thompson and Daniels.
As a result, the marginal value of having Mobley or Green or Zubac as your big versus the average center, while still notable, ends up being less than the differential when you place Johnny McMatadorscorer with somebody like Daniels or Thompson.
Daniels' historic season as a turnover-generating deflection machine still hasn't received the attention it deserves, especially since he's done it not as a roamer but as a guy who is assigned to the opponent's top wing scorer every night. As defensive seasons go, it's one of one.
The havoc he causes makes him one of the few defensive players you'll hear opposing coaches routinely mention as a concern pregame. Less appreciated, perhaps, is that Daniels also offers significant secondary rim protection as a 6-8 shooting guard, and that's particularly useful on a team with so little primary rim protection. He's not in Thompson's league in this regard, but he still blocked shots at a higher rate than Bam Adebayo or Jokić.
Has that made Daniels the single most impactful defender in the league? I can't quite get there. Viscerally, as someone who saw Daniels in person more than most, it never felt like I was watching a dominant all-around defensive performance; he's off-the-charts awesome in one easily measured category but less spectacular in the others. In a related story, Daniels' impact stats are surprisingly tame — the Hawks defended just as well this season when he was off the court, and that was the case regardless of whether or not Trae Young was on the court with him. They actually defended better in the five games Daniels missed entirely.
Advertisement
In a season where Wembanyama's injury has left the race in a muddle — nobody has an ironclad case — that certainly leaves Daniels as a strong contender. But I'd argue Thompson and Mobley have slightly more night-to-night impact on the opposition's offense, especially given Mobley's ability to toggle between guarding the perimeter and protecting the rim.
I should also mention Green here, since his candidacy has become A Cause for some reason, but voters shouldn't let him podcast his way to the crown this year. He's again been really good, with an off-the-charts IQ that lets him blow up plays before they start. However, he's not quite as impenetrable on an island as he was half a decade ago, and as a 6-6 rim protector, he doesn't quite match the other All-Defense-caliber centers in this regard. Also, Green only played 1,983 minutes — several hundred fewer than most of the other contenders.
First team
Second team
Imaginary third team of guys it pains me to leave off
The All-Ineligible team is arguably more imposing than the actual All-Defense team; Wembanyama was a no-brainer until he went out, and the Clippers' Kris Dunn was awesome this year and deserves mentioning. Also, my Defensive Player of the Year above might not even be the best defender in his own family; alas, Detroit's Ausar Thompson was ineligible after his recovery from a blood clot prevented his being cleared for the first 18 games. Add names like Caruso, Davis and Holmgren, and … wow. Imagine how hard it will be to crack All-Defense in 2025-26 if these guys are all healthy.
As far as the eligible people, my three names above obviously made the first team, where I joined them with Zubac and Camara.
I thought those two were the two most underrated defensive players in the league this year, with huge impact stats for overachieving units. Camara was a committed pain-in-the-tuckus with length and tenacity, one who led the league in offensive fouls drawn and was the go-to stopper for a Portland squad that defended at an elite level in the second half of the season.
Zubac, meanwhile, was both huge and mobile for a Clippers unit that ranked third in defense; in addition to his rim protection and vastly underrated mobility corralling pick-and-rolls, he controlled the glass for the league's top defensive rebounding squad.
I regret not having anyone from Oklahoma City on the first team, but the Thunder's strength is more about across-the-board peskiness than a single dominator. Putting Dort and Williams on the second team seemed the appropriate way to reflect that; Dort isn't as good as some of the others off the ball, but he's a brick wall physically with ballerina's feet as a one-on-one chaser and screen navigator. Williams, meanwhile, is an Amen Thompson-lite as an athletic positional shapeshifter who somehow started at center for three weeks without the Thunder missing a beat.
Advertisement
I mentioned Green above, and my last second-team spot went to Gobert. I don't think he was as good as his Defensive Player of the Year season in 2023-24, but he also gained strength in the second half of the year and had some throwback dominant games after everyone stopped paying attention. My biggest lament is leaving off Caldwell-Pope, who quietly made a huge impact on an Orlando squad that was the league's second-ranked defense.
Look, it wasn't much of a class. We're basically taking a gap year between Wembanyama and Cooper Flagg; maybe we just come back next year and give out two trophies?
The two most effective players as rookies, big men Zach Edey of Memphis and Donovan Clingan of Portland, didn't exactly have people gushing about their long-term ceilings. Meanwhile, all the high draft picks were pretty severely negative players for most of the season.
Risacher and Buzelis did the most to turn the corner in the final third of the season, which made it easier to list them second and third here. However, Castle, despite his iffy shooting and high turnover rate, checks the most boxes for this award: the most impactful in his rookie year, the one most likely to occupy a high-usage role in the future and the likely top pick in a redraft. Realistically, it's tough to get too wildly excited about a guy with a 13.7 PER who shot 28.5 percent from 3, but that's what we have to work with.
First team
Second team
I picked Atkinson to win this award before the season because I thought the Cavs were wildly underrated, but even I didn't expect this.
The Cavs stormed past the champion Celtics to the East's top record with a 64-win season, with virtually every button Atkinson pushed working to perfection. Pairing off his big-small combos (Mitchell with Mobley, Garland with Jarrett Allen) allowed the Cavs to keep the offense rolling even without starters on the floor. Getting Mitchell off the ball more also balanced the offense and eased the load on Mitchell's balky knees … and worked so well that the Cavs led the league in offensive efficiency.
I don't think Lue has received nearly enough credit for figuring out how to keep the Clippers afloat during Leonard's absence, then figuring out how to reincorporate Leonard without upsetting the apple cart. Leaning into Zubac's post game and Norman Powell's shooting, freeing Dunn to harass opposing scorers and squeezing every drop from limited offensive units, he kept LA treading water until the cavalry came back. Then, he went 18-3 in the last 21 games to nab a playoff spot, finishing with the league's third-ranked defense. By the end of the season, a Clippers team that seemed lottery-bound had itself a 50-win season.
Advertisement
Bickerstaff benefits from his comparison point, obviously — I'm not sure it's possible to do much worse than Monty Williams did in 2023-24 — but Detroit went from a 14-win tire fire to the sixth seed in the East, and did it with most of the same key personnel. Credit Bickerstaff for leaning into keeping shooting around Cade Cunningham, particularly by letting Malik Beasley let it rip early and often. More importantly, perhaps, was his building an identity of brash, eff-you toughness reminiscent of the Bad Boys; in a related story, the Pistons improved from 26th to 10th on defense.
It's easy to say the Dallas Mavericks dropped Dončić on Pelinka's lap, but that's too simplistic. Let's start with the obvious: He didn't fumble the bag. Pelinka kept it under his hat for two months, was able to keep his 2031 first-rounder and other goodies out of the deal and got the Dončić trade to the finish line before 28 of his rivals even knew the superstar was available.
Setting aside the Dončić trade, Pelinka and the Lakers front office had themselves a good year. They didn't panic early and burn their best assets on iffy deals, which was how they were able to make the Dončić trade in the first place; they also made sure to stay below the second-apron threshold, the other thing that made the Dončić deal possible. The trade of D'Angelo Russell for Dorian Finney-Smith was a huge help for the team's struggling defense, and the hiring of JJ Redick looks like a major win.
Altman put together the finishing touches on the East-leading Cavs by hiring Atkinson, inking Mitchell and Mobley to extensions (in Mobley's case, with an important '27.5 percent of the cap' limit on his supermax) and pulling together a deal for De'Andre Hunter that also got the Cavs under the luxury tax and delayed an inevitable repeater penalty for another year.
Just as importantly, can we talk about the moves Cleveland didn't make? Despite all the pressure to break up their two big men or their two All-Star guards after the last two postseasons ended in disappointment, the Cavs did neither. Allen and Garland stayed put and had awesome seasons.
After the Thunder won 68 games with a record scoring margin, Presti arguably should be first and not third. He's methodically built a super team for the next decade in Oklahoma City. The 'of the year' part is doing a lot of lifting to push him down to third, as several of the most crucial decisions were made years ago.
Even so, Presti got a lot done in 2024-25: Using his cap space for the hugely impactful Isaiah Hartenstein addition, setting up the cap holds for Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe to keep them on long-term deals at the same time, trading Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso and drafting Ajay Mitchell at 37th. Also, we may need to revisit this a year from now when people remember they got Nikola Topić at No. 12 in a mostly barren draft.
Advertisement
The ballot doesn't allow for a fourth name here, but the Clippers' Lawrence Frank deserves his flowers as well. Nobody expected much from the Clips, but they hit on just about every move at the margins (most notably Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr.), were proven right in their decisions to retain Harden but not pay Paul George and have one of the best contracts in the league with Zubac's extension.
Daniels should be a no-brainer choice. He went from getting a DNP-coach's decision in his final game of 2023-24 to possibly winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2024-25. I'd say that's a pretty dramatic uptick in his fortunes.
The third-year guard also improved his scoring average from 5.8 to 14.1, raised his PER from 12.0 to 15.6 and set about 20 marks for steals and deflections that all end with statements like 'making him the first player to do this since Dutch Dehnert of the Original Celtics in 1925.'
My 🧵 for why I think Dyson Daniels should be DPOY.
1) It is hard for us to wrap our minds around how far ahead he is of the pack in terms of both deflections and steals. Here's a scatterplot to help visualize it.
He is on another planet when it comes to disruptiveness. pic.twitter.com/zcfISZvfHW
— Steph Noh (@StephNoh) April 10, 2025
Thompson was my preseason pick, and I expect him to be the breakout star of the playoffs once the rest of the nation gets to witness his shocking athletic feats. While I'm a little skittish about putting second-year stars on an MIP ballot, he's taken a pretty massive leap forward and did it for a team that made a big jump in the standings.
Finally, Cunningham beats out Zubac and Portland's Deni Avdija for the third spot on my list. In some areas, it's hard to separate the other changes in Detroit from the upgrades in Cunningham's game, but he's ramped up his efficiency while still being the main cog of the offense, runs defenses ragged with his nonstop hit-ahead passes and brings it more on defense than a lot of his high-usage contemporaries. (An emergent knack for shot-blocking is a particular specialty of his.)
What more can we say about Pritchard? He's a 6-1 guard who somehow manages to be one of the game's most relentless offensive rebounders, with a rate better than Myles Turner, Jackson Jr., Green or James. Pritchard is also a mad bomber who made 40.9 percent from 3 on massive volume and sprinkled in enough sauce with his bully-ball drives to convert 63.4 percent of his 2s. He didn't score the most points of any bench player, but he was far and away the most efficient and impactful (63.3 true shooting percentage), while keeping things rolling for one of the league's best teams. In a year littered with difficult ballot choices, Pritchard was a relatively easy one.
Beasley was a revelation in Detroit after failing in seemingly similar roles in Milwaukee, L.A. and Utah. He succeeded with the Pistons by dialing his 3-point rate up to YOLO on a team that was desperate for floor spacing, weaponizing his shot to a degree not yet seen while still keeping up the accuracy (41.3 percent). On a per-possession basis, only Curry shot 3s more frequently; the result was a Detroit offense liberated from the tyranny of tough 2s.
Advertisement
Finally, a Cleveland Cavalier from the University of Virginia should occupy one of the three spots on this ballot. Ty Jerome was the best player on the whole list on a per-minute basis, an unbelievable, out-of-nowhere season where he was legitimately one of the best two-way guards in the league after wallowing in obscurity for half a decade. Alas, he only played 1,392 minutes, barely half the total of Pritchard and Beasley. It's tough to give him the nod with such a drastic minutes disparity.
Thus, Hunter is the third name. He spent two-thirds of his season attacking smalls on switches in Atlanta with his pull-up shooting, then transitioned seamlessly to a much lower usage role when he was traded to a stacked Cavs team. Overall, Hunter led all subs in scoring at 17.0 per game and has a good case to rank ahead of Beasley. However, as with Jerome, we have a clock issue: Beasley played all 82 games and was on the floor for 541 more minutes, a disparity that's tough to overlook.
With players from the three dominant teams basically disqualified because their teams rarely played close games, it's no shock that Jokić would rate among the best players when it mattered. He didn't have any game-winners this year, but the Nuggets had a plus-20 net rating with him on the court in clutch games, and he had a 63.8 true shooting percentage on massive 37.1 usage.
However, he still didn't match Brunson. Between the laughable shot-creation burden thrust on him (42.4 usage!) and his relative efficiency in those situations despite everyone in the building knowing what was coming, Brunson stood apart.
For the last spot on my ballot, Young and Edwards both shouldered insane crunchtime offensive loads relatively efficiently (39.0 usage for Young, 38.8 for Edwards, per the NBA's clutch stats page). However, the Hawks were better in crunchtime than Minnesota, and Young's passing gave him a slight edge over Edwards as a creator. Also, in a season with just a small handful of game-winners and no more than one from any individual player, Young did this in Utah in January:
UNBELIEVABLE SHOT FROM TRAE YOUNG…
GAME-WINNER FROM BEYOND HALFCOURT!#TissotBuzzerBeater #YourTimeDefinesYourGreatness pic.twitter.com/f5sWGEplNx
— NBA (@NBA) January 8, 2025
(Top photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Amen Thompson: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)