Defensive Player of the Year: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Paul George, and Rudy Gobert
There’s a huge chance that we see a player do something this year that hasn’t been done since the ’93-’94 season, and that only two players have done before. That is, win the MVP and DPoY in the same year.
However, I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until it happens, Anthony Davis will be the next player to do that. And I think that still holds true after this year because Gobert is my pick.
Gobert finds himself with the least amount of minutes out of these three, and yet he has nearly twice as many blocks as George and Antetokounmpo, and he has the second highest steals rate among these three.
One thing that really stands out to me when watching Gobert play is how much he works for himself on defense. Some players wait for defensive opportunities to come to them, Gobert makes an active attempt to go and find them. Gobert is also a scare on the defensive side of the court, and he’s almost certainly on every team scouting report when they go up against the Jazz.