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Evan Mobley said his goal coming into the season with the Cleveland Cavaliers was to win the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award.
He got it done.
The Cavs consider Mobley to be their best defensive player, and the league thought even more highly of him. Mobley held off fellow finalists Dyson Daniels of Atlanta and Draymond Green of Golden State for the award, the results being announced Thursday night in a broadcast on TNT.
“It just feels great to finally get this award,” Mobley said.
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Saying “finally” might be a bit of a stretch. Mobley is only 23 — the fifth-youngest player to win the award, joining fellow 23-year-olds Dwight Howard, Jaren Jackson Jr., Alvin Robertson and Kawhi Leonard as winners of the Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy.
Mobley won the award in a season where he was an All-Star for the first time and set a career high for scoring. But the case Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson made for Mobley was how different the Cavaliers’ defensive numbers were with Mobley on the court and without.
Put simply, with him on the court, they were airtight.
“It’s a huge dip, like 12 places or something,” Atkinson said. “That really screams out, to me. Probably the No. 1 stat that I look at.”
Green won the award in 2017, was a top-three finisher for the fifth time, and was bidding to become the 11th player in NBA history to win it at least twice. Mobley won it for the first time, after finishing third in the voting in 2023. Daniels was a finalist for the first time.
Daniels was second in the voting, with Green third.
Daniels had 229 steals this season, the most in the NBA since Gary Payton had 231 for the Seattle SuperSonics in 1995-96. Daniels was also the first player to average more than 3.00 steals per game since Robertson for the Milwaukee Bucks in 1990-91. Nate McMillan averaged 2.959 in 1993-94 for Seattle; John Stockton averaged 2.976 in 1991-92 for the Utah Jazz.
Based on Daniels, Green and Mobley all being finalists, it’s reasonable to think that they will be on the All-Defensive team when it is released by the NBA later this spring. It would be the ninth All-Defensive selection for Green, the second for Mobley and the first for Daniels.
Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert won the award last season, his record-tying fourth DPOY trophy.
The award was voted on earlier this month by a global panel of 100 writers and broadcasters who cover the league. The NBA releases a list of three finalists for its seven major individual awards — MVP, Most Improved Player, Coach of the Year, Clutch Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year — after the votes are counted but keeps the order of finish a secret until the results are broadcast.
Earlier this week, Boston’s Payton Pritchard won sixth man of the year and New York’s Jalen Brunson won clutch player of the year.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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