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Every team in the NBA has played at least 21 games, which means we're officially more than one quarter of the way through the 2025-26 season. Enough of a sample to speak with any level of clarity? Of course not. When I handed out one-month awards last season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn't make the top three for MVP. Swing and a miss on that one, 2024 Sam. I did manage to correctly predict Kenny Atkinson's Coach of the Year selection, though, so this exercise still has a shred of credibility.

At the quarter poll of the season, narratives have typically started to form and the cream is starting to rise. We may not know who's going to win every award, but we can at least point to a favorite and a few reasonable candidates. We're not trying to accurately predict who will win the award in the spring so much as we are setting the table for several more months of debate by picking the winners to this point in the season.

Below are my picks for each of the NBA's eight major awards to this point in the season. Most of the awards will get a three-man ballot. MVP, which I've already covered in depth here, will get five. Given how early we are into the season, we will ignore any eligibility concerns here. So long as a player hasn't missed the 18 games necessary to eliminate them from consideration, they can be chosen. So with that in mind, let's begin. 

Odds are from DraftKings

MVP

5. Cade Cunningham, Pistons (+5000 to win MVP)
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks (N/A)
3. Luka Dončić, Lakers (+270)
2. Nikola Jokić, Nuggets (+160)
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder (+160)

I've already done an MVP deep dive here, but there is one change from my last fake ballot: Cade Cunningham has jumped Tyrese Maxey for the No. 5 slot. The two share a tier with Anthony Edwards. They're down-ballot choices, but Cunningham is the most balanced of the three. He's a better defender than Maxey comfortably and a meaningful part of Detroit's stellar unit, and though Edwards is growing rapidly as a playmaker, Cunningham has him beat comfortably on that front. Maxey and Cunningham are among the most ball-dominant players in the NBA this season, with Maxey leading the league in touches by a mile. But Maxey has more shot-creation support than Cunningham, who ties together a group that's a bit more specialized. The No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference is the icing on the cake.

Antetokounmpo and Dončić are a rung above those three, though Antetokounmpo's injuries (he's set to miss another 2-3 weeks with a calf strain) will almost certainly knock him off of ballots in a few weeks. If we're not going to be able to appreciate what he's doing when voting comes in the spring, let's do it now. On a team with practically no other shot-creation, a two-time MVP is having his most efficient shooting season. He's scoring more on a per-minute basis than he ever has. So is Dončić, and he's healthier. He's also in pretty rarified air as part of the 35 points per game club. He'd be only the sixth player ever to get there if the season ended today, joining Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, James Harden, Rick Barry and Kobe Bryant. All five of them won MVPs at some point, though not necessarily in their 35 PPG season. Dončić has played at an MVP level for years. It's not his fault two of his peers have taken things to another level entirely.

I've written it before and I'm writing it again: Nikola Jokić is having the greatest statistical season in NBA history. He's leading the league in rebounds (at least among qualified players) and assists at the same time. That shouldn't be possible. You've heard of the 50-40-90 shooting club? He's gunning for the 60-40-90 club right now. He's currently setting new records in Box Plus-Minus and PER. The Nuggets, as usual, are an elite team when he plays and a bad one when he doesn't. He makes everything in Denver possible.

That's the lens we're used to viewing MVP through. That's what value means, right? The player who is the most indispensable to his team? The one who does the most for them? If that's your definition, Jokić is your winner. He may well win. He's been that good. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is forcing us to consider an alternative.

The Thunder have a +6.6 net rating when Gilgeous-Alexander sits. Over the full season, that would rank sixth in the NBA right now. The obvious way to look at that is to suggest that the Thunder are so good and so deep that Gilgeous-Alexander is boosted by a remarkable supporting cast in a way that Jokić is not. But that doesn't feel quite right, or at least complete, in a season in which his best teammate, Jalen Williams, has barely played. Yes, Gilgeous-Alexander plays on the best team in the NBA by far. But his supporting cast gets to be this good in part because he lets them.

Jokić may be flirting with 60-40-90, but Gilgeous-Alexander is pursuing something just as rare: averaging a point per minute. Only Joel Embiid and Wilt Chamberlain have ever done that, but neither did so in the way Gilgeous-Alexander is. Gilgeous-Alexander is touching the ball fewer times per game as a starting point guard (66.8) than Embiid did as a center (71) when he crossed that line. He was quite possibly the least ball-dominant scoring champion in NBA history a season ago and he's taken it to another level this season. He has the ball less. He scores more. His efficiency has launched up to a new planet.

And that empowers everyone else in a way that you can't quite quantify. Playing with an MVP is usually a pretty thankless endeavor. You watch them dribble and score off of their passes and you live with an understanding that your team rests on their shoulders. That is not, nor has it ever been, Gilgeous-Alexander's Thunder. He's a different sort of selfless in that he's capable of blending into the background in ways Jokić or a standard MVP never would. Oklahoma City's historic defense doesn't revolve around him, but he fits eagerly within it, refusing to shirk responsibility for his team's identity just because of his offensive workload. When he needs to take over, he obviously can. He somehow leads the NBA in clutch points despite sitting more fourth quarters than he's played in. But he never forces anything when he doesn't need to. 

He's not just the best player on one of the best regular-season teams of all time. He's the best player that could reasonably allow his teammates to create one of the best regular-season teams of all time.

It's just hard to imagine a Jokić team, no matter who's on it, ever being this good. That's not a shot at him. It's just a reality of the way he and most superstars play. Everything revolves around him to such an extent that when he has a bad game, as every player occasionally does, it becomes fundamentally harder for role players to scale up and support him. They're so used to being ordinary citizens of Metropolis waiting for Superman to save them. Michael Porter Jr. is arguably an example of this phenomenon. Jokić has famously never played with an All-Star in Denver. Porter may well make it in his first season in Brooklyn. Jokić creates more easy shots than perhaps any player in league history, but he's giving teammates fish rather than teaching them how to fish. There's nothing wrong with it. He's dishing out a lot of delicious fish. Most MVPs do. Gilgeous-Alexander is just presenting an alternative.

So here we sit, the NBA's best floor-raiser on one side and the NBA's best ceiling-raiser on the other. One of the narratives surrounding last year's race was that Jokić was empirically the best player, but Gilgeous-Alexander had the best team. I'd still frankly pick Jokić as the best player, but with nowhere near the conviction I would have a year ago. Gilgeous-Alexander is setting some records of his own. One in Win Shares per 48 minutes. Another in Estimated Plus-Minus, the stat that most frequently predicts MVP winners. One is arguably the greatest offensive player ever. The other doesn't get in the way of maybe the greatest defensive team ever. There's no wrong answer here. It's a matter of preference.

I'll change my mind a dozen times before the end of the season. For now, I give the slimmest of edges to Gilgeous-Alexander. His team is on pace to lose four games. That can't be an accident. Yes his team is incredible. You're telling me the Thunder without Jalen Williams were still one of the greatest rosters of all time? That doesn't pass the sniff test. If this team really challenges the wins record while shattering the net rating record as it currently is, we're going to have to look beyond the talent to explain why the team itself is so good. Gilgeous-Alexander's eagerness to allow teammates to share in the spotlight certainly seems like a contributing factor.

Defensive Player of the Year

3. Bam Adebayo, Heat (+800)
2. Chet Holmgren, Thunder (+160)
1. Victor Wembanyama, Spurs (+400)

There is a fascinating race brewing here, but sadly not for the reasons we would have hoped. Wembanyama, for now, remains eligible. And guess what? He wins running away. There's no way around that. He averages more blocks than any other player averages combined blocks and steals. He leads centers in deflections as well, and it seems pretty telling that he does this despite not really coming all of that close to leading the league in contested shots because, well, that means everyone is too scared to attack him and he's still racking up these bonkers counting stats. I don't have to sell you on Wembanyama. Watch him for 30 seconds and you know he's the best defender in the league.

What I'm more interested in at this point is what happens if he is eventually ineligible. Wembanyama missed his 11th game on Monday. That means he has seven left to go out of San Antonio's remaining 59. There's a good chance he doesn't play 65 games. And I'm not sure what happens after that.

The obvious instinct after that would be to turn to Chet Holmgren. He's the highest-profile defender on, at least what is at this moment, the greatest era-adjusted defense in NBA history. We also instinctively link him to Wembanyama. They were rookies in the same year. Holmgren is the closest thing Wembanyama has to a physical analogue in the NBA. The easy reaction to Wembanyama being ineligible would be to give the trophy to Wembanyama-lite.

And yet, almost every advanced defensive metric prefers his frontcourt partner, Isaiah Hartenstein. That often happens in double-big lineups. We've had similar seasons with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. But many of the rim-protection numbers tend to favor Hartenstein as well. Cason Wallace is making a case as the NBA's best perimeter defensive playmaker right now, chasing reigning king Dyson Daniels in both deflections and steals despite playing far fewer minutes. And deep down, regardless of minutes or availability or anything else, if you asked me who I believe the best defensive player on the Thunder is, I would say Alex Caruso.

None of this necessarily precludes Holmgren from winning the award. There is still a compelling argument that he is the most valuable defender the Thunder have because of his combination of rim-protection and mobility. There are some ball-handlers who can punish Isaiah Hartenstein. The Pacers gave him real problems in the Finals. Luka Dončić loves attacking him. That's not a problem for Holmgren, and you should always take defensive metrics with several grains of salt. 

But all of this points to a greater question: how on Earth do we assign defensive credit for the Thunder when basically everyone they play could credibly make an All-Defensive team? On the rare occasions in which teams like this have remotely existed, we've tended to give Defensive Player of the Year to someone on the merit of team performance. Marcus Smart for the 2022 Celtics stands out here. Did anyone believe he was the best defender in the NBA? Probably not, but he was an essential systemic piece for the best defense in the league by far. He allowed them to switch as much as they did. So he won. Holmgren is better than Smart ever was. But it's hard to say emphatically that he is what makes Oklahoma City's defense go. The Thunder allow 103.7 points per 100 possessions when Holmgren sits. That would still be the best defense in the NBA over the full season. We're not singling Holmgren out here. The Thunder missing literally any player on their roster have a lower defensive rating than the No. 2 defense in the NBA, Houston at 110.7 points per 100 possessions. There are great defenders everywhere here. The whole is what makes this unit special.

We're picking Holmgren as a placeholder here. Earned deference to maybe the best defense we'll ever see. But on a normal team, I'm genuinely uncertain if I'd rather have him or Bam Adebayo. What you lose in Holmgren's length, you get back in Adebayo's bulk and sturdiness. There's an ease with which he transitions between switching onto the perimeter and rotating back into rim-protection position that few players have ever matched. He's taken the Heat Culture torch from Udonis Haslem fully now. Miami has more defensive talent than it did a year ago. Davion Mitchell is a night-and-day upgrade over their previous batch of guards, Andrew Wiggins always helps and Jaime Jaquez getting his groove back has made everything better. But Adebayo ties it all together. He's the skeleton key that lets Miami approach the league lead in zone possessions every year without sacrificing more traditional coverages. You can do anything with him as the head of your defense. He lobbies for recognition constantly. Maybe Wembanyama's absence gives him a shot this season.

There's either no standout beyond Wembanyama or a dozen, depending on how you look at it. Jalen Suggs is the eye-test winner. I'd file for a restraining order after a quarter of getting defended by that guy. He also hasn't played enough minutes while recovering from the injury that ruined last season for him to draw serious consideration yet. Wallace is starting to stand out from the Oklahoma City perimeter crowd. Would he be able to play so aggressively without the support he has there though? Wallace catching up to Daniels as a playmaker doesn't negate what Daniels is doing either. He's been sensational as always. So has Draymond Green, who will pop up in this conversation until he retires, and as long as he keeps podcasting, probably two or three years after. There's no obvious Rocket for the race with Amen Thompson devoting more energy to offense this season. His brother Ausar has been the better of the two, but is still just a hair off of the top defensive tier. Basically, the race after Wembanyama is wide open. If he falls out of the hunt, someone else will have a chance to seize it.

Most Improved Player

3. Austin Reaves, Lakers (+500)
2. Jalen Duren, Pistons (+450)
1. Deni Avdija, Trail Blazers (+225) 

This one was brutal. We have three candidates all in the same basic tier of player this season. All three are probably headed for first-time All-Star berths. Reaves is the best player of the three right now by a hair, but comes with the biggest weakness: his defense. Duren started from the lowest place. There's a reason the Pistons didn't extend him over the summer. Avdija is the most balanced of the three. He's a No. 1 scorer who's good at everything. You could order these three, and a handful of other options, in any way you'd like.

I landed on Reaves by a hair simply because, well, he was already awesome. He wasn't this, but look at Reaves' statistical history. Few players have ever had a more linear development. His scoring has jumped 5.7, 2.9, 4.3 and now, 8.2 points with each passing year. You can see a similar progression with his assists. This isn't just volume, either. He's having arguably his most efficient season as well. If there's a single, standout area of improvement, it's in his strength. He's always had incredible scoring craft, but he's so much more eager to initiate contact now. That's how he's drawing almost 10 free throws a game. It feels unfair to punish him in this way, but Reaves has now been in these conversations four years in a row. Winners tend to be players that jump all at once. It's the "MOST" improved player. It's hard to improve more than any other player when you're growing this much every single year.

The counting stats suggest Duren made that single-season leap, but that has much more to do with opportunity, at least offensively. The metrics predicted this jump a year ago, but the Pistons are giving Duren much more room to create for himself this season. He attempted 56 shots out of either isolations or post-ups last season. He's already at 37 this year. Where he's really grown has been defensively. It's a pretty common trajectory for bigs as athletic as Duren. They come into the NBA having been so dominant physically for their entire lives to that point that they very often neglect the subtler points of defense, chasing blocks and big plays over fitting within any sort of structure. Duren just gets it now. His positioning, his timing, his risk-reward calculus as a decision-maker, it's all on point. The Pistons were already a great rim team last season because of Isaiah Stewart's defense and their overwhelming athleticism offensively. Duren's leap has made them a preposterously dominant one. They outscore opponents by over 13 points per game in the paint. Only the Thunder have a bigger margin.

A year ago today, Deni Avdija was still coming off of Portland's bench. Even after surrendering two first-round picks to get him, the Blazers didn't quite know what they had in him. Now, he's possibly an All-Star, and he got there, functionally, at a new position. Avdija is Portland's point guard. He's been their only reliable playmaker since Jrue Holiday went down, and he's taken on that newfound responsibility without letting his scoring volume or efficiency dip remotely. If you include passes, he's already used around 70% as many pick-and-roll possessions as he did all of last season. He is everything to the Portland offense. His on-off numbers are down right Jokić-ian. This is the single most important jump a player can make, the one from supporting player to franchise pillar. Reaves and Duren have made versions of that jump as well, but Reaves was closer to it than Avdija was and isn't as well-rounded, whereas Duren has done it under far more supportive circumstances. If either of them hadn't grown this much, their teams would be worse, but still good. Avdija has given a team without a franchise player a chance at potentially having one. That's the slight difference.

Sadly left off of the ballot, among many others, is Nickeil Alexander-Walker. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I predicted this. Like, almost exactly. A year ago, I said he'd make the jump Derrick White made in Boston for whoever his next team was, and that has more or less what has happened. But he went from an incredibly deep team that had to bring him off of the bench to a team that lost its max-salary starter at his position very early in the season. A lot of this is opportunity. He's grown tremendously as a shot-creator in Atlanta, but with three first-time All-Star candidates on the ballot, we have to nudge someone off. 

Rookie of the Year

3. Cedric Coward, Grizzlies (+4000)
2. Kon Knueppel, Hornets (+160)
1. Cooper Flagg, Mavericks (-140)

You could go in a few directions for third place. Derik Queen could easily crack ballots with more consistent playing time. The offensive upside he's shown thus far is considerable. VJ Edgecombe and Jeremiah Fears are having fairly standard high-volume rookie guard seasons. Ryan Nembhard has been transformational for Dallas, not only thriving, but comfortably moving Cooper Flagg away from point guard for good. Coward has just had the most consistent impact on winning of any of them without sacrificing counting stats. He's an amazingly well-rounded and mature rookie, especially considering he started his career at the Division III level. How many rookies ever generate a 10-point on-off swing? His shooting has cooled off a bit, but he's defending, creating and scoring inside of the arc better than Memphis could have hoped. The Grizzlies have a potential future star on their hands, but already, he's a solid, starting-caliber wing.

The real race, though, is between Duke's two top-five picks. Kon Knueppel had the inside track early on, when Flagg was flopping at point guard. In NBA history, only 85 rookies have ever averaged 18 points per game. Knueppel has the second-best effective field goal percentage of any of them, sitting snugly between Zion Williamson and Shaquille O'Neal on that list. The 3-point shooting is obviously the standout skill, but Knueppel has proven far more versatile as a rookie than expected. He's shooting almost 55% on 2s and is doing his fair share of individual creation. He's used more possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler than DeMar DeRozan so far this season, and he's been a reasonably valuable playmaker so far as well. We're watching one of the better offensive rookie seasons of the past decade in Knueppel.

But Flagg is starting to catch up. He's up above 20 points per game in his last nine outings, and while the efficiency hasn't reached Knueppel's levels, that's mostly a function of cold 3-point shooting that should turn around. He's not playing point guard anymore, but he remains a solid wing playmaker who has plenty of on-ball responsibility. That's really manifesting in the clutch, where Flagg has scored 52 points on 59.3% shooting. None of his teammates have scored even half as much in those settings, and he leads the team in clutch assists as well. The Mavericks trust Flagg when it counts. That's almost never true of rookies, and we haven't even covered his defense. Flagg is an essential component of the No. 7 defense in basketball, one that has had practically no other front court players on the court consistently. Daniel Gafford, Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively, the monstrous rim-protecting trio that was supposed to power this unit, has played 32 of a possible 75 games thus far. But Flagg has sat just once.

You could argue that Knueppel has been more consistent across the first month and a half, but Flagg has regained control of the race. He's the better, more complete player right now and he has the momentum. It's his trophy to lose.

Sixth Man of the Year

3. Reed Sheppard, Rockets (+1000)
2. Quentin Grimes, 76ers (+2200)
1. Jaime Jaquez, Heat( +400)

The inclusion of Grimes in this trio almost feels like cheating. The Sixth Man of the Year award was conceived in 1983. The minutes per game record belongs to Jason Terry in 2009. He played 33.7. Grimes, this season, is playing 32.9. He is functionally a starter. He plays more minutes than starters on his own team. But the 76ers have a guard glut, so they bring Grimes off of the bench. He therefore gets to post starter stats as a reserve. That's not to suggest Grimes is solely in the race on volume. How many reserves simultaneously fit the 3-and-D profile and consistently score through both isolation and pick-and-roll? Whether he's been better than Sheppard or Jaquez on a per-minute basis is debatable. The non-scoring box score stats tend to lean Jaquez and the advanced metrics lean Sheppard. But Grimes has a real argument mostly on the basis of volume. You get to help your team more when you play more.

But Jaquez fortunately isn't far behind. Since he hasn't started a single game this season, he's actually played more total minutes off of the bench than Grimes has. He's also inarguably more important to his team, serving almost as the totem of Miami's revamped offense. A year ago, we assumed he'd peaked. He was a four-year college player who had a strong start to his rookie year but seemingly didn't improve afterward. Pretty classic trope. He barely even saw the floor in the playoffs. But this new ultra-fast, drive-and-isolation-heavy system fits his skill set like a glove. He's scored as many points in the paint as Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Brown! Almost all of Miami's success this season has come with Jaquez and the bench units on the floor. Grimes is more of an accessory to Tyrese Maxey's breakout.

Grimes and Jaquez will probably have multiple shots at this award. Sheppard won't. Houston may not be able to keep him out of the starting lineup all year and certainly won't be able to next season at this rate. He's shooting 44.6% on 8.3 3-point attempts per 36 minutes. For reference, pre-injury Klay Thompson shot 41.9% on 7.6 attempts per 36 minutes. He still isn't a point guard yet. He almost never touches the paint. But this caliber of shooting is extraordinarily rare, and it's an essential ingredient for these gigantic, ultra-physical Rockets. He's even fitting in defensively in that respect. Yes, he's tiny and a switch-hunting target, but he's at least holding up his end of the bargain as a playmaker. He leads Amen Thompson's team in total steals and deflections for crying out loud. He's not the best player on the team, but he's one of the more irreplaceable ones. The Rockets have a million bigs. They're so deep on the wing that Dorian Finney-Smith hasn't played and we've barely noticed. But they have no way of replacing Sheppard. He's a critical component of maybe the second-best team in the league. He has to show up on ballots. He just hasn't played enough to pass Grimes yet.

Clutch Player of the Year

3. Tyrese Maxey, 76ers (+700)
2. Cade Cunningham, Pistons (+300)
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder (+320)

This feels like someone winning an Oscar after appearing in four scenes. How can Gilgeous-Alexander be the Clutch Player of the Year if the Thunder never play in the clutch? He's sat out more fourth quarters than he's played! Well, in the few clutch games he has played, he's scored a league-leading 93 points. He's averaging 8.7 clutch points per game, 3.4 above second-place Cade Cunningham. What are we supposed to do? Those four scenes were mind-blowing.

The rest of the ballot is chalk. Cunningham and Maxey rank second and third in total clutch points by a mile. Cunningham has scored his points more efficiently, leads in most other statistical areas and has a far better clutch record. Nikola Jokić has lost twice as many clutch games as he's won, and he's usually the candidate that isn't the traditional, shotmaking guard. The Lakers are undefeated in the clutch, but Dončić has missed half of those games and Reaves hasn't been good enough in them. This is about as straightforward a top three as you'll ever see on any awards ballot, at least for now.

Coach of the Year

3. Joe Mazzulla, Pistons
2. Erik Spoelstra, Heat
1. Mark Daigneault, Thunder

I feel a little sick to my stomach here. Erik Spoelstra, the best coach of this generation, has never won Coach of the Year. You could argue he's never deserved it more than he does this season. He watched Noah LaRoche get fired in Memphis and blamed for the team's late-season swoon a year ago and decided "that's the guy who can fix my offense," and it largely worked. The Heat have taken the principles LaRoche established for the Grizzlies last season and pushed them even further. They're the fastest team in the NBA by a mile. They've abandoned ball-screens to a historic degree. Spoelstra wisely borrowed an up-and-comer's concepts and used them to completely reinvent a team that was one of the stodgiest in basketball a year ago. That's Coach of the Year stuff out of probably the greatest coach never to win the award during its existence.

But come on, how does the coach on pace to go 78-4 not win this award? Yes, Mark Daigneault has the MVP on his team. Yes, he has one of the deepest groups of players ever assembled. But doesn't the coach deserve some credit for that? As great at Sam Presti is at identifying talent, isn't Daigneault at least partially responsible for developing it? Does Ajay Mitchell look like the next Jalen Brunson on any other team? How many coaches would get this much out of Brooks Barnhizer and Branden Carlson? This is the whole far more than the sum of its parts. The Thunder have great players, yes, but they also have players who become great just for being a part of this juggernaut. We've played almost two months and this team hasn't had a bad night. They're one of the most focused teams in NBA history. Their defense never lets up, never plays down to its competition. Daigneault has built a system, not just on the court, but within the organization, that feels impregnable. The Thunder are the Thunder, no matter who's wearing their uniform on a given night. That's not as drastic as the changes Spoelstra introduced this season. It was built over time. But right now, it's manifesting in the greatest regular season of all time. And it needs to be rewarded.

As usual, there's no shortage of candidates for the final ballot slot. Joe Mazzulla ekes out Ime Udoka, JB Bickerstaff and Darko Rajaković as he's managed to completely eliminate the words "gap year" from Boston's vocabulary. The Pacers were too injured to ever realistically win this season, but those injuries tend to spiral. The moment a team stops believing it can win the losses become a certainty. That never happened in Boston, even after an 0-3 start, and their coach deserves the credit for that. There was some thought that the Celtics would lean into their most extreme tendencies this season to try to offset their talent loss, but they've actually surrendered the league lead in 3-point attempts and are occasionally scoring at the basket. Neemias Queta and Jordan Walsh are keepers. The notion of getting Jayson Tatum back in February and genuinely making a run at the Eastern Conference crown is in play. It wouldn't be if Mazzulla hadn't been able to manufacture this strong start.

Executive of the Year

3. Trajan Langdon, Pistons
2. Rafael Stone, Rockets
1. Onsi Saleh, Hawks

Look, we can talk about Atlanta correctly identifying Nickeil Alexander-Walker as a player primed for a breakout in a bigger role. We can praise the Kristaps Porziņģis trade as a cheap way of adding badly-needed shooting at center and as a stealth Terance Mann cap dump. We should nod in the direction of the quietly ascending bench players. Mo Gueye is a monstrous defensive wing on a team full of monstrous defensive wings. I'm not convinced I've seen Vit Krejci miss a shot this season. But you're not here for any of that. You're here for the GM who managed to acquire an unprotected first-round pick from the team with the worst record in the NBA ahead of one of the best drafts in recent memory. Saleh won the award the moment he made that trade. Everything else was just window dressing.

If Saleh made the most significant long-term trade of the year, Stone made the best short-term addition in Kevin Durant, perhaps the single player in all of basketball best-suited to fit onto this exact Rockets roster. Houston needed his shot-making, but it needed it out of someone who wasn't going to sap usage away from Alperen Sengun and the other younger Rockets. Durant has fit like a glove, and Houston has a puncher's chance at the championship. Stone's stealth move? Refusing to add guards over the summer, even after Fred VanVleet tore his ACL. After Reed Sheppard spent his rookie season plastered to the bench, Stone had to make sure Ime Udoka, who typically loathes defensive liabilities, had no other options, so he filled his roster with every defensive wing he could find partially to support an existing identity, but mostly to force his coach's hand. It's worked wonderfully. Sheppard is a Sixth Man of the Year candidate.

Trajan Langdon still hasn't really put his stamp on the Pistons. He's winning mostly with the players Troy Weaver drafted, but there's something admirable about that. The Pistons are in every fake trade under the sun. A lot of GMs would force the issue just for the sake of credit. Langdon has played this slowly, tinkering only with the veteran slots in the rotation, and he hit on all of them even after having to pivot on the fly because of the Malik Beasley situation. Duncan Robinson has given them everything Beasley did, but in a bigger body. Caris LeVert is making his 3s. Two-way guard Daniss Jenkins has proven so good that finding minutes and shots for the returning Jaden Ivey has been a bit of a test. The Pistons are one of the deepest teams in the NBA, and they've kept their powder completely dry. That sounds quite a bit like the Thunder of the past few years. Detroit isn't quite as good as Oklahoma City, but Langdon has set the Pistons up to eventually take a pretty strong shot at the champ if they can make it through the East.