Let's start with the good: Evan Mobley won Defensive Player of the Year.
There was a lot of chatter over the past couple of months that seemed to suggest that the Cleveland Cavaliers star may not ultimately win the award. Whether it was Draymond Green doing his own political campaign for votes, Dyson Daniels stealing the attention of voters with his prodigious theft totals, Luguentz Dort winning a proxy award or Amen Thompson winning the annual "I'm trendy so I'll pick this dark horse candidate" there were a lot of names that juggled their way into the conversation.
There is something to be said for diversity of opinion, and legitimate arguments were made for all of those candidates. We do, in fact, probably struggle to properly value a steal that both ends a possession defensively and often sparks a high-percentage offensive possession. Amen Thompson does boast a truly special combination of size, speed and athleticism. The Oklahoma City Thunder have an historic defense, one of the very best all-time, and it seems like someone is supposed to get credit for that.
Yet what the discourse around this award revealed is not so much diversity of thought but a complete lack of understanding of what drives good defense. On offense you can add shooting efficiency with volume and passing and find your way to some informative and helpful metrics to understand who the best offensive players in the league are. On defense, it's much more complicated.
Who is actually good at NBA defense?
It was easy for the voting public when Victor Wembanyama was destroying opponents defensively as the favorite for the award. Once he was ruled out for the season the field was opened back up, and everyone bounced around the league trying to find the right person to put on their ballots.
Mobley won the award, but he ended up doing so by the smallest margin in the last 10 years. Giannis Antetokounmpo had a sublime offensive season but one of his worst defensive seasons in some time, but still received a first-place vote. Jaren Jackson Jr. was once the favorite to win but fell to seventh with no first-place votes.
Dyson Daniels, on the other hand, had 25 first-place votes and finished second in voting. Daniels had a special season racking up steals and deflections, but he also played for a bad defense and his team was better defensively with him off the floor. In the Atlanta Hawks' Play-In losses he was either ineffective or ignored, as perimeter defenders so easily are. Defense is too complicated to say "bigs are always better than smalls" but it's impossible to impact your team's entire defense as a perimeter defender, while a rim protector has a massive effect.
That's why voting for Lu Dort is likewise nonsensical; he is a very good isolation defender, and an important part of the Thunder's all-time defense. He also isn't one of the three-best defenders on his own team. Giving him 11 first-place votes was lazy and doesn't properly weight the impact and value of defense.
That's because it's not easy to do so. You have to spend a lot of time watching film (and not just of your team) and analyzing advanced stats and thinking through defensive philosophies. Is Evan Mobley one of the best two or three defenders in the NBA? Probably, but it's not clear.
What is clear is that Dyson Daniels was not. Lu Dort was not. Giannis Antetokounmpo was not. Draymond Green was probably not. But one of the most spread-out votes in the award's history just further highlights how the media doesn't know how to value NBA defense. I, as a member of the media, struggles to understand the true value of NBA defenders.
Unfortunately, we are the lesser of evils at this stage. Do you know who appears to understand NBA defense less than the media? NBA coaches.
The Athletic ran a poll of NBA coaches just a few days ago and asked them who should win Defensive Player of the Year. Their answer? Dyson Daniels in a landslide. Second was Lu Dort, third was Draymond Green, and Evan Mobley was fourth without a single first-place vote.
It's inexplicable. Do NBA coaches just look at the box score and vote? Do they blindly follow narratives and First Take talking points? Do they truly not understand NBA defense to that extent? Are teams that assemble good defenses simply lucky?
It's baffling and disheartening. If a big man is not dominating the paint and racking up a ton of blocks on a Top-3 defense, no one seems to know what to do. It should be self-evident that elite rim protectors are more impactful than elite isolation defenders, but so many seem to ignore that simply fact. They chase the box score, or the narrative, or the tough guy.
Evan Mobley won Defensive Player of the Year. He deserved to win Defensive Player of the Year. Yet he almost didn't win, and if it weren't for media members being divided with their nonsensical voting and misunderstanding of NBA defense, he would not have.
We still haven't figured out what it means to be the best defender in the NBA.