Yahoo Sports NBA awards 2023: How the HoopsHype ballot would look
The 2022-23 awards season in the NBA will be fascinating to watch unfold, as Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year are very difficult to predict as the campaign wraps up.
Rookie of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year are both a good bit clearer, as is Coach of the Year, but Executive of the Year is likewise pretty tricky to determine.
And for the All-NBA teams, how much will voters punish the superstars who missed a lot of time this season?
Below, check out the 2023 HoopsHype awards ballot, as voted on by our panel of writers and editors.
Most Valuable Player: Joel Embiid
Kyle Ross-USA TODAY Sports
Just like the actual vote will be, the margin between Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic for 2022-23 league MVP was razor-thin, with four of our seven voters voting for the former as their league MVP and the remaining three going with the latter.
If we were going just by the advanced analytics, Jokic would have swept the first-place votes, as the reigning two-time MVP sits first in VORP, BPM and Win Shares – all by a wide difference – as well as in first in our own Global Rating metric.
But for the second year in a row, Embiid leads the league in scoring (this time at 33.1 points per game) while also contributing 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks on 54.8 percent shooting.
The fact that the Denver Nuggets faded a bit in the final stretch of the regular season – the Nuggets were 6-9 over their final 15 games prior to Sunday’s regular-season finale – as the Philadelphia 76ers caught up to them in overall record also played a factor in our vote, as did Embiid’s late-season 52-point, 13-rebound explosion on national television against the Boston Celtics.
Whoever does win MVP, it will be well-deserved, our voters simply believe the award should go to Embiid this season.
Rookie of the Year: Paolo Banchero
Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports
Oklahoma City Thunder swingman Jalen Williams made this one closer than we thought it would be a month ago – that his play had a huge part in the Thunder unexpectedly qualifying for the play-in tournament also weighed heavily in our voters’ minds – but if we’re looking at the entire 2022-23 season, Orlando Magic 4-man Paolo Banchero is the deserving winner of Rookie of the Year.
On the season, the 6-foot-10 Banchero averaged 20.0 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists while shooting 42.7 percent from the floor – an efficiency mark the former Duke standout will need to improve on to take the next step in 2023-24.
Had Williams, who averaged 14.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.4 steals, had as high of a usage rate as Banchero (Williams had an 18.4 percent usage rate vs. Banchero’s 27.5 percent), could his numbers have looked closer to Banchero’s?
Maybe, but that’s all for naught. Banchero was our Rookie of the Year and we’re confident the actual voters will see it that way, too.
Defensive Player of the Year: Jaren Jackson Jr
Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports
Defensive Player of the Year will look closer to MVP voting than to Rookie of the Year in that this one could go one of two ways – there’s no clear-cut right answer this season.
Our voters landed on Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. for Defensive Player of the Year this season but just barely, with Jackson Jr. edging out Milwaukee Bucks big man Brook Lopez by just one vote.
This one is truly tricky.
The Grizzlies rank third in the NBA in defensive rating (110.6 points allowed per 100 possessions) while the Bucks rank fourth (110.8 points allowed per 100 possessions), two point-stopping units anchored by their big men, Jackson Jr. and Lopez.
Jackson Jr. leads the NBA in nightly rejections at 3.0 blocks per game while Lopez ranks third at 2.5.
Advanced analytics for defense are notoriously not the most reliable but even there, the two big men rank near each other, with Jackson Jr. having the higher DBPM (2.0 vs. 1.3 for Lopez) and Lopez taking the nod in Defensive Win Shares (3.9 vs. 3.8 for Jackson Jr.).
In the end, with the Grizzlies being the slightly better defensive team this season and Jackson Jr. leading the NBA in blocks (and he’s not just a shot-blocker as Jackson Jr. has the foot speed and hip mobility to defend wings and guards adequately, too), our voters went with the former Michigan State Spartan as Defensive Player of the Year for 2022-23.
Most Improved Player: Lauri Markkanen
Alex Goodlett/Getty Images
Most Improved Player is always a difficult award to determine.
What deems a player most improved? Does it take more improvement to from being a good player to All-Star? Or does it require a tougher jump to go from All-Star to All-NBA?
If you believe the former is more difficult, then Utah Jazz swingman Lauri Markkanen is your guy for Most Improved Player this season. But if you believe the latter is the tougher jump to make, then you probably think Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander should take the accolade, instead.
Our voters went with Markkanen and it’s not hard to figure out why, as the Finnish big man was down-right fantastic this season after a pretty up-and-down NBA career to this point, averaging 25.6 points per game (he had never put up more than 18.7 points in a season) to go with 8.6 rebounds on 49.9 percent shooting from the floor and 39.1 percent accuracy from three.
Gilgeous-Alexander – 31.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.6 steals – was outrageously good in his own right, but he was already great prior to this season. Markkanen going from being slightly above league average with regards to impact to being a full-blown All-Star was far more unexpected and, to our voters, more deserving of what Most Improved Player should be.
Sixth Man of the Year: Immanuel Quickley
Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports
This one had less drama to it, as New York Knicks guard Immanuel Quickley was the best bench player all season long, putting up 14.7 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists nightly on 44.9 percent shooting, 37.2 percent from three.
Quickley’s quickness, change-of-pace and pull-up shooting ability made him a nightmare to guard for opposing bench units, and has played a huge part in the Knicks’ impressive season which has them at 47-34 heading into the final game of the regular season.
The only other players who got consideration for this award were Boston Celtics guard Malcolm Brogdon and Bucks big man Bobby Portis, who both made decent cases, too.
Coach of the Year: Mike Brown
Harry How/Getty Images
Although Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown was the clear deserving winner for Coach of the Year, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault sure did make things interesting by getting Oklahoma City into the play-in tournament when it was expected the Thunder would be fighting for the No. 1 pick. Jazz head coach Will Hardy also did an excellent job in not only developing Markkanen but in getting everything out of a Utah team that looked pretty formidable back in January.
But for Brown to come in and in Year 1 get the Kings back into the playoffs for the first time since 2005-06 – doing so comfortably, at that – was more than enough for him to earn our Coach of the Year nod.
Executive of the Year: Danny Ainge
Rob Gray-USA TODAY Sports
Executive of the Year could go in many different directions but our voters landed on Jazz shot-caller Danny Ainge as the pick.
Ainge did a great job in picking up Markkanen as part of the Donovan Mitchell trade (along with three future first-round picks and two swaps) as well as pulling off a heist in the Rudy Gobert trade, landing Walker Kessler, who will get Rookie of the Year votes this season, and four future first-round picks to go with a pick swap.
That’s as much of a return as you can ask for when you trade away two All-Stars, with the Gobert-for-Kessler move looking particularly like a fleece already one season in.
Ainge might have been able to do better at the trade deadline, as the returns on the Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and Mike Conley trades were lackluster but overall, he still did enough in our eyes to earn Executive of the Year.
All-NBA Teams
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
1st Team All-NBA:
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Joel Embiid
Nikola Jokic
2nd Team All-NBA:
Donovan Mitchell
Damian Lillard
Jimmy Butler
Jayson Tatum
Domantas Sabonis
3rd Team All-NBA:
De’Aaron Fox
Stephen Curry
Julius Randle
Kawhi Leonard
Anthony Davis
Others receiving votes:
Kevin Durant
Pascal Siakam
Jaylen Brown
Lauri Markkanen
Anthony Edwards
Bam Adebayo
Devin Booker
LeBron James
DeMar DeRozan
Trae Young
1st Team All-NBA is made up of all non-American players, with the five players making up HoopsHype’s 1st Team all being international. Even so, nine of the 10 players in 2nd and 3rd Team All-NBA, according to us, were Americans, so things aren’t all bad in American basketball.
It’ll be fascinating to see who the actual voters take in their All-NBA teams. Will they punish legends like LeBron James or Kevin Durant for missing such large chunks of the season? Or did they do enough to make All-NBA status anyway?
And if they do make an All-NBA team, who will they remove from our list?
Kawhi Leonard might be in the most jeopardy, as he likewise missed a ton of action this season. He just might get rewarded with All-NBA anyway because his missed time came early in the season and not later on, like Durant and James.
All-Defensive Teams
Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports
1st Team All-Defense:
Jrue Holiday
Derrick White
Jaren Jackson Jr
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Brook Lopez
2nd Team All-Defense:
Alex Caruso
OG Anunoby
Jimmy Butler
Evan Mobley
Bam Adebayo
Others receiving votes:
Jaden McDaniels
Nic Claxton
Mikal Bridges
Herb Jones
Marcus Smart
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Not many surprises here, though there’s a chance Minnesota swingman Jaden McDaniels, a versatile point-stopper who can guard multiple positions, or Nets big man Nic Claxton – No. 2 in blocks per game this season – sneak into one of the two All-Defensive teams.
All-Rookie Teams
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
1st Team All-Rookie:
Bennedict Mathurin
Jalen Williams
Paolo Banchero
Keegan Murray
Walker Kessler
2nd Team All-Rookie:
Andrew Nembhard
Jaden Ivey
Jabari Smith
Jalen Duren
Jeremy Sochan
Others receiving votes:
Shaedon Sharpe
Tari Eason
Dyson Daniels
Again, nothing particularly surprising here, though Shaedon Sharpe coming on as strong as he has lately did give some of our voters pause. Maybe he finds his way onto the actual All-Rookie teams.
