{"id":124877,"date":"2025-02-20T19:19:45","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T00:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=124877"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T04:40:10","slug":"2-favorites-emerge-for-nba-defensive-player-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/20\/2-favorites-emerge-for-nba-defensive-player-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"With Unfortunate Wemby News, 2 Favorites Emerge For DPOY"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA has handed out the Defensive Player of the Year since 1982-83. Since that time, there have been 10 different players that have won the award multiple times. Dikembe Mutombo<\/a>, Ben Wallace<\/a>, and the reigning winner Rudy Gobert<\/a> lead the way winning the honors four times. It certainly looked like there would be a new NBA Defensive Player of the Year this season. Recent news means that the previous heavy favorite to win will no longer do so, and there potentially could be an 11th multi-time winner.<\/p>\n

With Unfortunate Wemby News, 2 Favorites Emerge For DPOY<\/h2>\n

Wembanyama No Longer Eligible For Defensive Player of the Year<\/h3>\n

Some NBA award races don\u2019t have a clear-cut winner as we enter the post All-Star break portion of the season. The 2024-25 MVP seems as if it will come down to two players, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> and three-time MVP Nikola Jokic<\/a>. While this year\u2019s rookie class hasn\u2019t been one of the best, there are numerous candidates that could win Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Defensive Player of the Year, it was mostly a foregone conclusion as to who would win. 21-year-old Victor Wembanyama<\/a> was a seemingly insurmountable favorite to take home the award this season. Wembanyama was arguably the most-anticipated rookie since LeBron James<\/a> after the San Antonio Spurs selected him first overall in the 2023 NBA Draft<\/a>. The 2023-24 unanimous Rookie of the Year was the runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year last season. He averaged a league-leading 3.6 blocks per contest.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to this season, and his blocks per game has increased to 3.8. That is the highest average since<\/a> Alonzo Mourning<\/a> averaged 3.9 in 1998-99 with the Miami Heat. He has blocked at least one shot in each of his appearances and has 13 games of at least five. Standing at 7-foot-3, Wembanyama allowed opponents to shoot just 50.8%<\/a> from the field within six feet, one of the best marks in the league.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the news broke on Thursday that Wembanyama will be sidelined<\/a> for the rest of the season due to blood clots. The NBA installed a 65-game rule beginning last season that required players to appear in at least that many games to be in consideration for certain awards and honors. One of those is Defensive Player of the Year. Wembanyama\u2019s season has prematurely ended after 46 outings, thus making him ineligible to win the award.<\/p>\n

Two New Favorites Emerge<\/h3>\n

With the unfortunate Wembanyama news, the Defensive Player of the Year now sees other players enter the conversation to potentially win. According to DraftKings Sportsbook, there are two candidates that have a good chance of taking home the award.<\/p>\n

The favorite is Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr.<\/a> (-105 as of 2\/20, 7 PM ET). As mentioned, 10 players have won the award at least twice. If Jackson Jr. were to do so, he would become the 11th. The 25-year-old won the award in 2022-23. While his shot-blocking prowess isn\u2019t quite what it was when he led the league in 2021-22 and 2022-23, he is averaging a career-best in steals (1.3) and fouling less frequently. He recently played in his second All-Star Game and was named Western Conference Defensive Player of the Month in December.<\/p>\n

Evan Mobley<\/a> played in his first All-Star Game<\/a> on Sunday and has the next best odds to be named 2024-25 Defensive Player of the Year (+130). Now in his fourth season, the 6-foot-11 power forward was third in voting in 2022-23. Mobley was also named Defensive Player of the Month for December, in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

After those two, odds are much longer for the other players listed. The next favorites are Dyson Daniels<\/a> (+1300), Luguentz Dort<\/a> (+2000), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+3000), Jalen Williams<\/a> (+4000), Amen Thompson<\/a> (+4500), Ivica Zubac<\/a> (+5000), and Rudy Gobert (+6000).<\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NBA has handed out the Defensive Player of the Year since 1982-83. Since that time, there have been 10 different players that have won the award multiple times. Dikembe Mutombo, Ben Wallace, and the reigning winner Rudy Gobert lead the way winning the honors four times. It certainly looked like there would be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":124893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62],"tags":[558,3966,1948,4669],"class_list":["post-124877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-defensive-player-of-the-year","tag-evan-mobley","tag-jaren-jackson-jr","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124877"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181089,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124877\/revisions\/181089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}