The Super Official 2017–18 NBA Awards

James Harden is MVP, but who’s Rookie of the Year? Who wins MVP runner up, Coach of the Year, and everything else? Let’s hand out some 2018 NBA regular season hardware…

Feels like we’re already halfway through the playoffs, but the 2018 NBA regular season awards are still two months away so that left us plenty of time. Who was this year’s MVP? Fine, we know that. What about Most Improved Player? Okay, we also know that. Sure, but who is the Rookie of the Year?? Don’t be stupid. Listen to your heart. That one’s easy too.

Still, any NBA season needs its awards, and this year the runners up happen to be just as interesting as the winners. So let’s crown Harden and Oladipo, but let’s recognize the guys in the running behind them too. Let’s name All NBA, rookie, and sophomore squads, recognize our Tim Duncan bargain bin All Stars, and pick a Coach of the Year. Let’s do award SZN.

If you need a refresher, here were last year’s awards. Lehgo!

Most Valuable Player

1. James Harden 2. Anthony Davis 3. LeBron James 4. Giannis Antetokounmpo 5. DeMar DeRozan

Shouts: Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Jimmy Butler, Chris Paul

James Harden is the MVP. There just really isn’t a discussion to be had. He played for the season’s only truly elite team, and he was that team’s truly elite player. The MVP doesn’t always go to the best player on the best team, but that’s usually a good place to start the argument. In this case, it’s a good place to end it.

Since 1990, MVPs average 62 wins a season, with a median of 62 wins as well. Just one team won 60 games this year — the Houston Rockets, coasting into the finish line at 65–17. The Raptors won 59, and the Warriors won 58. No other team won more than 52 games. For every year since 1990 except last year, that means the MVP comes from one of those three teams. As good as many other players have been this season, names like LeBron, Davis, and Giannis are much closer to Russell Westbrook’s 2017 campaign than people would like to admit. And they’re a worse version of it. The Warriors don’t have an MVP winner this year, not with the disappointing record and all the injuries. So your only real case against Harden is arguing for DeMar DeRozan as the worse best player of a worse best team in a worse conference with worse stats in every measurable way. Good luck with that.

James Harden led the league in scoring. He was fourth in assists. He powered one of the league’s best offenses of all time, no matter how much we take that for granted already, he elevated a bunch of role-playing teammates, and he even played some defense this year.

James Harden is the MVP. It should be unanimous.

Second place comes down to Brow and Bron. LeBron played 82 games for the first time in his career and posted one of his most impressive statistical lines ever. He posted career highs in both assists and rebounds per game in his 15th season with the second best shooting numbers of his career. Of THAT career. Davis matched him in scoring and bested him in rebounds, but LeBron had four times as many assists this year.

So why give the edge to Davis at 2? He did more with less this season. He won only two fewer games than LeBron (and probably matches him if he plays all 82) in a far more difficult conference with a much worse roster around him. He also played defense. Davis averaged four stocks a game and was the game’s best and most versatile defender down the stretch. Davis got within one win of a West 3 seed on a team that started Rajon Rondo and E’Twaun Moore and played Darius Miller, Ian Clark, and Dante Cunningham most of the season. As bad as LeBron’s roster is — and remember that James is largely to blame for that lack of continuity and probably for the lack of Kyrie Irving — Brow had even less help but did just as much or more. The award is called Most Valuable, not Most Stats. LeBron’s 2018 MVP case is much closer to Russell Westbrook’s 2017 MVP argument than you’d like to admit.

Giannis Antetokounmpo is awesome and a slightly lesser version of all of those things. He wasn’t quite as good as Davis or James, and his team wasn’t as successful. None of that is meant as a knock on a great season. Giannis is a clear fourth on my ballot.

Fifth place on the ballot is a toss-up. Stephen Curry would be here or better if he’d played at least 15 more games. Jimmy Butler didn’t play enough either. It doesn’t feel like the right year to recognize Kevin Durant in a regular season in which nothing stood out. Damian Lillard is the choice du jour, mostly because it’s new and fun. Dame was wonderful this year, but my final spot came down to Russell Westbrook or DeMar DeRozan. Neither was as efficient as the others, but both feel more valuable to their teams. Westbrook was downright bad the first quarter of the season, and DeRozan changed his game and helped his team win 59 games. He gets the nod.

All NBA Teams

First Team

James Harden, Damian Lillard, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis

Second Team

Russell Westbrook, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Jimmy Butler, Joel Embiid

Third Team

Chris Paul, Victor Oladipo, Ben Simmons, Paul George, Karl-Anthony Towns

All NBA is more about stats and best players than most valuable, hence the slight shuffling here. Injuries matter, but only somewhat. They cost Steph and CP3 one level each. There aren’t many snubs that need to be mentioned here except at guard. Bradley Beal’s probably not really a snub, but he was almost as good as Oladipo, DeRozan, and Kyrie Irving. Kyrie missed too many games while also being a borderline candidate.

That left Oladipo and DeRozan for the final spot, and the NBA doesn’t make either of them eligible at forward. I gave Costco Kobe the last spot on my MVP ballot, so Oladipo gets the spot here. Don’t @ me.

Here’s the logic on the rest of the picks:

Worst Team All NBA

PG Jarrett Jack, New York SG Avery Bradley, Detroit & L.A. Clippers SF Andrew Wiggins, Minnesota PF Dragan Bender, Phoenix C Bismack Biyombo, Orlando

Shouts: Jamal Crawford, J.R. Smith, Stanley Johnson, Tyler Ulis, Wesley Johnson, Lopez Twins, Kris Dunn, Jarell Martin

We have 1st Team All NBA and 2nd Team and 3rd Team, and we talk about the snubs enough to effectively create 4th and even 5th Teams. But what about the terrible starters at the other end of the spectrum? What about the guys that held down a starting spot most of the season and were the worst in the league to do it?

Presenting the 30th Team All NBA, the worst starters in a league of superhumans still better at basketball than anything you’ll ever do:

Rookie of the Year

1. Ben Simmons 2. Donovan Mitchell 3. Jayson Tatum

Shouts: Kyle Kuzma

This one has been beaten into the ground and then some, but ultimately I think the three-man ballot is pretty clear. The case for offensive Rookie of the Year is very close, and Mitchell might come out ahead by a hair. But Ben Simmons is already an elite guard defender, deserving of All Defense recognition, and he affects the game in a more holistic way. Naming Ben Simmons Rookie of the Year is obvious and deserving, and it doesn’t take anything away from the spectacular season Donovan Mitchell had too.

Tatum is a clear third, and he also had an awesome season that would’ve been worthy of ROY discussion many campaigns. He’d have won in a landslide last year. In fact, so would Kyle Kuzma.

Actually, since we’re here, just how many rookies this season would have won Rookie of the Year in last year’s campaign? Winner Malcolm Brogdon averaged 10/3/4 with good shooting numbers as a bench piece for the East 8 seed, and he beat out Dario Saric’s 13/6/2 for the award.

Simmons wins unanimously a year ago. So does Mitchell, and so does Tatum. So does Kyle Kuzma, who averaged 16/6/2 and led the Los Angeles Lakers in scoring and somehow won’t make more than a few ROY ballots. That’s it for unanimous winners, but many more of this year’s rookie’s probably win it. Lauri Markkanen’s 15/7 and 145 threes would’ve done the trick. Josh Jackson’s 13/5/2 would’ve been close, but 19/6/3 post All-Star break would definitely have been enough. Dennis Smith was bad, but 15/4/5 would have been enough, and De’Aaron Fox’s 12/3/4 would have too, especially since the Kings would’ve played him more down the stretch to push for the award. Unless of course they pushed Bogdan Bogdanovic’s 12/3/3 instead, another deserving winner. And you know 10/7/7 would have been enough for Lonzo Ball stans. If you’re counting, that’s ten rookies this year that would’ve won 2017 Rookie of the Year, and we haven’t even mentioned valuable role players like O.G. Anunoby, Royce O’Neale, Jarrett Allen, or Memphis’s Dillon Brooks, who basically had Malcolm Brogdon’s season and went unnoticed.

But anyway, congratulations to NBA voters on last year’s choice. Anytime you can recognize a 24-year-old sixth man rookie on a .500 team, you gotta do it.

All Rookie Teams

First Team

Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell, Jayson Tatum, Kyle Kuzma, Bogdan Bogdanovic

Second Team

Josh Jackson, Lauri Markkanen, Jarrett Allen, John Collins, Dillon Brooks

Since we’re here, let’s just get our All Rookie teams out too. I don’t have too much more to add. Heck of a rookie class, especially considering only three of the top 12 picks are represented above. If you want to give OG Anunoby a spot, fine. If you want to reward stats with DSJ or Fox, sure.

Lonzo Ball? That’s a no from me, dawg. Lonzo was super awesome in January and February with 11/8/7, a 39% three pointer, and an 119–93 ortg-drtg. Unfortunately that was only seven games. His season was a little more pear-shaped. Like, literally pear-shaped. Ball’s shooting splits for the season were cover-your-eyes-awful 36/31/45. Are those shooting numbers or a woman’s measurements? I like Lonzo. I wish him the best. But he was the Lakers third best rookie this year. Shouts to Josh Hart.

If you’re looking for more rookie thoughts, serge and I got you covered at Grandstand Staff:

All Sophomore Teams

First Team

Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, Jamal Murray, Jaylen Brown, Fred VanVleet

Second Team

Brandon Ingram, Taurean Waller-Prince, Tomas Satoransky, Pascal Siakam, Domantas Sabonis

I’ve always felt like All Sophomore teams would be a lot more interesting than All Rookie. This year is an exception, but most rookies just compile meaningless stats on bad teams after struggling through the first half of the season. We expect more of sophomores. They’re expected to make a real difference, and you can see it in the names above.

Remember how bad last year’s rookie class was? It was even worse than you remember. But one year later they’re coming around in a big way. I wrote more about them here:

Most Improved Player

1. Victor Oladipo 2. Tyreke Evans 3. Josh Richardson

Shouts: Joe Ingles, Julius Randle, Terry Rozier, Aaron Gordon

I don’t like to reward players on their rookie deal for Most Improved. Technically everyone in the NBA should be working to improve each year, but that’s especially true of sophomores and juniors who are still finding their way, fighting for playing time, learning the nuances of the game.

Saric, Ingram, Sabonis, Murray, and Brown are all sophomores that took a huge step forward — heck, so did Joel Embiid for that matter. Terry Rozier made a third year leap many are just now noticing. Julius Randle and Aaron Gordon earned themselves a lot of money this year on expiring rookie deals. Those guys are all great.

Josh Richardson was technically on his rookie deal but signed a $42-million extension panned by some, then turned into the best player on the Heat. Tyreke Evans went from Pelicans and Kings washout to a starring role for the Grizzlies with his best shooting and offensive year ever at age 28.

But, yeah, Oladipo wins this one.

Sixth Man of the Year

1. Lou Williams 2. Nikola Mirotic 3. Tomas Satoransky

Shouts: Fred VanVleet, Trey Burke, Montrezl Harrell, Terry Rozier, Eric Gordon

Lou Williams feels like cheating, but for all you Ben-Simmons-is-not-a-rookie truthers out there, the NBA makes the rules, not me. I just wonder how many games it cost the Clippers to play their best player off the bench instead of starting him.

Sixth Man of the Year typically goes to a bench gunner. In the last decade, we’ve given the award to Eric Gordon, J.R. Smith, Lou Williams, and Jamal Crawford (three times). Andre Iguodola never won the award, and Manu Ginobili won it once, a decade ago. That’s criminal.

Nikola Mirotic’s teams went 34–21 when he played this year, a 51-win pace. They went 5–23 without him, a 15-win pace. That seems significant. The guy averaged 21 and 10 per 36 minutes off the bench and made a real impact, and it’s nice to see him get his due during this playoff run.

Tomas Satoransky saved the Wizards’ season when John Wall went down. He had a 124 offensive rating and shot 47% from downtown. That’s enough to edge out Fred VanVleet and the Raptors bench mob for the final spot.

Defensive Player of the Year

1. Rudy Gobert 2. Joel Embiid 3. Anthony Davis

Shouts: Draymond Green, Andre Roberson, Brad Stevens

Look, I’m not going to pretend to be a defensive expert, but big men impact the game defensively far more than any other position, and a few names stand out at the top.

Rudy Gobert has less defensive help around him compared to Embiid’s All-Defense caliber teammates Ben Simmons and Robert Covington, and his team’s defense ranked higher. Both of them missed a lot of time, but Embiid ended up playing under 100 minutes more than Gobert. I ranked Rudy 1b last year by a hair, so it’s his turn now. Embiid will get his eventually.

The Tim Duncan Bargain Bin All Stars

PG Fred VanVleet, Toronto SG Tyreke Evans, Memphis SF Will Barton, Denver PF Luc Mbah a Moute, Houston C Emeka Okafor, New Orleans

Bench: Spencer Dinwiddie, Quinn Cook, Trey Burke, Royce O’Neale, Reggie Bullock, Jeff Green, David West

Superstars are great, but there’s only so many of them and only so much salary cap. No team could possibly sign the league’s premier offensive weapon, its best defensive switchblade, the most talented seven-foot player of all time, and the streakiest most cold-blooded shooter on the planet… wait, that’s a bad example. Fine, most teams can’t sign all those guys, and even the ones that do still have to fill out the roster with bargain veterans and role players. And when it gets to May and June, it’s often those guys that make the difference between a win and a loss in those stray non-star minutes.

Rookie contracts are great, and any good young player will far outweigh his contract value, but a bargain bin veteran opens up value for the entire team. Everyone on the Tim Duncan All Stars made $5 million or less this season, and this year’s entire roster makes less than $22 million combined, less than Chandler Parsons’s rotting corpse.

Presenting the Tim Duncan Bargain Bin All Stars…

Coach of the Year

1. Gregg Popovich, San Antonio 2. Brad Stevens, Boston 3. Brett Brown, Philadelphia

Shouts: Dwane Casey, Quin Snyder, Doc Rivers, Mike D’Antoni, Alvin Gentry, Nate McMillan

What an incredible year of coaching. That list is almost a third of the league and doesn’t even include annual standouts Rick Carlisle and Erik Spoelstra, Portland’s Terry Stotts, or other great coaches with terrible rosters. NBA coaching is now a game of haves and have-nots, and it’s become increasingly obvious when teams are held back by outdated coaching schemes or coaches that don’t see eye-to-eye with their players.

Casey overhauled the entire Toronto system, got the same old players to buy in, and turned it into the second-best record in the NBA. Snyder lost his franchise player and then his new franchise player for a chunk of the season and somehow has the most buzzed about team in the playoffs. Rivers and Gentry held patchwork rosters together with duct tape and dreams. McMillan made the Pacers fun. D’Antoni coasted to the best record in the league. They’re all relegated to the honorable mentions heap.

I think we’re underrating the job Brett Brown has done in Philadelphia. This team won ten games two years ago. Two years ago!! In two years, they went from threatening the worst record in NBA history to becoming the short-lived Eastern Conference favorites earlier this week (RIP). Embiid, Simmons, and Saric are awesome, but no one knew how that team would fit together before the season, few envisioned Simmons as a full-time point guard, and even fewer could’ve turned a roster of college kids into a top defense and weaseled a 16-game win streak out of them. An incredible job.

Still, this award has to come down to Stevens or Pop because it’s just so apparent how much these two guys did despite the lack of available talent.

Pop lost the best two-way player on the planet, handled a messy situation all year, and led his team to a top-eight point differential and the brink of their expected 3 seed. LaMarcus Aldridge is the worst best player on a playoff team, and the Spurs don’t even have a second-best player, and it just didn’t matter.

Stevens lost one new star in the first five minutes of the season and his other one halfway through, and somehow his team kept getting better. He played a bunch of kids all season, turned a handful of them into stars, made them the league’s best defense, and got them to believe in themselves.

So who’s your pick? Knowing what we know now, Stevens gets the nod. But this is a regular season award. Could Pop have coaxed this Boston roster into a top-end defense and turned them into a solid Eastern playoff team? Yeah, probably. Feels very Poppy. Could Brad Stevens have walked into the decrepit Spurs roster, managed an ugly Kawhi situation all year, and had them safely in the hunt for the West 3 seed all year as expected? Yeah I can’t get there.

I’m not sure there’s a person on the planet who could have done what Pop did this year. Who else would have had this team in the playoffs? Anyone? He’s not going to win it, but this would be an NBA-record fourth Coach of the Year for Popovich.

Good. Let’s give it to him every stinkin’ year.

Thanks as always to Basketball Reference, second to oxygen among daily necessities. Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, humor, pop culture, & life musings. Visit Brandon’s writing archives here.