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The NBA announced the winner of the 2023-24 Defensive Player of the Year award with little anticipation. The conversation surrounding this honor has been loud for months and the readings on the tea leaves were clear on the direction the wind was blowing. Rudy Gobert was lined up to win the award for the fourth time. Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace are the only other players to win this honor so many times.
Gobert had a great defensive season yet again. He is a phenomenal defender but it feels wrong to insinuate that he is one of the 10 best defenders of all time. When you grace someone with this prestigious honor on this many occasions, you have to argue their place on an all-time list. His own contemporaries named Gobert as overrated in an anonymous poll, while selecting Victor Wembanyama as the league's best on defense. These votes do not reflect that.
The complete voting results for the 2023-24 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year. pic.twitter.com/SpApbyUUw2
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) May 7, 2024
All NBA voters are not taking this seriously
When you look at this list, it makes you scratch your head at many of the decisions. Domantas Sabonis received a third-place vote. That voter needs to step to the front of the stage and explain to the world what the thought process was behind that decision. Chet Holmgren deserves a vote before Sabonis and Chet doesn't deserve a vote.
When you have items like that on your ballot, it calls the quality of the entire list into question. There is no need to go into all the reasons why Wembanyama should have been the first player in NBA history to win Defensive Player of the Year; that's been done ad-nauseam since this result was expected;. But politics and senseless castings need to be called out regardless.
Spurs fans should rejoice anyway, though. At the very least, the NBA has given a man bent on proving why he's looked at as the one, another reason to crush the league next season. Great job on that.