NBA Defensive Player of the Year Odds, Picks, Predictions 2024

The 2023 NBA Defensive Player of the Year award winner was Jaren Jackson Jr. of the Memphis Grizzlies. Jackson Jr. was just the second Memphis Grizzlies player to win the award, after 2013 winner and NBA Champion Marc Gasol.

Through his award-winning season, Jackson Jr. averaged 18.6 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.0 blocks, and 1.0 steals on 50.6% from the field and 35.5% from three-point range. His contributions on both ends of the court helped Memphis earn the second seed in the Western Conference.

At 23, Jackson Jr. became the youngest player to win Defensive Player of the Year.

Ten players have won Defensive Player of the Year twice or more. Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace lead the pack with four victories, but there are many more players to recognize. Four-time winners: Dikembe Mutombo (1995, 1997, 1998, 2001), and Ben Wallace (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006). Three-time winners: Dwight Howard (2009, 2010, 2011), and Rudy Gobert (2018, 2019, 2021). Two-time winners: Sidney Moncrief (1983, 1984), Mark Eaton (1985, 1989), Dennis Rodman (1990, 1991), Hakeem Olajuwon (1993, 1994), Alonzo Mourning (1999, 2000), and Kawhi Leonard (2015, 2016).

The NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award winner doesn’t receive a prize beyond the Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy. In terms of cash incentives or bonuses, there are none.

It may be written in many players’ team contracts that they receive a bonus upon receiving the award, but that is subject to the terms of the team agreement and not the NBA organization.

The most accurate prize for the Defensive Player of the Year is that their name is written in history as one of the greatest ever to play.

No, fans of the NBA do not have a say in who will be awarded Defensive Player of the Year. Unlike All-Star voting, the Defensive Player of the Year is voted upon by a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters across the United States and Canada.

The voting process for the NBA Defensive Player of the Year is as follows: Media members are allowed to award a player of their choice a “vote” ranked from first place, worth ten points, to third place, worth one point. The player with the highest points total wins the award.

There has never been a unanimous winner for Defensive Player of the Year. The closest a player has come was Ben Wallace in 2002. The undersized Detroit Pistons center received 116 out of 120 votes for the award.

Wallace averaged 7.6 points, 13.0 rebounds, 1.7 steals, and 3.5 blocks in his award-winning season. It was just one of his four Defensive Player of the Year-worthy years.

The NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award is usually announced after the conclusion of the NBA regular season and the Play-In Tournament. The team of the winning player tends to reveal the news publicly during the NBA Playoffs.

Before its cancellation, the prize would have been announced at the NBA Awards ceremony. Last year, the award news was reported on a broadcast of Inside the NBA.

The first-ever winner of the Defensive Player of the Year award was shooting guard Sidney Moncrief of the Milwaukee Bucks. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member was an equal force on the offensive and defensive end of the court.

In his Defensive Player of the Year winning season, his second All-Star season, Moncrief averaged 22.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.5 steals, and just 2.4 fouls in 35.7 minutes per game.

Impressively, his first award-winning season was just a precursor to winning Defensive Player of the Year in consecutive years. He is genuinely one of the NBA's greatest players!

Centers have won the most Defensive Player of the Year Awards with 25. Small Forwards and Shooting Guards have won five, Power Forwards have won four, and Point Guards have won two.

A rookie has never won the Defensive Player of the Year award. The closest a rookie has ever come to winning the award was Manute Bol in 1985-86. He finished second in voting for defensive player of the year, falling just five votes short of eventual winner Alvin Robertson.

In Bol's rookie season with the Washington Bullets, he posted 3.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 5.0 blocks per game. He led the league in blocks per game, even beating out multi-time winners Mark Eaton and Hakeem Olajuwon.

At 23 years old, Jaren Jackson Jr. (2023), Kawhi Leonard (2015), Dwight Howard (2009), and Alvin Robertson (1986) are tied as the youngest winners of the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award.

At 34 years old in 2001, Dikembe Mutombo was the oldest-ever Defensive Player of the Year Award winner. Splitting the season between the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers did not deter Mutombo's defensive efforts.

With six wins, four coming from Ben Wallace alone, the Detroit Pistons have earned the most Defensive Players of the Year. The other Pistons player to win Defensive Player of the Year was fellow Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman.

Twelve different NBA franchises have failed to produce an NBA Defensive Player of the Year winner. Those teams are: Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, LA Clippers, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, Toronto Raptors, and Washington Wizards.