With the preseason coming to a close Victor averaged nearly 3 blocks with 5 boards in only 20 mins played. JJJ, the reigning DPOY averaged 3 blocks with nearly 7 rebounds in 28 mins played.
If Victor increases his rebounding numbers and keeps playing at this level do you think he may have a real chance to be the first rookie to win DPOY?
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At least try to spell his name right
if he takes last year’s #30 defense and makes it really really good by himself, then yeah maybe.
That’s an absolutely ridiculous expectation for any rookie though.
Of course he can, esp when guys like JJJ and Gobert are winning it
My guess is that his advanced (and basic) metrics will be DPOY level but won’t end up winning due to not playing 65 games or the Spurs not being good enough as a team.
no
Just the fact that he might be in the dpoy conversation at the end of the season would be mind-blowing for a 19 year old.
It’s a narrative award so if he is the new golden child for the NBA they’ll give it to him
Jarens the golden child? League forgot to tell the refs this important info
On one hand the stage is definitely set for him to have a shot. The Spurs wore not only the 30th ranked defense in the league, they spent the vast majority of the year as one of the bottom five defenses in NBA history by pretty much every metric.
With him being the only major addition to the team, if they were to make a massive leap, say around 15-10th in defensive rating and did so while he put up really good shot blocking numbers. The narrative would definitely be there
On the other hand, It can’t be overstated how terrible the spurs were on defense last year. It seems extremely unlikely they will finish near the top 10, even though they definitely will improve, and if Victor is putting up crazy block numbers But the team is still bad to mediocre on the defensive side. There’s no way he wins the award.
Winning the award? Sure. Actually being the best defender in the League? Nope.
Even excluding the overall defensive performance of the Spurs, rookies with great individual stats tend to not get votes for the major trophies even hyped ones
The Admiral, Shaq, Yao, Marc Gasol, Kawhi, AD, Embiid, Mobley all got 0 votes for DPOY as a rookie
Dwight got one 5th place vote and Duncan got 4 1st place votes is as close as anyone’s got in 30 years. Wemby could average 14 boards and 3.5 blocks which is exactly what Shaq did on a bad team wouldn’t matter