B/R Staff Predicts Every Major 2025 NBA Award Winner

Bleacher Report NBA Staff

B/R Staff Predicts Every Major 2025 NBA Award Winner

Photos by Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via We're less than a week away from the first tipoff of the 2024-25 NBA season. And that means it's time to throw down some predictions.
Few, if any, are as fun as the league's major awards.
Below, you'll find picks from Bleacher Report's staff for all of them: MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player, Clutch Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year.

Executive of the Year: Leon Rose, New York Knicks

David Dow/NBAE via New York Knicks president Leon Rose will earn Executive of the Year for the 2024-25 campaign following a tremendous offseason that saw the team add Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns via trade.
The Knicks have gradually earned the reputation in recent years for having one of the most competent, strategic front offices in the league. Following a long drought that saw one playoff win since 2023, the team advanced to the second round in two straight postseasons. Instead of becoming self-satisfied with incremental progress, New York went big with significant, cap-creative deals to add a defensive wing who can score (Bridges).
The complexities of the rules made it difficult to keep center Isaiah Hartenstein (who left for the Oklahoma City Thunder in free agency), but the team pivoted by adding one of the league's best scorers at the position in Towns.
The Knicks made sacrifices, including Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle and draft currency. But the team is arguably the Eastern Conference's biggest threat to the Boston Celtics' chance to repeat. The team will finish with a top-five record (if not higher), and Rose will be honored for what he and his staff accomplished this summer.

Coach of the Year: Taylor Jenkins, Memphis Grizzlies

Quinn Harris/ Taylor Jenkins has three top-10 finishes in Coach of the Year voting, led by a second-place nod in 2021-22, when his Memphis Grizzlies went 56-26 and announced themselves as one of the West's up-and-coming threats.
This season—with Memphis ready to rise again after an injury-plagued 2024-25 campaign knocked the team out of the playoff picture—offers Jenkins a prime opportunity to similarly re-establish himself. After a year out of the spotlight, Jenkins and the Grizzlies will remind the league of their best features: defensive intensity, relentless work on the offensive glass and a surprisingly low turnover rate for a team with this much explosive offensive talent.
The West is overstuffed with quality, but the Grizzlies can help make Jenkins' COY case by posting another win total in the 50s and ranking in the top 10 on both ends —marks they reached in 2021-22 and narrowly missed (11th on offense) in 2022-23.
Everybody loves a comeback, so the redemption angle should help Jenkins' narrative for the award. And as long as the injury bug that already bit Vince Williams Jr. and GG Jackson Jr. doesn't keep chomping, the product on the floor will be good enough to justify Jenkins' inclusion in awards consideration on merit.
Ultimately, Jenkins' candidacy mirrors his team's arc. He and the Grizzlies arrived as exciting, young forces in the league a few years ago and began clearing out space for themselves among the NBA's best. After a brief interruption last season, they'll pick up where they left off.

Most Improved Player: Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder

Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via The Most Improved Player of the Year award is one of the hardest to predict. It has gone to players beginning to reach their potential. Five of the last nine MIP winners have been third-year players, and Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams has a good chance of taking the trophy home in 2024-25, which will be his third campaign.
The 23-year-old took a step forward last season, going from averaging 14.1 points per game as a rookie to dropping 19.1 points a night. A big reason for the leap is the improved three-point success rate, shooting up seven percentage points to 42.7. Williams turned into a legitimate second option for the Thunder last season.
So the question is: Where can he improve? The key will be consistency; his shooting dropped from 45.3 percent pre-All-Star break to 37.8 percent post-All-Star break. If Williams can find a way to stay consistent in that area, there's a strong chance he will win this hardware.
A few players can give Williams a run for the award. If Evan Mobley begins to spread the floor for the Cleveland Cavaliers by increasing his range, it will open the door for him in the race. The other player to watch for is Victor Wembanyama. If he can improve his offensive efficiency, voters could jump on the Wemby train.
This is still Williams' award to lose; if he continues to make the leap, the Thunder will become the favorite to come out of the West.

Clutch Player of the Year: Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets

Patrick Smith/ Voter fatigue may cost Nikola Jokić his fourth MVP in five years, but he hasn't snagged a Clutch Player of the Year yet, and he's been one of the league's best players in big moments for years.
Last season, when games within five points were in the final five minutes, he averaged a ridiculous 36.9 points, 12.6 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 2.6 threes per 75 possessions, while shooting 55.3 percent from the field and 39.1 percent from deep. He was fourth in total clutch points and 10th in total clutch assists.
If he's able to repeat that kind of production, he should obviously be in the mix, but it'll take more than that.
In a weird way, this is a team award, because you have to be in a lot of close games to get the volume of clutch minutes and moments needed to stand out. The Celtics may not have many contenders, just because they'll author a ton of blowouts.
Denver, on the other hand, has lost two important contributors in each of the last two offseasons. And the Nuggets' slower pace and lack of three-point volume contribute to closer games, too.
The Nuggets should have enough clutch moments to make Jokić a real contender (and ultimately the winner) here.

Rookie of the Year: Zach Edey, C, Memphis Grizzlies

Dylan Buell/ The overarching theme to the 2024 NBA draft class was its lack of a clear-cut top prospect. It should come as no surprise, then, that the upcoming Rookie of the Year race feels similarly wide open.
There might be a half-dozen candidates (or more) who could qualify as reasonable options, but our crystal ball sees Memphis Grizzlies center Zach Edey eventually standing above the rest.
Of all the lottery picks, Edey, the No. 9 selection, has the best chance to fill a substantial role on a club competing for something of substance. While winning might matter less in this award race than perhaps any other, it's still a potential separator in what could be a crowded race.
Memphis, which has been a wins machine whenever Ja Morant has been healthy, has a lot riding on Edey's ability to hit the ground running. His unanimous National Player of the Year awards in each of the past two college seasons suggest he might be up to the task. And while he shouldn't be expected to dominate the same way, the changes he's already made (slimming down and expanding his range) should help the throwback bruiser keep up with the times.
If Edey proves he can hold his own, the Grizzlies should have no hesitations about handing major minutes to their new 7'4" mountain in the middle. It's fairly easy to see his path to averaging a double-double with perhaps multiple blocks on a team that lands somewhere in the West's upper half. That feels like an award-winning feat in this freshman class.

Sixth Man of the Year: Donte DiVincenzo, Minnesota Timberwolves

David K Purdy/ This one may feel sort of bold, since Donte DiVincenzo's new teammate and reigning Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid is ahead of him in the betting odds, per FanDuel , but consider this a dual prediction about the Minnesota Timberwolves bench.
With both of those players on the second unit, the T-Wolves should dominate opposing reserves, and the Sixth Man of the Year voting could look a little like it did in 2020-21, when Jordan Clarkson won the award and his teammate, Joe Ingles, finished second.
The nod to DiVincenzo over Reid is based on a few things. There's no voter fatigue with him (even a little may make a difference for Reid). DiVincenzo figures to have more control of the second-unit offense. And if Minnesota's preseason game against DDV's former team is any indication, he may be on a revenge tour in 2024-25.
If his averages are near where they were last year (15.5 points, 3.5 threes and 2.7 assists), the Timberwolves finish near the top of the West again, and Mike Conley and Anthony Edwards stay healthy (thus forcing DiVincenzo to come off the bench), he'll earn the award.

Defensive Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

Photos by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via How rare is it for an NBA player to win Defensive Player of the Year in their second season? It's only been done once in history, with San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Alvin Robertson accomplishing the feat in 1985-86.
Now, a second Spur will take home this honor as a sophomore.
Victor Wembanyama is perhaps the best defensive prospect the NBA has ever seen, as he finished second to Rudy Gobert for DPOY as a rookie and led the league in blocked shots (3.6 per game). After the All-Star break, no one contested more shots at the rim than Wembanyama (10.5 per game, 2.7 more than second-place finisher Brook Lopez), who also held opponents to a stingy 52.2 percent shooting mark.
At 7'4", Wembanyama is tied for the tallest player (Zach Edey) in the league and some added muscle to his frame now has the center weighing in at 235 pounds, up from 209 a season ago.
Wemby is going to win a lot of Defensive Player of the Year awards in his career and will be the youngest recipient (21) in history when he takes home his first trophy next spring.

Most Valuable Player: Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets

AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post Now is around the time his anecdotal case should suffer. And yet, consensus has not been this low on the Denver Nuggets in some time. That works in Jokić's favor.
If they win enough to hover near the top of the Western Conference while carving out (much) larger roles for youngsters like Christian Braun, Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther and navigating the Russell Westbrook experience, perhaps even optimizing it, who will be deemed primarily responsible? Spoiler alert: It won't be general manager Calvin Booth or head coach Michael Malone. If the preseason (and Olympics) are any indication, it will not be Jamal Murray, either.
It'll be Jokić, the generational superstar who will have ferried a team relying on youthful question marks and divisive supporting cast members to contender territory, all without the help, in all likelihood, of a fellow All-Star.

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