2022 midseason NBA awards ballot: All-Defense first team
G — Matisse Thybulle, Sixers
G — Mikal Bridges, Suns
F — Draymond Green, Warriors
F — Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks
F — Rudy Gobert, Jazz
The three frontcourt players are my top-3 Defensive Player of the Year votes. Simple enough. Gobert, Green, and Giannis might be the three best defenders of a generation.
The guard picks are trickier, and there’s a bit of Academy Award-style category fraud going on, but Mikal Bridges and Matisse Thybulle come out victorious. Bridges is probably the best perimeter defender in basketball right now, and if he’s not, then Thybulle is. On a per-minute basis, very few wings (or, uh, guards) impact the game like those two. All arms and chaos.
2022 midseason NBA awards ballot: All-Defense second team
G — Jrue Holiday, Bucks
G — Jimmy Butler, Heat
F — Evan Mobley, Cavaliers
F — Jaren Jackson Jr., Grizzlies
F — Joel Embiid, Sixers
Joel Embiid gets the nod here, even if he has been taking some well-earned breathers on the defensive end recently. At the end of the day, even with Thybulle on the roster, it’s hard to overstate Embiid’s importance as a rim protector. He cleans up a lot of messes for a small, exploitable Sixers roster.
Jaren Jackson Jr. and Evan Mobley are quite possibly the future of the DPOY race, while Jimmy Butler and Jrue Holiday need no introduction in Philadelphia.