The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Mid-season NBA Awards: SGA-Jokic-Cade MVP race, Wemby vs. Chet DPOY, All-NBA teams, 6th man & more

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Jason gives his mid-season NBA awards and discusses how the league's 65-game rule will impact the results. He breaks down the three-headed race for MVP between Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC Thunder), Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets), and Cade Cunningham (Detroit Pistons), as well as the Defensive Player of the Year race between Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio Spurs) and Chet Holmgren (Oklahoma City Thunder), the races for Coach of the Year, Most Improved, Sixth Man of the Year, and All-NBA teams including players such as Luka Doncic (Los Angeles Lakers) and Steph Curry (Golden State Warriors). All lines presented by Hard Rock Bet.  #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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As promised, today we're going to be checking in on our NBA awards, a little mid-season check-in. The only one we're not going to hit today is Rookie of the Year because I would like to hit that one in more detail tomorrow. I want to do like a deep scout of the guys that have had their first season in the NBA this year. And look at it, not just as a view of the award, because I think Cooper flag is most likely going to win it, but I want to dive into some of the specifics of each player more as,

as we talk about their development. So I want to spend a whole episode on that. So today, we're just going to rip through all the awards, top to bottom, going to go over some best bets, who I think's going to win. It's going to be a fun one. You guys know the Joe before we get started,

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basketball. All of our lines that we go over today are provided by our partner Hard Rock Bet starting with MVP. Current lines on Hard Rock Bet. Shea is leading at minus 200. Yokic in second place plus 300. Big drop off from there. Cade is in third place at plus 1400 and Luca in fourth place at plus 2,000. I think Cheggisgill says Alexander is clearly the MVP at this point. I'm not surprised. He's favored. He's averaging 32 points per game on 67% true shooting this season.

To give you guys some perspective, unanimous MVP Steph averaged 30 points per game on actually a tiny bit lower efficiency. He was at 66.9% true shooting. So we're talking about a more efficient scoring season at, higher volume than unanimous MVP Steph. It's also just from some perspective, the most efficient season of Steph's career was 67 and a half percent true shooting. But that was in 2018 when he was alongside KD, much lower usage role, only average 26.4 points per game. So do I think Shay's been as good as unanimous MVP Steph? No, Steph was scoring at nearly the same volume and basically the same

efficiency while bringing an enormous amount of shot creation value because of his gravity when he was running around without the ball. Steph was a better offensive engine. That's no shade at Shea. I think Steph's peak offensively is the second highest peak ever in the history of the league behind Nicole Yokic. I think step at his peak offensively was an even slightly better offensive player than LeBron James at his peak.

So there's no shame there. I just think we're seeing from Shea this season, the best guard season since 2016 step and i think that's saying a lot when you think about all the insane seasons from like russell westbrook in 2017 or james harden a couple of times during his peak there uh you know five years ago we're seeing the highest peak even higher than those peaks since 2016 step i think he's going to win MVP i think he'll very much deserve it so let's talk a little bit about some of the other candidates on the list so both uh i like i don't like the yokech bet at all. The odds look favorable, right? You're getting Yokic at plus 300 there. But considering the

situation, like, he just has to miss two more games to be ineligible for the award. That could be anything. That could be him sitting out a couple of meaningless games late in the year because he doesn't necessarily care all that much about MVP or like, let's say he tweaks an ankle just ever so slightly on the front end of a back to back. He misses a game. Suddenly, you just need one more game and he's ineligible. So, like, for all of the different ways that could go south. I think Yokic is not a great opportunity at plus 300. Now, both Cade and Luca, you're looking at the value at there, right? Cades plus 1,400.

Luca is plus 2,000. Cade is the interesting one for me there. The Pistons currently have the best record in the entire NBA. Cade has clearly been their most valuable player. He's got a strong on-off net rating. The team performs way better when he's on versus when he's off. he's produced at, you know, not the same level as the Yokic Lukash-Shay tier, but he's produced at a very high level, 25 points per game, six rebounds and 10 assists. Really strong shot creation data, despite him not being really surrounded by much in the way of offball shooting talent.

He's particularly been amazing in the post this year. Out of the 50 players who have posted up at least 75 times, he has the sixth best efficiency in the league, 1.28 points per possession, including passes. and he's a legit two-way player, which I think is a feather in his cap over guys like Luca and Nicola Yokic as counter examples. Like you guys saw how well he defended in the All-Star game, blocking Brandon Ingram at the rim, competing and getting actually quite a few deflections and a rim contest that four stops. But that's how he's been most of the season. He's active. He's physical. He's averaging a career high 1.5 steals per game. Not only is he a pretty darn good defender right now, but I think he's got the tools in that competitive

force of nature to be one of the top two-way players in the game one day. If you look at this as a gambling opportunity, there's a version of this story where the thunder kind of ease their way through the rest of the season. Maybe Cade bumps up as efficiency a little bit. That's the one big thing you're looking at it with him is scoring volume and efficiency is pretty far below these top guys. But what if he bumps it up a little bit, you know, average is closer to 30 points per game on something closer to 60% to shooting the rest of the way. What if the Pistons finished with the number one overall seed? And what if there's like a solid three or four game margin between them and OKC? That's a pretty damn strong MVP case.

And you're getting him at plus 1,400 for what is, you know, a completely realistic outcome. So I like that as a as a long shot kind of like value bet. The Luca kind of case is similar in the sense that like, well, what if he's just awesome down the stretch? The Lakers are just two games back of the fourth seed. If he puts up insane numbers and the Lakers end up finishing third in the West and they're like right up there with San Antonio and he's got this crazy statistical performance, right? 33, eight, nine on 61% true shooting already. What if he goes for, you know, 34, 10 and 10 on 63 or 64% true shooting from this point on to the end of the season? That would be like the case, right? But I just think it's too much of a long shot. Like, you know, Yokic could miss two games and get

so I think Luca could pass him. Cades just not as good as Luca overall as a player right now. You know, obviously he has that potential, but Cades earlier in his development. He doesn't put up the stats in overall production that Luca does. So I think Luca could pass him with voters. But I just don't see a universe where Luca could get more voter support than Shea. Like the case for a Cade over Shea is overwhelming team success. The Thunder have been nowhere near as good as Detroit in high.

profile matchups this year. The Pistons are 10 and three against teams in the top 10 in point differential. The Thunder are six and eight. The Pistons have just, they have a better record. They perform better against the best teams. The Pistons have just had a better season. So if that gap grows a little bit before the end of the season, that could be enough to supplant Shea. There's no chance for Luca to supplant, supplant Shea in terms of team success. And so unless Shea just gets hurt and misses too many games, and he's only missed seven games to this point. So he'd have to suffer some sort of substantial injury to miss at least 11 games. I don't think that's going to happen. So based solely on their individual play this year, Shea's been better on both ends of

the floor. The team's been better. So I don't think we're going to see Luca win an MVP this year. So I don't like him very much as a long shot bet. And that's why he's plus 2000 for the record. But I, Shea's the MVP. If you're looking for a value bet, I like Cade at plus 1,400. What will it take for Luca to finally win an MVP? This is the last. thing I want to hit on before we move on to defensive player of the year. It's not about his upside. I would argue Luca's ceiling is actually the highest in the league, maybe even a bit higher than Yokic,

specifically because of his ability to create his own shot from the three-point line. When Luca has every part of his game going, he's literally one of the most indomitable forces in the history of the league. No one doubts Luca's ceiling. when he's he has the ability to hit 7, 8, 9 step back threes in a single game. He has the ability to get to the reliable short range shot making that you get from Yokic. He's every bit the passer that Nicola Yokic is. He is every bit as good when he's at his best, if not a tiny bit better than everybody in the league.

But he has by far the lowest floor of any of the current superstars. You have a bad Yonis game? Maybe he's missing some shots at the room, missing some free throws. It doesn't have any of his perimeter game going. He still brings enormous value defensively, enormous value on the glass, and that relentless rim pressure comes with a lot of trickle down positive effects. Yolkich and Shea have such a close to the rim shot profile and they both have such fantastic shot, a touch on short twos, like Shea's damn near 60% on jump shots inside of 17 feet. Yokich is in the mid 60s on floaters and

hooks. They're both just relatively immune to variance. Yokic has some turnover issues, but he's nowhere near as bad as Luca. So for perspective, Yokic has never averaged over four turnovers in a game, per game for a season. Luca's done that five times. So like, even when you talk about the turnovers, it's not the same as Luca there. And again, less propensity to have these really cold shooting nights, right? With Luca, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like his bad nights are useless. He'll still create some good shots. He'll draw the rim protector over and throw a lob to his big man for a dunk.

He'll make some quality kickouts. He's always been a good rebounder. That's a thing that helps his floor. But when he's having bad nights, it's usually a lot of turnovers, a lot of missed threes and really bad defense. And so his bad nights are just more damaging to his team than the bad nights for other stars. And because his game is so predicated on high volume three point attempts,

he's more prone to those cold nights. So like, how does Luca finally win an MVP? It's when he reaches a point in his career where he's made a diligent effort to trim the fat in his game. Cut down on the mistakes. The poor shot selection, like, you don't have to go two for 11 from three. You can go two for seven,

realize you don't have it, and adjust your shot profile, right? A little bit more consistency on defense. Like those kinds of things, that is what actually accentuates and shines the light on his immense. ceiling, which as we mentioned, he might have the highest ceiling in the entire NBA. Another way for me to describe it is like, Shea's a better basketball player than Luca.

But Luca is a, has a higher ceiling, a great Luca game when he's bullying dudes for short twos and he's spraying out for 12, 13 assists and he's hitting eight or nine step back three. There's not many guys in the league, if at all, that can touch that level. But none of that matters if it's wildly up and down and if he can't fix his floor. So that to me, you know, Luke has been consistently every year, one of the guys that we look at as a preseason MVP favorite. And every year he seems to be out of the mix when we get to this point. And I do think he's capable of getting there, just has to fix his floor, trim some of the fat in his game. Defense a player of the year.

This is another one that basically comes down to the 65 game rule. Wembe is currently the favorite on Hard Rock Bet. He's minus 250. Chet's the only other real guy in contention right now at plus two. 30. But Chet has only missed seven games and Wembe has missed 14. So if Wembe misses four more games, he's disqualified. And we've seen how careful the spurs can be with him and any, any little tweak and strain that he has, any sort of little thing could cause him to miss two or three games, right? So I would look at this one as much more of like a coin flip in terms of which of those

two guys I think is going to win defensive player of the year. And so at that point, if you're getting shed at plus 230, he's your best opportunity there. Now, to be very clear, if you're just basing this award on individual performance and we assume that both guys qualify at the end, it's Wemby by a mile. That's no shade at Chet. Chet gives you basically everything you could ever want from the center position defensively. As great scheme versatility is an elite drop coverage big, both in deep drop. They're up at the level, like up to touch type of coverages. He's an outstanding switch defender. He's been very good in one-on-ones this year.

I think he's a better post-defender than he gets credit for. Like, yeah, he can get buried by power bigs from time to time. But his length and mobility actually make up for that quite a bit. He tends to win more of those battles than he loses, and that reflects in his percentages, his point-per-possession data this season. The only real knock-on-chat defensively is the defensive rebounding piece. And I wouldn't say he's bad at it.

He's just not the kind of guy that can, like, single-hand anchor you on the defensive glass like some of the other top centers in the league. So point being, in any other era in NBA history, he'd be on the very short list of people that you consider to be the very best defender in the NBA, right? But Wemby's an alien. And everything he does just lacks any sort of comparison throughout all of NBA history. And the funny thing is, before we go any further, because again, I feel strongly that Wembe, if the season were to end today, is the defensive player of the year.

I think there's a wide gap between him and Chet. But what's funny is he's actually having a pretty bad season defending one-on-ones, both statistically and with what you see on tape. He's been particularly susceptible to dribble drives. He's been overplaying the jumper a little bit. He's only allowed to pull-up threes on him in one-on-ones this year, but he's been giving up a lot of buckets on drives. He's been overplaying the jumper a little bit.

Sometimes he'll open up his stance and try to, you know, kind of get that extra step towards the contest in power drivers. will just hit that open hip and just go right around him. We've seen a lot of examples of it this year. You guys remember the Zion Williamson game. Zion drove right around him a bunch of times. Janice has gotten right around him. Anthony Edwards, remember that game winner where he,

or not game winner, but like the clutch shot that kind of iced the game against the spurs, drove right around Wemby and got to like a little floater off the glass. I've seen Caleb Martin beat him off the dribble in an ISO. I've seen, you know, I've seen just all sorts of like individual one-on-one-on-one, Peyton Pritchard got him off the top of the key with a drive. Who's the young player, the wing that the jazz got this year. Ace Bailey got him with a drive out of the corner that led to a three for use of

Nerkich. He's just been giving up a lot of dribble drives. So like, what's funny is, is like, as good as he is defensively already, he's got some substantial room for improvement just by like squaring up his stance a little bit more and kind of finding that better sweet spot, maybe giving a tiny bit more ground and conceding a few more pull-up jump. and not giving up the drives. The main reason why is because a drive by Wemby means Wembe's not at the rim. So like if you beat Wemby off the dribble, there's no rim protection element. You have the

ability to finish there relatively easily. So what's kind of funny is he's having this rough season in one-on-ones, but he's still just far in a way the best defensive player in the league. Because his overall impact as an off-ball defender in ball screens help situations at the rim when he just kind of steps over from off-ball. There are so many. many situations where guys get open on drives, cuts, rolls, and they look up and they go, nope, and they kick it out or they dribble it out. He just breaks down so many offensive sequences sheerly with his sheer presence around the basket. And I think that when you're looking at that specifically, that overwhelmingly impacts the game more than enough to make up for any sort

of issues he's had in his one-on-ones this year. He's averaging 14 rebounds per 36 minutes this here, which is a career high, and the on-off numbers show it. The OKC defense is elite with Chet and still very good without it. The Spurs defense is elite with Wembe and goes to below average without it. I think he's the best defender in the NBA by country mile. Still has plenty of room to improve, which is terrifying. So what you're essentially betting with the defense player of the year award is not who's the defense player of the year.

Wemby's the defensive player of the year. You're betting whether or not you think Wemby's going to miss four more games. And so if the under four missed games is minus 250 and the over missed four games is plus 230, I'm probably going to take the over. Because I would argue that's roughly about a coin flip right now and chat's getting better odds. So that's probably your best value play.

But if the season ended today, I think Wemby is clearly the defensive player of the year. Today's show is brought to you by our presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet, the official sportsbook partner of the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic. What's better than the sound of the ball on the hard? would. Sneakers squeaking and the swish of the net winning on Hard Rock Bet. You're home for Hoops action all season long. And if you want to score a major bucket, shoot your shot at the same game parlay. Stack your picks on Hard Rock Bet and see your odds grow. But if you miss tip off,

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We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember.

I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas, and then I wrote down on my little notepad,

Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

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Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions,

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This one's a slam dunk for J.B. Bicker staff. And before, you know, we're not going to get into like, you know, different betting opportunities here because J.B. is just going to win it. But I really just want to dive into specifically why I. I think J.B deserves this award. It's not just as simple as Detroit having the best record. It's their strong identity, the one that exists, regardless of who is on the floor, which I think is always a feather in the cap of the head coach. Those of you guys who've been listening to the show for a while

might remember an episode last year when the calves were starting to go on their run, when I had Carter Rodriguez on the show. And we were discussing all the different things that Kenny Atkinson had done to improve the team. The emphasis on playing in transition more, the hunting of transition threes, early offense threes, the emphasis on driving kick when they got in the half court. The emphasis on forcing turnovers on defense, a lot of more aggressive ball pressure and attacking the basketball

to try to spark more of those transition opportunities. All things that we've talked about that every team should be doing. These are the same things that we talked about with like the Pacers last year that were fueling a lot of their success. Like these are margins that every team should be hunting. Ball pressure to make ball handlers uncomfortable. That ball pressure also forces turnovers, which can spark transition opportunities.

Every transition offensive possession is far more efficient than a half court offensive possession. So you should be hunting them as much as possible. Spot up opportunities are far more efficient than any sort of on ball opportunity. So you should be hunting as many spot up opportunities as possible with dribble penetration and emphasizing driving kick. These are all things that every coach in the NBA should be doing. And what I thought was interesting is Carter in that pod was like, J.B. Bickerstaff was preaching all of these same things to the caps. But that sometimes a locker room just needs a different voice.

He had been there for a half decade. They needed a different voice. He moved on. And he's been the perfect voice for this Pistons locker room. He's achieving a level of buy-in down the roster that I think is super impressive. And again, there's a strong team-wide identity. One of the biggest things that I point to as an indicator of a strong coaching presence is how your team performs on the margins.

How well does your team excel in everything that's outside of the half court? because when you get into half court, obviously coaching still plays a role in terms of your system, but that's where individual greatness can really take over. That's where having a Cade Cunningham, having a Luca Donchich, having a Nicola Yokic, makes up for a lot of what a coach can do in those sorts of situations. In the margins, that's all a coach preaching fundamentals. What your transition defense principles look like, what your transition offense principles look like, how often you're running as a habit.

Because, again, if you want to emphasize transition possessions, you've got to have a have it or running. You got to have guys that really enjoy being in the open floor and don't like to walk the ball up and down, right? And the pistons just absolutely crush teams on the margins. Cleaning the glass has this catch-all transition metric that I've used a lot over the years. They call it transition points added per 100 possessions. It basically just takes a combination of like the frequency, how often you allow a team to get in transition and how efficient they are when they get in transition. Detroit is top 10 in both transition points added per 100 possessions on offense. and on defense, according to cleaning the glass.

So strong fundamentals and transition on both ends of the floor. The outscored teams by five and a half points per game, every single game off of turnovers. They outscore teams by two points per game and second chance points. They outscore teams by 4.9 points per game just strictly in the fast break. So they're capitalizing on every single, like one of those like coaching type of metrics that we look at around the league. Another very simple way for me to put this is,

I don't think the Pistons have the most talented roster in the NBA. They're talented roster, but they're not out there just overwhelming teams with talent. By any measure, though, this has been the best team in the NBA this year. They have the best record. They have the best performance in games against the best teams. We mentioned this earlier in the show, but OKC has a better overall net rating for the entire season because they've been beating the hell out of all the bad teams in the league. but Detroit, 10 and three against teams in the top 10 point differential,

outscoring them by an average of 5.7 points per game. OKC 6 and 8 point differential of just 0.1 in those games. So they're outperforming expectations better than any team in the NBA by a wide margin. And that is why J.B. Bickerstap is the runaway coach of the year favorite. All right, we got, we're going to do All MBA, Most Improved, and Sixth Man, before we get out of here today. All NBA, this one is also just super tricky because of the 65 game rule. So LeBron and Janus are already out. There's a legitimately high possibility that Luca, Nicole Yokic, Victor Wenimah,

Steph Curry, Devin Booker, and Kauai Leonard all missed the 65 game cut. All those guys are like a two-week injury or one-week injury away from basically being disqualified from all-MBA. So we could end up with like a truly bizarre All-MBA lineup here if things go wrong in terms of the injuries down the stretch. But just for fun, let's just assume that all these guys play the rest of the season and we don't have that particular issue. First team, I think there's four locks. Nicole Yokic is a lock. Again, if he can stay healthy, Shea's a lock, Luca's a lock. I think Anthony Edwards is a lock. I considered three different guys for that first

team spot, that final first team spot. I looked at Jalen Brown, Quay Leonard, and Victor Wem, and you know the kawai jaylund brown debate is fascinating because i actually do think kawai's a better basketball player than jaylon brown but jalen obviously more team success and he's been a little bit more available this year that gives him a nod but i ended up putting wemby over both of them one because i think the spurs record is just too too tough to deny at this point especially considering again you're playing in that brutal western conference his on-off numbers are insane like he's plus 11 the spurs are 11 points worse per 100 possessions when he's off the floor versus on. That's the same as Kauai.

Kauai has a plus 11 on off. But we're talking about a team that's below 500 versus one of the most dominant teams in the NBA all this season. So Wemby, again, you're getting pretty solid offensive production efficiently in the mid-20s, but you're also getting defensive player of the year-level contribution for a team that's been better than both the spurs or than both the clippers and the Celtics. So I ended up giving Wemby the nod for first team. You know, I always, you know, Bill Simmons used to always frame it like this. And I actually agree with him.

Like the all NBA teams should look like a rough snapshot of what the league looked like in that particular season. And to me, Wembe just feels like a guy who you would look at as one of the five most influential and impactful players of this particular season. So Yokic, Shea, Luca, Anthony Edwards, and Wembe would be my first team if the season ended today. second team there are a couple of absolute locks like kate cunningham absolute lock jayl brown absolute lock at this point koile entered absolute lock from there it gets a little tricky with the guards and there's a bunch of dudes you're considering there right jelan brunson you're considering donovan mitchell you're considering tirees maxi jamaul murray devon boker step curry and i'm going to lean towards team success in this particular case so jelan brunson i think this has been the best season of his career

he was there they're in a stretch surrounding the in season tournament about the month or so prior. He was legitimately playing at a top tier superstar level. It's been a little inconsistent since then. But overall, he's been kind of like in that fringe zone between what I would consider to be a top tier superstar and one of the second tier guys. So I give the nod to Jalen Brunson there. And then Donovan Mitchell, I've talked about this before. He deserves a ton of credit for floating the ship for this Cavs team this year, consistently being available, consistently producing for a team that has just been absolutely rasson.

by injuries. Donovan Mitchell got the nod for me for second team. Third team, I thought these were the clear five. I think there's a pretty substantial drop off after these five. When you get to more of like the Denny Avdia Alperin, Shangun kind of crew, those guys that had a pretty substantial drop off. So third team, pretty easy. Tyrese Maxie, then the best player on the Philadelphia 76ers this year has made a substantial leap in terms of a scoring consistency that's brought him into that tier of guards that's higher up in the league. Kevin Durant, kind of like a lesser version of the Donovan Mitchell case, has really been carrying the load in terms of availability and consistent production for that Houston Rockets team. Jamal Murray, one of my predictions

from before the season that I got right, not right about everything. I've been wrong about a lot this year, but I did think Jamal was going to have an awesome season. He's had an awesome season. I think he deserves that third team all NBA spot. Deserves a lot of credit for helping to float the nuggets when Nicole Yokic was out this year. He's been like playoff. Jamal Murray in the regular season in terms of the consistent scoring and efficiency. Devin Booker, the offensive engine driving that overachieving Phoenix Suns team. And then Steph Curry. Again, Steph Curry, I think, you know, Jackson and I were talking about this before

recording today. There's a lot of guys on that first and second team that you consider taking Steph over for a playoff series. But in the regular season, this, it just hasn't amounted to enough team success to justify anything higher than a third team selection. So again, quick wrap up. First team, Yokic, Shea, Luca, and Wembe. Second team, Kade, Jalen Brown, Kway Leonard, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell. Third team, Tyrese Maxi, Kevin Durant, Jamal Murray, Devin Booker, and Steph Curry.

All right, we're going to go through these last two pretty quick here. Most improved player. The lines right now, Denny Obdias, minus 120. Jalen Johnson is plus 240. Big drop off there to Keontay, Georgia, plus 800, which was a little surprising for me because I think Keontes is an obvious third. but I would put him a little closer. I think he's had a really, really impressive leap this season. There's kind of an interesting betting opportunity on the Jalen Johnson side.

If the season ended today, Denny's the most improved player. He's the better basketball player right now. I think he impacts winning at a higher level than Jalen Johnson, specifically because he's that self-creating offensive engine type that I've always just valued more, right? We've discussed it at length this year. He's a relentless driver of the basketball, but he also mixes in a beautiful change of pace to his game. where in the middle of the floor he can slow down, put the defender in jail. He has great size there in the middle of the floor.

And then he can methodically pick you apart in those spots. He's very good at kind of waiting for openings to generate around the basket and kind of slithering his way through to find layups. He's very good at getting to the foul line. He's good at making all of the reeds in those situations. And the Portland Trailblazer offense just falls apart when he's off the floor. That's how gifted of an offensive engine he has become. It's one of the most important archetypes in the NBA right now. At the season ends of today, Denny's the best player in that group.

he's the most improved player in that group, he would get the award. But since that back injury, he suffered against the Knicks, Denny's looked a little bit shaky. He's averaged just 19 points per game in his last six games. He's looked a little less explosive.

Not hard to imagine why with the back injury, right? So like, if Denny tails off this year, then Jalen's going to win the award. So there might be some value there at Jalen Johnson at plus 240. Lastly, before we get out of here today, sixth man of the year, Hard Rock Bet has it as a three-man race

Nas Reid at plus 190, Kelden Johnson at plus 325, and Jaime Hawkes at plus 525. I look at as more of a two-man race. I mean, Kelden and Jaime have very similar kind of like play styles as bully ball drivers,

and Kelden has just done it at a little higher level for a better team this year. So I would look at it more as like a two-man race between Nas and Kelden. Also, their teams are just more relevant, right? I actually lean towards Kelden here.

I'm a big Nas-Reed fan. It's less about Nas and more about just how much I like Kelden and what he's done for San Antonio this year. He's brought a very important bully ball element to this team, not just as a driver, but also as a cutter and as a rebounder. He's been a guy that just brings like the hammer off of the bench for San Antonio. It just brings a lot of reliable power element to his game.

He's hit a lot of big, important catch and shoot threes this year. That's honestly one of the big differences for me. Like if you look at Nas and Kelden is generally on the same footing, Keldon's been way better in the clutch this year. So Nas Reid is just two for 12 from the field in clutch situations this season. Kelden is 7 for 11, including 3 for 4 from 3. If the season ended today, my sixth span of the year would be Kelden Johnson. All right, guys, it's all I have for today.

Again, we're going to be back tomorrow focusing entirely on rookie of the year. I want to do deep dives on these guys, not just talking about the rookie of the year award, but also talking about just how I project their careers to move forward, areas for opportunity. We're going to be looking at it way more as like a scouting type of pod. going to go deep on all of the rookies. Then on Thursday's pod, we're going to be covering the top of the draft. I'm going to specifically be focusing on AJ DeBonson, Darren Peterson. Darren's been such a fascinating player to me over the course of the last

a couple of months to watch just these crazy moments that he's having. But there's some tricky stuff with his desire to play and some weird kind of just antics that I want to dive into a little bit. But we're going to be talking rookies on Thursday, and then we'll have our mailbag. on Friday. As again, as always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you tomorrow.

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