Evan Mobley has won the 2024-25 NBA Defensive Player of the Year award, the league announced Thursday. Mobley is the first Cleveland Cavalier to win the award and, at 23, is the second-youngest player ever to win it, trailing only Dwight Howard, who beat him by a few months in 2008. Now Mobley gives the Cavaliers the first of what they hope will be many trophies this spring.
Mobley received 35 first-place votes, 10 more than the Hawks’ Dyson Daniels. The Warriors’ Draymond Green came in third, while the Thunder’s Luguentz Dort, Rockets’ Amen Thompson, Clippers’ Ivica Zubac and Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo also received first-place votes.
His journey to win it, though, certainly wasn’t traditional. For most of the season, Victor Wembanyama was the runaway favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year. The reigning Rookie of the Year led the league in total blocks despite playing just 46 games, but the deep vein thrombosis that ended his season also made him ineligible for awards. That created a wide-open field for an award most had assumed was a lock.
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Two favorites quickly emerged: Draymond Green andEvan Mobley. The odds initially favored Mobley, as the 2023 runner-up to Jaren Jackson Jr. had led the defense for the wire-to-wire No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, and his consistent excellence reflected that. Mobley is the rare big man who can both protect the rim and switch onto the perimeter capably, and that gave Cleveland remarkable flexibility in how it concocted game-plans and schemes.
Green came on a bit later. On trade deadline day, the Warriors had the NBA’s No. 10-ranked defense and were below .500. But once Jimmy Butler came aboard, the Warriors zoomed back into the championship picture. Since the deadline, the Warriors have had the NBA’s best defense, and they finished the season at 23-9. Green played center for most of that stretch, both protecting the rim and quarterbacking Golden State’s defense from the back line.
In the end, Mobley edged Green out to win the award, and it’s a good thing he did considering how crowded the field is expected to be in the coming years. Wembanyama will hopefully return at full strength next season. Cooper Flagg is coming, and several All-Defense-caliber youngsters, like Amen Thompson, his brother Ausar Thompson and Dyson Daniels, are on the rise as well. This was Mobley’s best chance to earn a well-deserved trophy, and now he’s done so.
