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2026 NBA Awards Predictions with 1 Month To Go
We're approaching the home stretch of the 2025-26 NBA season, and awards contenders are making their closing statements.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić remain locked in another battle for MVP, but DPOY front-runner Victor Wembanyama is making it hard to exclude him from any serious conversation about the league's highest individual honor.
Rookie of the Year pits two former roommates against one another, while Sixth Man and especially Most Improved feel more hotly contested than ever.
All these races are taking place as teams vie for playoff positioning and players who are subject to the rule try desperately to stay above the 65-game mark for awards consideration.
There's a lot going on. Let's check in on awards predictions with a little over a month left in the season.
MVP: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
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Nikola Jokić is on track to lead the league in rebounds and assists per game while averaging a triple-double and posting a 57.5/39.4/83.2 shooting split. Yet somehow, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's status as the MVP favorite feels more solid than ever.
Some of that has to do with the standings, as SGA's Oklahoma City Thunder are well clear of Jokić's Denver Nuggets. OKC's short-handed takedown of the Nuggets on March 9, in which Gilgeous-Alexander hit a pair of clutch threes to cap a dominant individual effort, felt like a decisive statement in the MVP race.
SGA is averaging 31.7 points, 6.6 assists, and 5.4 rebounds while posting a career-best 66.7 true shooting percentage. Virtually every individual stat is at or above the levels he set in winning MVP a year ago, and his edge in Estimated Plus/Minus helps offset Jokić's annual advantage in on/off splits.
Victor Wembanyama is the best defensive player on the planet and is driving the suddenly contending San Antonio Spurs, but he'll have to settle for a third-place nod behind a pair of statistical juggernauts.
Cade Cunningham might be shouldering the heaviest offensive load of anyone in the MVP conversation, but his Detroit Pistons are struggling at the wrong time, and his combination of relatively inefficient scoring and turnover woes takes him out of serious consideration.
Defensive Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama
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Victor Wembanyama knocks 12.2 points per 100 possessions off of the opponent's offensive rating when he's on the floor, mainly because he reduces rim-attempt frequency by 4.5 percent and short mid-range attempt frequency by 3.4 percent. He's the only big man in the league to rank above the 90th percentile in attempt reduction across those two close-range areas.
Those figures still don't capture Wemby's deterrent effect. Watch any Spurs game, and you can immediately spot the entire opposing team constantly searching for Wembanyama, clocking his location and adjusting their plans accordingly. He's like a shutdown corner in football that no quarterback dares to throw toward—except he's playing free safety and can eliminate any area of the field he wants. That's a messy metaphor, but Wemby's impact defies clean description.
The catch-all stats are inadequate, but they still show Wemby is the best defender in the league. He's tops in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus and Defensive LEBRON.
Chet Holmgren is arguably the most important piece of the NBA's leading defense in OKC, and Rudy Gobert's on-off impact is actually more pronounced than Wembanyama's. They're still a long way behind the leader and will only catch up if Wemby slips below the 65-game threshold.
Rookie of the Year: Kon Knueppel
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Cooper Flagg may still have the higher ceiling, but Kon Knueppel is already one of the most impactful offensive players in the league. His 95th-percentile Offensive EPM rating puts him dead even with the likes of Deni Avdija and Kevin Durant, and the rookie is outshooting both of them.
In fact, Knueppel's 2025-26 campaign would be the best shooting effort by a rookie if it had stopped a week ago. He's going to set the all-time rookie mark for made threes at a number that'll be hard for anyone to reach, and he's on track to finish with a scoring average of over 19.0 points per game on a true shooting percentage north of 65.0 percent.
Forget this year's class. No rookie has ever managed 19.0 points per game on even 62.0 percent true shooting. What Knueppel is doing this season rates as legitimately historic.
Flagg's foot injury cost him time just as Knueppel's Charlotte Hornets surged up the standings, shifting attention away from the top overall pick's excellent season. If the Dallas Mavericks rookie had stayed healthy and if his team hadn't decided to tank, this race would have been far more compelling.
VJ Edgecombe's major role on the playoff-bound Philadelphia 76ers earns him an honorable mention. He's been an every-night starter with averages of 15.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.5 steals.
Sixth Man of the Year: Naz Reid
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This will make it two Sixth Man wins in the last three years for Naz Reid, who continues to solidify his spot as the best offensive big man coming off an NBA bench. At 46.7 percent from the field and 37.7 percent from deep, Reid's shooting numbers are right in line with where they were last season, when he finished fifth in Sixth Man voting.
The bonus this season: Reid's defense is grading out better than ever. Though the Minnesota Timberwolves value his 13.8 points per game most, and though they'll almost never trot him out against dangerous lineups without a center next to him, Reid is on track to average at least one block and one steal for the first time in his career. Better still, his D-EPM is in the 84th percentile, a personal best, and the Wolves allow 3.2 fewer points per 100 possessions when he's in the game.
Jaime Jaquez's bludgeoning drives and post game allow him to dominate against reserve units. He's in line for a career-high 15.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game while hitting just over 50.0 percent of his shots from the field.
Keldon Johnson brings energy similar to Jaquez, but he's doing it on a contender and can actually space the floor. His 13.0 points per game come with a 38.0 percent hit rate from deep.
Most Improved Player: Keyonte George
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Keyonte George emerges from an exceptionally strong Most Improved field on the strength of a transformation that would have seemed impossible a year ago.
At the end of 2024-25, George was an empty-stats, offense-only, sometimes-starter on a terrible Utah Jazz team that couldn't possibly have believed in him as a long-term piece. Now, he's concluding a season marked by averages of 23.8 points, 6.2 assists, and 3.7 rebounds while establishing himself as a rising star. Utah's faith is justifiably renewed, and the proof lies in its deadline acquisition of Jaren Jackson Jr.
That's not a move you make if you don't believe George is a high-level starter and potential All-Star right now. Major jumps in foul-drawing craft (7.1 free-throw attempts per game) and scoring efficiency (45.5 percent from the field; 37.0 percent from deep) mark George as exactly that type of player—miles better than the guy he was last season.
Jalen Duren became an All-Star by adding a downhill driving game to his offensive profile; Jalen Johnson and Deni Avdija proved they could be first-option scorers and playmakers; Ryan Rollins came out of nowhere to settle in as a quality starter. Collin Gillespie did the same.
This is a stacked category with loads of worthy candidates. Maybe it's time to expand the award and go with Most Improved First and Second Teams to account for them all.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
