{"id":829124,"date":"2025-04-26T01:40:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T05:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=829124"},"modified":"2025-04-26T01:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T05:41:18","slug":"evan-mobley-wins-defensive-player-of-the-year-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/evan-mobley-wins-defensive-player-of-the-year-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Evan Mobley Wins Defensive Player of the Year Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For years, the Cleveland Cavaliers coined the term &#8220;Defend the Land&#8221; as their motto for postseason runs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for this season, that phrase became the standard for forward Evan Mobley, who took home the franchise&#8217;s first-ever Defensive Player of the Year Award in a tightly contested race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the closest award-race so far, Mobley garnered 35 out of 100 first-place votes. However, he also earned 30 second-place and 20 third-place votes. Mobley finished with 285 points, 88 ahead of Atlanta Hawks guard Dyson Daniels, who had a breakout season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Daniels finished with 25 first-place votes, 17 second-place and 21 third-place votes while Draymond Green finished with 15 first-place votes, 20 second-place and 19 third-place votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A global media panel of 100 voters selected the winner of the 2024-25 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award.<br><br>The complete voting results \u2b07\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7eH65d7erV\">pic.twitter.com\/7eH65d7erV<\/a><\/p>&mdash; NBA Communications (@NBAPR) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NBAPR\/status\/1915535445791850812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 24, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Mobley, already a well-respected defender across the league, had a breakout 2024-25 season. The USC product made his first All-Star team and averaged 18.5 points per game, 9.3 rebounds per game and 1.6 blocks per game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the NBA, opponents shot only 44.5% from the field when Mobley was the primary defender, in addition to his 10.4 contested shots per game, the third-highest of qualified players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mobley&#8217;s frame and athleticism have allowed him to guard nearly every position on the court and captain the Eastern Conference&#8217;s top dogs alongside Jarrett Allen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Mobley&#8217;s impact defensively goes far beyond the stat sheet. With a new coaching staff led by head coach Kenny Atkinson, Cleveland ranked eight in defensive rating and opposing field goal percentage. According to the NBA, with Mobley on the court, Cleveland&#8217;s defensive rating skyrocketed to the second-highest in the League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Evan Mobley, the 2024-25 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/KiaDPOY?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#KiaDPOY<\/a>!<br><br>The ANCHOR of the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cavs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@cavs<\/a> defense all season long \ud83d\ude24\ud83d\udcaa <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Kia<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nPOp4eDdaJ\">pic.twitter.com\/nPOp4eDdaJ<\/a><\/p>&mdash; NBA (@NBA) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NBA\/status\/1915539892475437151?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 24, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, the Cavaliers are out to prove that they belong as the top seed in the Eastern Conference, and are matched up against the Miami Heat in the first round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Cleveland runs a help defensive scheme, Mobley has guarded Bam Adebayo and Nikola Jovic throughout the series, where he has held both scorers to under 50% shooting from the field so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the Cavs poised for a deep postseason run, expect Mobley to man the paint and lock up the top option in each playoff game to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For years, the Cleveland Cavaliers coined the term &#8220;Defend the Land&#8221; as their motto for postseason runs. But for this season, that phrase became the standard for forward Evan Mobley, who took home the franchise&#8217;s first-ever Defensive Player of the Year Award in a tightly contested race. In the closest award-race so far, Mobley garnered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":543,"featured_media":829106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[13006,60581],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-829124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-evan-mobley"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829124"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829130,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829124\/revisions\/829130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829124"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=829124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}