Shai Gilgeous-Alexander believes his teammate deserves the Defensive Player of the Year(DPOY) award, and he’s making sure to endorse him.
Along with his other teammate, Jalen Williams, Gilgeous-Alexander believes that their teammate, Lu Dort, deserves the DPOY award. After the win over the Pacers, Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams shared their differing views on how the award should be structured.
Shai took to his Instagram and shared a story about endorsing Lu Dort.
Clutchpoints put out a brief comparison of different top-scoring teams’ overall stats versus when they play the Thunder.
In the post, Clutchpoints compared Luka Doncic, Cade Cunningham, Devin Booker, LeBron James, and Donovan Mitchell’s season average. Which remained well around 30 points per game. But when all of these superstars played against the OKC, their scoring averaged somewhere between 9.5-16 points per game.
Quoting the post, SGA wrote- “Le Dort Effect.”
Please give us the Thunder in the playoffs man pic.twitter.com/Tvk8kVE06A
— ✧.* (@HoodiiBron) March 31, 2025
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Though the endorsement is legitimate. With their dominant defensive play, Dort along with other Thunder stars led the team to 62 wins for the season.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Gives His Nod To Lu Dort For DPOY
While there are other stars in the league making their valid point to win the DPOY award, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gives his full support to Le Dort.
“To me, it’s just impact. There’s no position. There’s guards, there’s bigs, there’s wings, and to me, it’s whoever impacts the most deserves…all the team selections, it’s the same thing. And I think Lu is at the forefront of impacting defense in this NBA every single night, and that’s why I think he should get it,” Gilgeous-Alexander recently said.
He supports the current way the award is given, emphasizing that impact is what truly counts, regardless of a player’s position. Shai argues that just like in the MVP race, it should be based on how well a player performs in the season.
He strongly believes that Dort significantly impacts the Thunder’s defense night after night.
Conversely, Williams suggests a change in the award process, advocating for the recognition of both perimeter and big defenders.
He notes that historically, the DPOY award has predominantly gone to big players, and he thinks it would be fairer to acknowledge the contributions of guards and wings as well. Williams proposes either awarding two players or creating an All-Defensive Third Team to better represent the diverse contributions needed on defense.
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