NBA Awards: Embiid has intriguing case for Defensive Player of the Year

By Josh Liddick, Sports Talk Philly editor 

On Monday night, the NBA will award all the season's awards headlined by the Most Valuable Player. The Rookie of the Year Award is between Sixers' point guard Ben Simmons and Jazz shooting guard Donovan Mitchell, in which Simmons has a fighting chance for the nod.

On the defensive side, Joel Embiid faces stiff competition as one of the three finalists for the Defensive Player of the Year honor. Jazz center Rudy Gobert and Pelicans center Anthony Davis are the other finalists.

Embiid has himself an intriguing case for Defensive Player of the Year but some may say that both Gobert and Davis have a better chance, who were both selected to first-team All-Defense this year. Embiid was selected to the second-team, while his teammate Robert Covington was on the first-team.

Joel Embiid had a fantastic season on defense for the Sixers as they won 52 games and went to the playoffs for the first time since 2012. He was third in the NBA in defensive rating (100.5), 13th in defensive win shares (3.8), seventh in block percentage (4.8), eighth in rebound percentage (19.4), fourth in blocks per game (1.8), and 15th in defensive box plus/minus (2.5).

Rudy Gobert only played in 56 regular season games for the Jazz, but finished second in defensive rating (99.5), 12th in defensive win shares (3.9), second in block percentage (6.0), 11th in rebound percentage (18.8), and second in defensive box plus/minus (4.6).

If the case for Gobert to win the award is hindered by only playing 56 games last season, then Anthony Davis seems like he would be the favorite then to capture the award. Davis was 11th in defensive rating (102.3), third in defensive win shares (4.9), fifth in block percentage (5.6), first in blocks per game (2.6), and 16th in defensive box plus/minus. Davis also was 10th in the NBA for Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) at 4.9. Both Gobert and Embiid missed out on the Top 20.