Utah Jazz: End of season awards if the season is over

Defensive Player of the Year

Once again, this award was a gimme. How can you not pick Rudy for this award on his own team? According to Ben Simmons, you need to be able to guard multiple positions on the floor to be one of the premier defenders in the league.

But according to me, it’s just as valuable, if not even more worthwhile, to have a player that can defend an entire zone of the court single-handedly.  Whatever player decides to waltz into the paint and try to score, will have to do it over the long outstretched arms of Rudy.

It doesn’t matter if they’re a point guard, like Damian Lillard, or a center, like Joel Embiid. Rudy can lock down the paint with the best of them, and that’s with teammates that don’t play very good perimeter defense as a whole.

It’s a gift his teammates have taken for granted this season in particular. They could do a better job at feeding Rudy the ball on offense, especially when he’s wide open or has a big mis-match.

Or they could try harder to limit their mistakes so Gobert isn’t cleaning up after everyone on the defensive end of the court.

Honorable Mention: Royce O’Neale

Royce gets the honor of taking the toughest defensive assignment of all the perimeter players most nights. He does his job well (most of the time), and my guess is that he will earn every penny of his four year/36 million dollar extension, and then some.

After inking that extension however, he had a bad slump on both ends of the court. Part of that may have had to do with the starting lineup troubles the Jazz had that directly involved him, but his defensive effort just wasn’t cutting it for that 15 game stretch in February.