NBA awards picks: Experts split on MVP and Rookie, but SGA and Wemby are unanimous picks for other honors

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Here's the good news: we've reached the end of the 2025-26 NBA season, and while All-NBA teams have been ravaged by the 65-game rule, the fields for the major individual awards were left mostly intact. We're still waiting to hear if Luka Dončić will receive an extraordinary circumstances exemption, but Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokić and Kawhi Leonard all snuck across the finish line in the season's final weekend to ensure their MVP eligibility. Among legitimate candidates, the only player we know to have fallen out of the running for a major award at this stage is Cade Cunningham for MVP.

That allowed our NBA staff here at CBS Sports to consider most of the realistic field for the NBA's major awards. Below, you'll find our votes for the eight highest individual honors in the league: MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player, Clutch Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year. Note that the 65-game rule applies only to MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player. Rookie of the Year, Clutch Player of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year have no minimum.

You can surely predict some of our award winners. The only drama involved in the Defensive Player of the Year race was whether or not Wembanyama would reach 65 games, for example, but the other races were a good deal more dramatic. Depending on Dončić's eligibility, there are up to four realistic MVP candidates. Rookie of the Year has been a two-man race all year, but Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel have such different cases that there has been intense debate between the two of them. Most Improved Player and Coach of the Year are enormously subjective and therefore almost always create crowded fields.

So, where did our voters fall? Check out the 2026 CBS Sports NBA awards ballot.

MVP

Defensive Player of the Year

Rookie of the Year

Coach of the Year

Sixth Man of the Year

Most Improved Player

Clutch Player of the Year

Executive of the Year

Expert explanations

Botkin: There is an almost irrefutable MVP case for each of SGA, Jokić and Wemby. In the end, Jokić is still the best player of the three, and the Nuggets still suffer more without him than the other, deeper teams do without their star. He's the first guy in NBA history to lead the league in both rebounding and assists, and, on the side, he averaged 27 points per game.

Don't worry, there is still hardware going out to SGA, who is my Clutch Player of the Year, and Wemby, who should be the unanimous pick for DPOY (if he isn't, someone needs their voting privileges revoked). Rookie of the Year is a total toss-up; I give Kneuppel the edge for his impact on meaningful winning. Neckeil Alexander-Walker is the clear MIP. The guy went from a bench role player to 20 PPG om 40% high-volume 3-point shooting.

I can understand COY votes for a lot of guys, but to me Mazzulla is clearly the guy -- even if he doesn't want the honor. The fact that the Celtics lost Jayson Tatum for the majority of the season, and lost the minutes that Jaylen Brown was on the court, and still won 56 games is a testament to Mazzulla's mastery of the margins, pulling all the right lineup levers to squeeze every ounce of juice out of a team that has one one of the clearest identities in the league.

On that same note, Stevens deserves EOY. It started in the offseason by getting off a 34-year-old Jrue Holiday who had over $100 million left on his contract without even having to give up a first-round pick. Hell, he got Anfernee Simons back for his trouble, and then flipped Simons as he continued to trim tax money at the deadline. All told, Stevens saved the Celtics more than $300 million in tax payments, which puts them in line to reset their repeater-tax clock after next season (a very big deal), all while still fielding a team that can legitimately compete for a championship.

Gonzalez: DPOY was the easiest call by a wide margin. Provided he's eligible, might as well put Wembanyama down for the next five while we're at it. Other awards were tougher. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets another MVP, edging out Nikola Jokic and Wemby. Went back and forth on ROY before finally going with Flagg. Kon Knueppel has had an other-worldly shooting season, but Flagg was asked to do more for the Mavs and his defense is what ultimately elevated him. The toughest decision here was Most Improved. The eye-of-the-beholder component has long frustrated voters. For me, it came down to Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jalen Duren. Hard to imagine the Pistons as the 1-seed without Duren making a massive leap that will also land him a handsome payday this offseason. But NAW gets the slightest of nods over him by virtue of transitioning from a very useful bench player in Minnesota to a high-level starter on an ascendant Hawks squad.

Finally, while the media doesn't actually vote on Executive of the Year, I'm glad we're doing that anyway in this space. On behalf of Sam Presti, I'd like to thank Daryl Morey and the Sixers for allowing the Thunder to give Jared McCain a good home and for once again reminding everyone that, in this category, it's Presti and then everyone else until further notice.

Herbert: Not to be dramatic, but making a call on MVP was agonizing. I've flipped between the three main candidates numerous times in the past few weeks, but eventually settled on Jokić. There are all sorts of stats I could cite here, but one I haven't heard mentioned much is that Jokić assisted 50.3% of his teammates' made baskets when he was on the court. This is peak Steve Nash-type stuff, and it led the league by a significant margin. From a center, it's obscene.

ROY was tough, too. If you'd prefer to reward Cooper Flagg for what he did in a lead role, I get it. But it's not as if Knueppel is merely the beneficiary of a healthy offensive environment. He's a huge reason -- arguably the single biggest reason! - that the Hornets leveled up this season. If what he did in an off-ball role were easy, then a rookie would have done it before.

Jaquez's all-around production gave him a slight edge over Keldon Johnson for 6MOY. Alexander's transformation on offense (and continued excellence on defense) gave him the nod over Jalen Duren. Since NAW might have been the smartest signing of the summer and the Hawks made a legendary draft-day trade, EOY wasn't all that complicated. Joe Mazzulla's Celtics blew my mind. DPOY and Clutch Player of the Year were not remotely close.

**Maloney:**This was yet another incredible MVP race, but the honor has to go to Gilgeous-Alexander who put together a historic season while leading the Thunder to the best record in the league. He's the fifth player ever to average at least 30 points per game while shooting 55% or better from the field, and the first guard to do so. He also led the Thunder in assists, and was 14th in the league in that category, while providing above-average perimeter defense and countless clutch moments.

There's no need to go in-depth on DPOY. All season long, the only question on that award has been whether Wembanyama would be eligible. He is, and will likely win the award unanimously. Rookie of the Year is going to be the closest major award vote. Knueppel was more efficient on a better team, but Flagg had the better numbers and was asked to carry a bigger burden on both ends. I leaned Flagg but wouldn't argue with anyone who has Knueppel.

Jaquez Jr. had an awesome season for the Heat and was the best all-around player in this Sixth Player race. Alexander-Walker went from role player to 20-point-per-game-scorer while also having by far the most efficient season of his career. Gilgeous-Alexander led the league in clutch scoring. Mazzulla turned the "Gap Year Celtics" into a title contender. Saleh fleeced the Pelicans for their first-round pick, signed the likely MIP to a bargain contract and was brave enough to ship out Trae Young.

Quinn: The MVP race seemed to come in waves. It was Nikola Jokić vs. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, then it was Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Brown against Gilgeous-Alexander, then it was Luka Dončić and Victor Wembanyama vs. Gilgeous-Alexander. Gilgeous-Alexander was the lone constant, the best player across the full 82-game span. Everyone else's case came with some sort of flaw. Jokić and Dončić were only part-time defenders. Wembanyama didn't play enough minutes. Cunningham was too inefficient. Brown's outlier shooting hid his lighter impact in other areas on the court. But Gilgeous-Alexander is bulletproof. A Michael Jordan-esque scoring season on the league's best team with no identifiable weaknesses is usually going to win MVP.

Did you watch a Spurs game this season? Good, then you know who the Defensive Player of the Year is. Most Improved Player is usually a matter of your definition of the award. Do you prefer players who grow from supporting roles into stardom? Then you're likely a Jalen Duren or Deni Avdija supporter. If you instead lean on players who came out of nowhere to be real contributors, Neemias Queta or Ryen Rollins is likely your pick. Nickeil Alexander-Walker is the best compromise between the two and therefore one of the easier Most Improved picks of the last few seasons. We rarely factor winning into Rookie of the Year, but that's usually because the candidates are high draft picks and high draft picks go to bad teams. It seemed like Kon Knueppel did when he landed in Charlotte, but they've reinvented themselves in large part around his shooting and movement. Cooper Flagg has better raw numbers, but Knueppel's have come in meaningful games and he's vastly more efficient. This is a relatively weak Sixth Man of the Year class, but Jaime Jaquez has been the most foundational to his team's identity of any of the candidates. Their reinvention around pace and driving without screens wouldn't have worked without him. Clutch Player of the Year was also straightforward. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the NBA in clutch points in just 27 clutch appearances.

Joe Dumars may have handed Onsi Saleh Executive of the Year on a silver platter when he gave him his unprotected 2026 first-round pick, but hey, give the Hawks some credit. They also landed the likely Most Improved Player for roughly mid-level money. Coach of the Year could go to half a dozen candidates, but what Mazzulla did for Boston is nothing short of astounding. To earn a No. 2 seed after having lost half of your rotation from the previous season and with your best player sidelined for most of the year feels almost impossible. Boston has mastered its high-3-point volume, low-turnover approach to offense, and top-five defense given how thin this front-court looked on opening night is a minor miracle. There are a lot of candidates who could win in a normal year, but there's nothing normal about what Mazzulla pulled off. This was one of the best regular-season coaching jobs in recent NBA history.

Wimbish: It was another historic season for SGA, who comes out on top of another tight MVP race in my book. His effortless consistency can go unnoticed because he's not regularly putting up 40+ points. But it's that "boring" consistency that led him to breaking the record for longest streak of 20+ point games, previously held by Wilt Chamberlain. A record that is still active at 140 games, by the way. Defensive Player of the Year was by far the easiest one to figure out. All you have to do is watch a few of San Antonio's games to understand the massive impact Wembanyama makes on that side of the floor.

The Rookie of the Year race provided the most debate in the last few weeks of the regular season, but I'm giving the edge to Flagg. Knueppel has been phenomenal in Charlotte and has played a key role in transforming that offense. But Flagg's been the offensive engine in Dallas all season. He's shouldered more than Knueppel, and isn't just earning passing grades, he's shattering expectations and breaking a bunch of records on the way. Then there's the defense, where Flagg proved to be far ahead where many rookies are expected to be on that end of the floor.