NBA Defensive Player Of The Year Award
The National Basketball Association's Defensive Player of the Year Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1982–83 NBA season, to the top defensive player of the regular season. The winner is selected by a panel of 124 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom casts a vote for first, second and third place selections. Each first-place vote is worth five points; each second-place vote is worth three points; and each third-place vote is worth one point. The player with the highest point total, regardless of the number of first-place votes, wins the award.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 16 different players. Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace have each won the award four times. Dwight Howard has won it thrice, while Sidney Moncrief, Mark Eaton, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Alonzo Mourning have each won it twice. The most recent award recipient is Tyson Chandler of the New York Knicks. Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Kevin Garnett are the only Defensive Player of the Year winners to have won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) during their careers; Jordan and Olajuwon won both awards in the same season. In Olajuwon's case, he is the only one to have also won the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award and the NBA championship in the same season.
No player trained completely outside the U.S. has won this award. The two winners born outside the country—Mutombo in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Olajuwon in Nigeria—both played U.S. college basketball (Mutombo at Georgetown and Olajuwon at Houston).
Read more about NBA Defensive Player Of The Year Award: Winners
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