NBA Most Improved Player Award
The National Basketball Association's Most Improved Player Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1985–86 NBA season, to the most improved player of the regular season. The winner is selected by a panel of sportswriters 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 27 different players. The most recent award winner was Ryan Anderson. None of the award winners have won an NBA Championship as a player, however in 2011 Darrell Armstrong won the title as an assistant coach for the Dallas Mavericks. Hedo Türkoğlu, Rony Seikaly, Gheorghe Mureşan and Boris Diaw are the only award winners not born in the United States; all but Seikaly were also trained completely outside the U.S. (Seikaly played college basketball at Syracuse).
Only Alvin Robertson, Dana Barros, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O'Neal, Danny Granger and Kevin Love won the award and selected as an NBA All-Star in the same season; Dale Ellis, Kevin Duckworth, Kevin Johnson, Gilbert Arenas and Zach Randolph were the other winners who were later selected to play in the All-Stars Game.
Read more about NBA Most Improved Player Award: Winners
Famous quotes containing the words improved, player and/or award:
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)