Oklahoma City Thunder: Best candidates for 2018-19 NBA awards

Defensive Player of the Year: Andre Roberson

You will not find a worse offensive player in the league than Andre Roberson. Last season he outdid himself by averaging just 5.0 points per game on 22.2 percent shooting from beyond the arc and 31.6 percent from the free throw line. That free throw percentage is worse than Dwight Howard‘s, for crying out loud.

Yes, Roberson is an offensive disaster. Even with an excellent facilitator on the team in Russell Westbrook, he struggles to make an open layup. So the question is: why is he on the court at all? There is an argument to be made that no amount of defensive prowess can make up for Roberson’s shortcomings at the offensive end, but head coach Billy Donovan seems to value his defense more than his lack of offense.

Donovan may be right, and he’s not the only one who thinks Roberson is an excellent defender. The numbers speak for themselves: last season he ranked fourth in the league in defensive win shares (0.058), a number that attempts to assign a value to a player in terms of team wins his defense is responsible for.

Roberson also finished in the top 10 for defensive rating between players that played 26 or more games. But perhaps the best indicator of his value as a defender is not in the numbers but in the way the Thunder completely fell apart after they lost him to an injury last year. Their defense was a shell of what it had been before, and without Roberson they had no answer for Donovan Mitchell in the playoffs.

If Roberson can make a full recovery from his injury and return to top form, he will definitely be in the running to win Defensive Player of the Year. After all, it’s all he does. He’s a specialist.