Predicting The Winner Of EVERY NBA Award In 2027

With the new NBA season right around the corner, it's prediction time for anything and everything. Today we turn our attention to the awards races, which every year are some of the most fun things to watch play out over the course of the season, and this season in particular. They're arguably more wide open and up for grabs than ever. In this video in particular, we will be going through each of the major awards, predicting who we believe will win each of them, along with discussing a a couple of the honorable mentions that will be right behind them in the race, with the awards in question being the Most Improved Player, the Sixth Man of the Year, the Defensive Player of the Year, the Rookie of the Year, and of course, the MVP. Before we start, though, it would be greatly appreciated if you all could utilize YouTube's new hype feature, because it actually helps the videos out quite a bit. Now with that being said, let's dive right in. We'll start with the Most Improved Player award, and the player I believe will win it this season is Ty Jerome of the Memphis Grizzlies. We briefly saw the breakout that Jerome is capable of last year, but it was only done in a 15-game sample size because he was injured for most of the rest of the season, so it doesn't really count as a full breakout, so he will still absolutely qualify for an award like this if he can keep that level of play up throughout the entire season. In that small sample size last year, he averaged a little over 19 points per game along with 6 assists per game, shooting the ball ridiculously efficiently. He also did that in just 22 minutes per game on average, which is pretty absurd when you think about it on a permanent basis. This year, after the team traded away Ja Morant, Jerome was the one who is left to likely step into the starting point guard role, and starters typically play around 30 minutes a night, which is around where I would expect Ty Jerome to be playing to. Realistically, over the course of a longer 82-game season, he will probably go through more ups and downs like all players do, but in a bigger, more prominent role with more consistent usage than ever before. I don't see why he can't have a season averaging about 20 points and 6 assists per game. The last time he was fully healthy, he was coming off of the bench for the Cleveland Cavaliers, averaging about 12 points and 3 assists per game. So that big of a leap in production is more than I believe anyone else will have this year, if everything goes according to plan. Now, as for the runners-up for this award, We have Kahlil Ware and Asar Thompson. Ware just got traded from Miami to Milwaukee this summer as a part of the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade, and I think in a more pressure-free environment where he'll be able to experiment more and actually have his development prioritized, as opposed to trying to fit a role in Miami where the goal was prioritizing trying to make the playoffs at the time, he'll actually get to show what he's fully capable of now. In Miami, he averaged about 11 points and nine rebounds per game, already producing at a pretty high level for a center, And he also shot the ball 39% from three, making him a useful role man and stretch big. He'll start the year behind Miles Turner on the depth chart, but I expect him to overtake the starting role at center for this team at some point, and when he does, he has the talent to easily average a double-double, scoring around 15 points per game. As for Asar Thompson, he's already one of the most impactful defensive players in the NBA, but if he can show any kind of improvement on the offensive side of the ball, he'll easily be in this combo. He only scored 10 points per game last year, and if the Pistons are going to take a leap, they need more output from their role players around Cade Cunningham, so the goal is to find more ways to get Asar making an impact on the ball. He can't get any worse as a shooter, so if he can even get anywhere remotely close to being an average shooter, his scoring output will increase by a good bit, and with how athletic he is, finding ways to get him more opportunities at the rim would be helpful for the unit as a whole. The next award up is the sixth man of the year and the player we believe will win it in 2027 is Peyton Pritchard of the Boston Celtics. Pritchard won this award already in 2025 and after experimenting with a bigger role in the team's starting lineup last season he ended up requesting to be moved back into the sixth man role midway through the year where he is clearly more comfortable. Last season he didn't qualify for the award because he did spend more of the year in the starting lineup but in the 31 games that he played after switching back to that six-man role, he was averaging about 18 points and five assists per game, shooting 48% from the field and 42% from three. When he subs in, he immediately starts putting pressure on defenses by bombing a high volume of threes and knocking them down very efficiently. He's an incredibly crafty creator on the ball, and every year has shown notable improvement as a driver and scorer inside the arc. And this year, the Celtics will once again need him to produce at a high level to maintain their success with Jalen Brown no longer on the team. 18 points and 5 assists per game is already production very few other bench options are capable of matching, and then throw in his efficiency and the fact that he'll likely once again be doing it on a team that wins a whole lot of games. I just don't think anyone else checks all of those boxes quite like he does. Now, as for the runners-up here, we have A.J. Mitchell and Pel Larson. A.J. Mitchell is who I view as the stiffest competition for Pritchard this year because he is just as capable of a scorer and as a creator, while also doing it for one of the best teams in the NBA with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Mitchell even averaged about 23 points per game in their team's playoff series against the Lakers this past postseason, so he's shown he can even be a starting caliber guy in some teams' lineups around the league if he were granted that opportunity. The Thunder are just too deep, with so many other players also getting touches for me to see Mitchell consistently putting up the numbers to lead this race. As for Pel Larson of the Miami Heat, he's my dark horse pick for the award this year. The Heat traded away a lot of their depth in order to land Giannis Antetokounmpo, so Larson will be way more involved night to night, and I truly believe he is ready for that bigger role. He's played for Sweden in this summer's World Cup qualifying games, and in those games, he assumed a pretty big role and was averaging 26 points per game. He's hungry to prove himself. He's a very well-rounded combo guard who plays with good energy and gets to the rim at will, and on a Heat team that now need help in their backcourt, he'll step up. The next award up is the Defensive Player of the Year award, and the player we believe will win it this season is Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs. This is probably the award with the least unpredictability of all going into the new season. Ever since Wemby was drafted, he pretty much has immediately been the single most impactful defensive force in the league, and the only reason he didn't win Defensive Player of the Year in either of his first two seasons was because he was a rookie, and then he didn't play enough games to qualify for the award last year. So last season, when he did qualify, he won in a landslide. That will pretty much be the only thing that could stop Wemby from taking home the award again this year. He's led the NBA in blocks every single season of his career by a wide margin. His defended field goal percentage always ranks near the top of the NBA, and while the Spurs were the third ranked team defensive overall last year, they also allow 9.7 fewer points per 100 possessions, with Wemby on the court illustrating how much he can single-handedly change the way that the team holds things down on that end when he's out there. He's physically unlike anything we've ever seen, as someone with absurd size and length, while also being quick on his feet and agile enough to recover from pretty much any blow-by, so with the Spurs once again gearing up to contend at the highest level. He checks all the boxes. Now, as for the runners-up, we have Chet Holmgren and Bam Adebayo. Chet is someone who may go down as a player who, unfortunately, just had to play in the Victor Wembanyama era, because his output is on par with plenty of other defensive player-of-the-year winners from the past. He's another elite shot blocker in his own right. He anchors the number one defense in the NBA, and he has the versatility to switch out onto the perimeter and hold his own against different positions. As for Bam Adebayo, he's been an elite defender for years, and he just hasn't always been in situations that have allowed that brilliance to truly shine to this degree. Now that he's being paired with Giannis Antetokounmpo in the frontcourt, I see the Heat having one of the better-ranked defenses this upcoming season, and ultimately, Adebayo's versatile work as a rim protector that can thrive inside and out will be one of the biggest reasons for it. He does a little bit of everything. He locks up without fouling, which is an incredibly rare trait for players with his skill set, He's just also someone, unfortunately, fighting for second place behind Victor Wembanyama. The next award up is the Rookie of the Year, and the player we believe will win it this year is AJ DeBonsa of the Washington Wizards. This was the race that I easily had the toughest time making a selection for. All four of the top picks from this year's draft are players I genuinely believe are studs in their own right, and we'll all have big years, but DeBonsa ultimately became the choice for a few reasons. One, he's probably the best pure scorer of the bunch, and in the Rookie of the Year award specifically, the top scoring rookies are the ones that typically get heavily favored. The Wizards are expected to be much improved this season with the additions of Trae Young and Anthony Davis to the mix, but DeBonsa could still end up being the team's most consistent number one scoring threat, because he's ultimately the new face of the franchise that they plan to build around, plus Anthony Davis's injury history means he could end up missing time again, leading to DeBonte needing to take on an even bigger role regardless. At his size, and with how well DeBonte operates on the ball, it would not surprise me one bit if he averaged at least 20 points per game in year one, and those kind of numbers are what the best rookies historically put up. As for the runners-up here, we have Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson. Now, with there being three finalists for each award but a top-four crop of top-tier rookie talent. Unfortunately, that resulted in Darren Peterson being left out, but I want to reiterate that I do firmly believe in all four of these guys as great prospects, which I cannot say for many other years. Most of the time, there's at least one top prospect that I'm more wary of, like last year, for instance, when I wasn't nearly as high on Ace Bailey than others, but I cannot say that for this year's group. Peterson is just on a Jazz team that already has so many mouths to feed, so his usage just might not be as high as the other three rookies. Cameron Boozer is already assuming a big role on the rebuilding Grizzlies team and could be at the heart of what they do on offense as a well-rounded playmaking forward with the strength to dominate scoring inside and the shooting, plus playmaking talent to operate out of the high post. Caleb Wilson will also be heavily involved with the Bulls team early in their rebuilding process as an aggressive slasher who showed in Summer League. He's also way better of a shooter than initially advertised. So, all in all, the rookie of the year race may be the most fun to monitor this season. And finally, we've arrived at the MVP award, and the player we believe will win it this season is Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks. There are obviously a lot of top-tier MVP candidates around the league, and most of them already have MVPs on their resume who also aren't going anywhere, so it's fair to assume it'll be a lot of the same names in the race again this year. I don't even disagree with that. the same guys that have been in the mix the last couple of years will still be heavily involved in the race. I just have a lot of confidence that this season is setting up to be the year things could all come together for Luka Doncic. LeBron James is no longer on the Lakers, so it fully is the Luka Doncic show now in LA, with everything catering to him and how he likes to play, without having to take any steps back. He's already someone who stuffs the stat sheet unlike pretty much anyone else in the league except for Nikola Jokic, as Luka Doncic just won his second scoring title last season averaging 33.5 points per game, and what's crazy is there is still room to go grow for him as a scorer this upcoming year with even more potential usage. He's come very close to averaging a triple-double in the past, as in 2024 he was 0.2 assists and 0.8 rebounds away from joining that club, and now the Lakers are constructed to maximize everything around him. Most importantly, the Lakers will still be good enough to earn a top seed in the West. They may not finish top two, as the Thunder and Spurs likely have those spots locked up, but a three seed in the West for LA should not surprise anybody if it happens. And if it does happen, and Luka's numbers exceed anybody else's on paper, that's the combo of production and winning that can earn him his first ever MVP. As for the runners-up, we have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama. Shai has won each of the last two MVPs, and the argument for him this season will pretty much be exactly the same as the last two years. He'll likely once again be leading the top seed in the West while being one of the top-ranked scorers in the league, which is always a strong argument that anyone can have. Wemby is getting closer and closer to taking home an MVP himself, because his defensive impact is already second to none while also being a great scorer, but MVP and Defensive Player of the Year are different awards, and I need to see Victor Wembanyama take more of a leap as being one of the more dominant scorers in the game before he can actually take home this award, because 25 points per game in this day and age isn't even top 10 in the league and that's where he was at last year. And with that being said, that's all I have for you today. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and comment down below who you think will win each of the awards this season. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time.