Tag: All-Defense

Dejounte Murray reacts to Victor Wembanyama breaking his record

Dejounte Murray took to Twitter to react to San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama breaking his All-Defense record.

The San Antonio Spurs had a rough 2023-24 season, but Victor Wembanyama made it all okay. His stellar play has given the city of San Antonio plenty of hope for a brighter tomorrow, as the 20-year-old Frenchman already looks like one of the better players in the NBA.

Wembanyama concluded his season with a second-place finish in Defensive Player of the Year voting and the first-ever unanimous Rookie of the Year victory. He also earned a spot on the All-Defensive First Team. He became the first rookie to ever make the First Team and the youngest player to ever make an All-Defensive Team.

The previous youngest player was Dejounte Murray, who accomplished the feat with the Spurs in 2018. After Wembanyama broke his record, Murray showed him some love on Twitter, tweeting out some fire emojis. (H/t Ben Stinar of Sports Illustrated)

https://x.com/DejounteMurray/status/1792982902797660661

Normally, this type of thing would fly under the radar, but there have been some rumblings of a potential Murray return to San Antonio. So perhaps Murray was inadvertently praising his former teammate.

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Victor Wembanyama becomes first-ever rookie to make All-Defensive First Team

San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama just became the first-ever rookie to make the All-Defensive First Team.

It was a historical season for San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama. While the Spurs as a team weren’t very successful, Wembanyama was nothing short of incredible. He became the first-ever unanimous Rookie of the Year winner, and on Tuesday, he was named the All-Defensive First Team – an honor that no rookie has ever earned before.

According to the NBA’s official communications account, Wembanyama is not only the first rookie to make the All-Defensive First Team, but he’s only the sixth rookie to ever make an All-Defensive Team in general. The other five are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1969-70), Hakeem Olajuwon (1984-85), Manute Bol (1985-86), David Robinson (1989-90), and Tim Duncan (1997-98), all of whom were named to the Second Team.

In addition, Wembanyama was voted the best defender in the league by his peers in a recent player poll conducted by The Athletic.

At just 20 years old, Wembanyama is already one of the best defenders in the NBA, and he’s only going to get better.

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Celtics Lab 236: Projecting season-long hardware at 2023-24’s midpoint with Kwani Lunis

We cover everything from Most Valuable Player to Executive of the Year and everything in-between,

Most of the teams in the NBA have played around half of their 82-game schedule, giving us enough of a sample size to get an idea of which players might be taking home some full-season hardware come April and onward.

And with the Boston Celtics currently the owners of the league’s best record, it is not unfair to expect the franchise to have at least a little bling headed their way at season’s end. To try to predict what awards Boston players and front office employees might be taking home come spring, the hosts of the CLNS Media “Celtics Lab” podcast got together with NBC Boston 10’s and  “The Big 3 NBA” podcast cohost Kwani A. Lunis to sort out which Celtics might be adding to their trophy case.

We cover everything from Most Valuable Player to Executive of the Year and everything in-between, and even come up with some of our own, team-specific awards for Boston’s 2023-24 season.

We also get caught up on all the latest news, and look back at an intense week of Celtics games.

The Celtics Lab podcast is brought to you by FanDuel.

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ

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Celtics Lab 101: The protocols return, the Wiz go down & building our All-Defensive teams with Josue Pavon

Rewarding defensive performance across a season is always a fraught venture, but this episode, we did our best to give Boston their flowers.

As the 2021-22 NBA regular season draws to a close, so begins the projections of analysts and fans of which players ought to win what end-of-season awards. The Boston Celtics did not at all look like a team that would be in the mix for many if any such hardware at the midpoint of their campaign this season but have since very noticeably turned their season around in a historic way under first-year head coach Ime Udoka.

With a league-leading defense and a top-10 offense possessing one of the best point differentials in the league, the Celtics have all the indications of being a team that can win an NBA title so long as no more serious injuries after Robert Williams III take place.

And with Timelord potentially even returning early, it’s easy to get distracted by the postseason on our collective doorstep.

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But with this success should come accolades, and for this week’s CLNS Media “Celtics Lab” podcast, your usual hosts linked up with Josue Pavon of the “Cedric Maxwell” podcast on the same network and Heavy.com to talk all things Defensive Teams and where Boston’s players should be on it.

Check out the episodes embedded above to hear Justin Quinn, Alex Goldberg, and Cameron Tabatabaie’s cases for All-Defensive teams, with Pavon offering his own views and keeping us honest.

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This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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What other awards might be in the mix for the Boston Celtics besides Defensive Player of the Year?

Several could conceivably be in play.

There are at least four honors handed out at the end of an NBA season that current members of the Boston Celtics organization should realistically at least be in the running for, if not outright favorites to win. Executive of the Year (EOTY) for President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens, Coach of the Year (COTY) for Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, All-Defense for rising big man Robert Williams III, and All-NBA for superstar forward Jayson Tatum are the four which might just be nabbed by Celtics this year

And that’s not even considering the Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) for veteran Boston point guard Marcus Smart, who is currently the odds-on favorite to win the award.

Host of the regular NBC Sports Boston “Forsberg’s Four” segment Chris Forsberg lays out a case for each n a new video put together to stump for the hometown team’s chances to take home some hardware after an amazing midseason turnaround.

Watch the clip embedded above to hear why Boston ought to be considered for All-Defense, All-NBA, EOTY, and COTY on top of Smart’s ironclad case for DPOY.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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Two Celtics cited among NBA’s best defenders — and one is likely a surprise to Boston fans

While one of the two is a no-brainer, the other might sneak up on some fans.

With the top-rated defense in the NBA, it makes sense that the Boston Celtics are finally starting to get some love when it comes to the coveted Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) award. In fact, it would be a bit incredulous for at least one of the team’s several stalwart defenders to not be in the conversation given their identity and current case as a contender is built around that side of the ball.

But there is a very good case that the best defender on the team plays a position that — at least historically — has not had much in the way of success of taking home that particular piece of hardware, though there’s a solid chance multiple Celtics could end up on an All-Defense team even still.

A new article by Basketball News’ Mark Schindler took a closer look at how the league’s defensive honors may be apportioned by season’s end, with some Boston players properly featured in the conversation.

Boston’s Marcus Smart misses NBA’s All-Defensive Teams; Jaylen Brown gets votes

There will be no Celtics on either of the NBA’s All-Defense teams this season.

Per a league press release, Boston Celtics veteran guard Marcus Smart has missed this year’s NBA All-Defensive teams, while teammate Jaylen Brown registered votes for the honor.

Smart, who has been named to the First Team the prior two seasons, came in sixth among guards in voting, with 22 total points just behind the Phoenix Suns Mikal Bridges with 39. Brown registered a single vote for the league’s Defensive First Team for a total of 2 points. First Team honors were granted to Rudy Gobert (Utah Jazz), Ben Simmons (Philadelphia 76ers), Draymond Green (Golden State), Jrue Holiday and Giannis Antetokounmpo (both of the Milwaukee Bucks).

Second Team honors were awarded to Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler (both of the Miami Heat), Joelle Embiid, Matisse Thybulle (both of the 76ers) and Kawhi Leonard (Los Angeles Clippers).

All ballots were tabulated by accounting firm Ernst and Young, per the league.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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How many Boston Celtics have won NBA All-Defensive Team honors?

How many Celtics can you name who have been so honored? Better yet, can you name the seasons they were?

If there was ever a team that hung its hat on the defensive end of the court while winning at an elite, even historic rate, it has been the Boston Celtics since their inception in the Basketball Association of America as one of the founding members of the league that would become today’s NBA seven decades past.

But how many of its players have been honored among the league’s greatest defenders on a year-to-year basis with the NBA’s All-Defensive Team honors? The award didn’t get rolled out to recognize the best defenders in the Association until the tail end of the Celtics golden era of title dominance in the 1960s, and yet they still figure among the best-represented franchises for this honor over the years.

How many Celtics won First or Second Team honors? What were their names, and which seasons did they do it in? Scroll down and find out just how well you know your favorite team’s history — recent or otherwise.

Celtic duo land All-League team nods in HoopsHype’s mock vote

The Celtics have some high expectations from our sister site, HoopsHype.

The Boston Celtics are getting some love by the team over at our sister site HoopsHype, who have named a number of Celtics players to their All-League teams for the soon-to-arrive 2020-21 NBA season.

In order to simulate the voting process as best they could, the HoopsHype staff were to select a big man, two guards and two forwards for each of the three All-NBA teams and the All-Rookie teams and All-Defensive teams. After which, the results were tabulated and published for us to compare and contrast with our own expectations for hardware distribution at the end of the coming campaign.

These are the Celtics they envision earning All-League accolades by season’s end written up by HoopsHype’s Bryan Kalbrosky.

Smart, Tatum rate highly in Amick’s All-NBA assessment in The Athletic

Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum represented the Boston Celtics well in The Athletic’s Sam Amick’s new article about his All-NBA voting.

The Athletic’s Sam Amick has rated the 2019-20 performances of Boston Celtics All-Star forward Jayson Tatum and veteran guard Marcus Smart highly, both making the cut for respective end-of-season awards in the analyst’s estimation.

Tatum’s torrid post- All-Star nomination tear was good for a forward slot on Amick’s ballot for All-NBA Third Team, and Smart’s uncanny defense on players positions 1 through 5 got him a spot on the Athletic writer’s All-Defensive First Team.

The Texan defensive nightmare got his nod because he is “A ball-hawking [hound] who can slow the game’s most elite scorers every time out, while the Duke product got his given he “blossomed just like so many predicted he would once Kyrie Irving left town”.

That isn’t the assessment we recall here at the Celtics Wire among many national writers (though not as far as we can recall about Amick, to be fair), though we concur with the Athletic analyst’s view that it “didn’t make it any less impressive to watch.”

Notable potential Celtic candidacies omitted by Amick were Tatum in the Most Improved Player category, head coach Brad Stevens in the Coach of the Year Race, and — regrettably — Smart being on the ballot in the Defensive Player of the Year race, given his size and defensive flexibility.

The analyst must have dinged him a bit for Friday’s performance against the Thunder.

We kid, of course.

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