Never got DPOY! Duncan has 15 defenses, Kobe has 12, Jabbar has 11, Pippen has 10

Best Defensive Player Award is a very important individual award. Although it may not be as popular as MVP and scoring champion, many players who won the DPOY award are also role players and are not very famous, but they have excellent defensive abilities to become DPOY players. However, not all players with strong defensive abilities have won DPOY.

In NBA history, there are only 5 players who can be selected into the All-Defensive Team at least 10 times, namely Duncan, Kobe, Garnett, Jabbar and Pippen. Among them, Duncan has been selected for the All-Defensive Team 15 times, Kobe and Garnett have 12 times, Jabbar has 11 times, and Pippen has 10 times.

However, only Garnett won the Best Defensive Player Award for these 5 players. The other four players won the Best Defensive Team in total, but none of them had a DPOY trophy, which was somewhat unexpected, and many people also stood up for them.

Duncan, Kobe, Jabbar and Pippen have been selected for the best defensive team more than ten times. On the one hand, they have long careers and their peak periods are also long. On the other hand, they are both very defensive, so they can become regular visitors to the best defensive team. However, there are 10 people selected for the Best Defensive Team each season, and there is only one Best Defensive Player, so it is not that easy for them to get DPOY.

However, with their defensive ability, they deserved to be elected the best defensive player, but unfortunately they were not elected once. The reason for this is that the selection mechanism of the best defensive player will have a lot to do with it. DPOY is different from MVP. MVP candidates are the best players in the league, especially players with gorgeous personal data and excellent team record. DPOY mainly looks at the performance on the defensive end, and many of them cannot be reflected by data.

The best defensive players often tend to give role players who focus on defense. However, superstar players like Duncan, Kobe, Jabbar, and Pippen, who have both offense and defense, their performance on the defensive end may be covered up by the offense end, so when selecting the best defensive player, they have no advantage.

In addition, Paul and Kidd, two defenders with strong defensive abilities, have been selected into the best defensive team nine times in their careers, but have never won ZPOY. James has also been selected into the Best Defensive Team 6 times in his career. He has excellent defensive ability in the peak season, but he has not been able to become the Best Defensive Player.