2022 End of Season Thunder Awards: Who Takes Home Hardware?

The InsideTheThunder.com crew gave out end of season awards to players in Oklahoma City.

Now that the 2021-22 season has come to an end, awards are due. While the Oklahoma City Thunder won't have any players or staff win NBA awards, there's individual team accolades that deserves recognition.

Over the past week, the InsideTheThunder.com team handed out awards for several categories. Who took home the hardware?

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Most Valuable Player: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Gilgeous-Alexander was Oklahoma City’s unquestioned star heading into the season, and his role on the Thunder is no different at the season’s end. The 23-year-old ended his campaign averaging 24.5 points, five rebounds and 5.9 assists.

Defensively, he averaged career-high’s in both steals and blocks, averaging 1.3 steals and 0.8 blocks. While being the only true scoring option on a struggling team, Gilgeous-Alexander handled the pressure well. He was fourth in the entire NBA in points scored out of isolation situations, meaning he created a lot of offense for himself.

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Most Improved Player: Aleksej Pokusevski

Pokusevski, a second year hybrid, has long been a project in the making for Sam Presti. But this season he began to show why Presti took a shot with drafting him. The number still leaves plenty of room for improvement as his career pushes forward, but shows the amount of progress he has made.

While his scoring went down from 8.2 points per game to 7.6 points per game, his efficiency and shooting was markedly improved. His rookie season he shot 34.1% from the field, a disappointing mark for a young prospect, but this season he improved the number to 40.8%.

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Sixth Man of the Year: Tre Mann

Given that Oklahoma City had three guards and No. 6 Pick Giddey leading into Mann’s selection at Pick No. 18, there was some skepticism that the former Gator would easily breach the regular rotation.

After a sporadic Summer League stint, Mann was third in line for a backcourt battle that lasted until December. However, he became a hot commodity, recording averages of 15.0 points and 3.9 assists across seven games with the Blue, including a 30-point outing.

Alonzo Adams/USA TODAY Sports

Defensive Player of the Year: Josh Giddey

Giddey was drafted sixth overall and had an immediate impact on the defensive end for the Thunder. While overall Giddey is far from the best man-to-man defender, his quickness and team defending ability carries his talent.

In his 54 games Giddey accounted for 51 steals (0.9 steals per game). Of all Thunder players his defensive win share was second on the team behind Kenrich Williams and most of any starter with a tally of 0.101. He also ended the season with a 109.4 defensive efficiency rating, which isn’t the best in the league, but is respectable.

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