Cleveland Cavaliers forward Evan Mobley has been named the 2025 Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced Thursday.
The fourth-year forward beat out Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green and Atlanta Hawks’ Dyson Daniels to earn his first league-wide honor.
Mobley finished the season averaging 18.5 points per game, but his defensive presence also contributed to Cleveland’s success this year. Mobley finished with 9.3 rebounds per game, averaging 7.0 defensive rebounds; he also nabbed 1.6 blocks per game and 0.9 steals per game.
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He helped lead the Cavs to a 64-18 regular season and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
In a race without a clear frontrunner, Mobley ended up on top. The forward received 35 first-place votes and 30 second-place votes to finish with 285 total points — well ahead of Daniels (197 points) and Green (154 points).
The 2025 race for DPOY was more open that normal, in part because a number of players were not eligible for the award. Players are required to play in at least 65 games in order to be considered for end-of-season awards; they also had to play at least 20 minutes in 63 of those games.
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That requirement put several players out of contention, including San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama, who was sidelined after the All-Star break with a blood clot in his shoulder after 46 games. But it left Mobley (71 games), Green (68 games) and Daniels (76 games) free to become the award’s three finalists.
With Wembanyama out, the conversation around the award completely changed without a frontrunner. (Even while missing the final two months of the season, Wembanyama still led the league in blocks, with 176.) At the time, Memphis Grizzles center Jaren Jackson Jr. was an odds-on favorite for the award, but he did not end up making the final cut for the finalists.
Mobley, meanwhile, is expected to lead the Cavaliers to a deep postseason run. Cleveland has pulled to a 2-0 series lead over the Miami Heat to start the playoffs.
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