Earlier this month I briefly highlighted Victor Wembanyama’s insane block rate.

While it is more fun to daydream about the potential of his defensive prowess given more minutes, I thought I would see how he racks up on a per-game basis. I

am using per game because when it comes to Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) voting, I don’t expect voters to always turn to advanced stats to make their decisions

. The current candidates in order of their projection to win are Rudy Gobert, Jarrett Allen, Chet Holmgren, Victor Wembanyama, Bam Adebayo, Derrick White, and Anthony Davis.

From the numbers, I’m still surprised as to why Wembanyama isn’t the current favorite for DPOY over Rudy Gobert.

Looking at just steals vs blocks, two standard box score statistics that are most often resorted to for this award, we can identify there is a floating average needed to be in consideration.

Below I have plotted the current DPOY candidates as well as the winner for the past forty years.

This trendline demonstrates that it is generally acceptable to give the award to a guard who might not be able to accumulate many blocks, if they are able to make up for it with steals.

We see that some of the more dominant season performances come with 1988 Michael Jordan who averaged 3.2 steals and 1.6 blocks per game or any of the years that Ben Wallace won the award.

While there have been numerous candidates below the line who have won, the uncertainty lies in whether it was other metrics/influence that categorized these players as elite defenders, or whether it was just a weak year for the award.