Tuesday 25 June 2019 09:21, UK
Luka Doncic won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award and Pascal Siakam was named Most Improved Player at the league's awards show in Santa Monica, California, on Monday night.
Doncic received 98 of the 100 votes, with Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks getting the other two. The third finalist was the top pick in last season's Draft, Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton.
Siakam of the NBA champion Toronto Raptors won the Most Improved Player award over fellow finalists De'Aaron Fox of the Sacramento Kings and D'Angelo Russell of the Brooklyn Nets.
Like Doncic, Siakam ran away with the award, receiving 86 out of 100 votes.
Los Angeles Clippers guard Lou Williams was chosen the Sixth Man of the Year for the third time, matching Jamal Crawford's record as a three-time winner of the award. The only other two-time winners of the Sixth Man award were Kevin McHale, Ricky Pierce and Detlef Schrempf.
Williams, 32, put up 20 points, 5.4 assists and three rebounds per game in 75 appearances in 2018-19, starting just once.
The other finalists for the Sixth Man award were Williams' team-mate Montrezl Harrell and the Indiana Pacers' Domantas Sabonis.
Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was named Defensive Player of the Year for the second year in a row, beating fellow nominees Giannis Antetokounmpo and Paul George.
Gobert is the second player in Jazz history to win multiple Defensive Player of the Year awards (Mark Eaton 1985 and 1989) and the 10th in league history to claim the honour more than once.
The Coach of the Year award went to the Milwaukee Bucks' Mike Budenholzer, who beat out fellow finalists Doc Rivers of the Los Angeles Clippers and Michael Malone of the Denver Nuggets.
Milwaukee general manager Jon Horst won Executive of the Year, becoming the second Bucks executive to claim the honour. John Hammond won after the 2009-10 season.
Doncic, a 20-year-old guard who averaged 21.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 6.0 assists in 32.2 minutes per game, is Dallas' second Rookie of the Year winner, joining Jason Kidd, a co-winner with Grant Hill in the 1994-95 season. Doncic played in 72 games last season.
Young, a point guard, averaged 19.1 points, 8.1 assists and 3.7 rebounds in 30.9 minutes per game last season. He played in 81 of the team's 82 contests. A year ago, Young, the No 5 overall draft pick in 2018, was dealt from Dallas to Atlanta along with a 2019 first-round pick in exchange for Doncic.
Siakam averaged 16.9 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.1 assists over 31.9 minutes and played in 80 games. Siakam, a third-year player whom the Raptors drafted with the 27th overall pick in 2016, increased his point total by 9.6 points per game over the 2017-18 season, the biggest gain by any player to have played in 40 games in the consecutive seasons.
Budenholzer, 49, led the Bucks to a 60-22 record, their best record since going 60-22 in the 1980-81 season. The 16-win improvement over the previous season was the best mark in the NBA this season and earned the Bucks the No 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. They lost to the eventual NBA champion Raptors in six games in the conference finals.
In his first season in Milwaukee, Budenholzer also won Coach of the Year in Atlanta in 2015 after leading the Hawks to a 60-22 record in his second of five seasons with the team.
