Detroit — The NBA announced on Monday evening that San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama has been named the Defensive Player of the Year for the 2025-26 regular season. Wembanyama delivered one of the most dominant performances in league history. He averaged a league-high 3.1 blocks per game with 197 total rejections. Wembanyama also notched 11.5 rebounds and 1.0 steals.
Wembanyama won the award unanimously. Oklahoma City Thunder All-Star Chet Holmgren finished in second place, while Detroit Pistons’ Ausar Thompson came in third.
Although Thompson fell short of winning the league honor, it does not diminish the success of his career year. As a two-time Eastern Conference Defensive Player of the Month winner for both January and March, he led the league in steals, averaging 2.0 per game with a total of 146 steals this season. Additionally, he recorded 69 total blocks and averaged 5.7 rebounds over 73 games.
Thompson was vital to the Pistons finishing the regular season with the league’s second-best defense, posting a rating of 108.9.
“It’s the difference in personnel on how he is defending and where he picks them up, how he has been able to read situationally and the uniqueness and how he can apply pressure to those guys,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “He is a student of the game. He watches so many films of the guys he is going to be defending, learning their tendencies and how he can be disruptive. He has taken a huge step.”
The Defensive Player of the Year award is the first of three nominations for the Pistons. On Sunday, coach J.B. Bickerstaff was named a top-three finalist for Coach of the Year, and Jalen Duren was a finalist for Most Improved Player of the Year. The winner of the Most Improved Player award will be announced on Friday.
coty.davis@detroitnews.com
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Pistons’ Ausar Thompson finishes third in Defensive Player of the Year
Reporting by Coty M. Davis, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
