THE AWARD NOBODY CAN AGREE ON

NBA 2025-26: Most Improved Player — The George Mikan Trophy

The George Mikan Trophy. Named after the NBA's first dominant big man, a player who revolutionized the center position in the 1940s and 50s and whose impact on the game is beyond dispute. What Mikan's legacy has to do with a guard who doubled his scoring average in his seventh season, a 22-year-old center who set a youth record, and a point guard who went from waived to starter — nobody can quite explain it (properly). The connection is honorary at best, arbitrary at worst.

If this award were being designed from scratch today, it would probably have a different name and cleaner criteria. Nobody fully agrees on what "most improved" even means. Is it the biggest statistical jump? The most dramatic career turnaround? The player who finally became what everyone expected? The player nobody expected anything from at all?

This season, the debate has three legitimate answers. And one of them is the most extraordinary late-career development story in years. As long as the award exists, we evaluate it. Here is our verdict.

#1 — NICKEIL ALEXANDER-WALKER, ATLANTA HAWKS

2024-25 (Minnesota Timberwolves): 9.4 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 25.3 minutes 2025-26 (Atlanta Hawks): 20.8 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.3 steals, 3.2 threes, 33.4 minutes The jump: +11.4 points per game. In his seventh NBA season.

Let that last sentence land. NBA players don't do this in Year 7. The developmental arc of a professional basketball player almost universally bends toward incremental improvement or plateau by that point. Reinventing yourself as a 20-point scorer after half a decade as a rotation piece doesn't happen. Except it did.

The career story matters here. New Orleans drafted him and moved on. Utah had him and moved on. Minnesota used him as a bench contributor — and when the time came to extend someone, they chose Naz Reid over him. Three franchises. Seven years. A player the league had quietly decided had a ceiling: a useful wing, a good defender, a bench guy who could give you 12 on a good night. Nothing more.

Then Atlanta signed him on a mid-level deal, handed him a starting role, and he exploded. Nine 30-point games. Career highs in every single statistical category. His scoring jump from 9.4 to 20.8 points per game ranks among the largest single-season increases in the last 25 years for a player of his experience level. A defensive presence that teams actively game-planned around. The cousin of SGA finally playing like someone who belongs in that conversation.

What makes this genuinely historic is the age and the context. Players who break out in Year 7 are vanishingly rare. The NBA is littered with careers of players who were good but not great, who settled into roles and stayed there. Alexander-Walker didn't settle. He grew — in a way the sport almost never produces at this stage.

And the most telling signal of how much Atlanta believed in what they had: when the Hawks decided mid-season to press the reset button and trade Trae Young — a franchise cornerstone, a max contract, the face of the organization for years — Alexander-Walker and Dyson Daniels were the primary reasons they felt comfortable doing it. You don't trade your star unless you believe in what's already in the building. NAW was part of that belief. He earned it from scratch, in seven months, after seven years of being told he wasn't quite enough.

This is the award. It isn't close.

#2 — JALEN DUREN, DETROIT PISTONS

2024-25: 11.8 points, 10.3 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 26.1 minutes 2025-26: 19.5 points, 10.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 65% FG, 28.2 minutes The jump: +7.7 points. All-Star. Youngest player in NBA history to average a double-double over a full season.

Duren's improvement didn't come from a new system or a new role. It came from becoming a better basketball player — the purest form of what this award is supposed to celebrate.

His handle improved. His finishing became more varied and more reliable. His turnovers dropped even as his usage increased. His defense — already elite — became more sophisticated and communicative. He went from a player who could hurt you in limited minutes to one who could carry a team in his star's absence.

That last point matters most. When Cade Cunningham went down with a collapsed lung late in the season, Duren stepped forward and Detroit went 8-3. A 22-year-old center, on a rookie contract worth a fraction of what he has earned this season, keeping the number-one seed in the Eastern Conference intact without his franchise guard. That is star-level impact — and the All-Star selection, long overdue by the time it arrived, confirmed what Detroit already knew.

The Pistons will pay him this summer. Whatever that number is, they will not hesitate.

#3 — RYAN ROLLINS, MILWAUKEE BUCKS

2024-25 (Career total): 6.2 points over 56 games across three seasons — waived, buried on depth charts 2025-26: 17.3 points, 4.6 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 47.2% FG, 40.6% from three The jump: +174% in scoring. From waived to starting point guard.

The purest transformation story in this field. Rollins didn't receive a new opportunity within a stable situation. He received a second chance at an NBA career — after multiple organizations had decided he wasn't worth keeping — and turned it into a starting job on a playoff team next to one of the greatest players in NBA history.

He became Milwaukee's second-best player behind Giannis Antetokounmpo. He ran the offense. He shot efficiently from deep on real volume. He defended. And at the trade deadline, the Bucks - allegedly - had the opportunity to acquire Ja Morant — the asking price included Rollins. They said no.

A team with championship ambitions chose to keep Ryan Rollins over Ja Morant. That is the measure of how dramatically his value shifted in twelve months.

The statistical jump — from 6.2 points to 17.3, from occasional rotation player to full-time starter across 74 games — tells part of the story. The context tells the rest. Rollins was a first-round pick who disappeared. He came back not as a role player looking for a foothold, but as someone who had genuinely become a different, better basketball player.

That is what this award was invented to recognize. George Mikan would probably approve.

The verdict: Alexander-Walker wins. Not because his numbers represent the most dramatic statistical transformation — Rollins' story is equally extraordinary in its own way — but because of what it means in context. You don't become a 20-point scorer in Year 7 of an NBA career. Except Nickeil Alexander-Walker did. And three franchises that passed on him are watching it happen.