2021-22 NBA Awards Media Poll: Most Improved Player

20 different NBA media members from around the country participated in a mock voting process conducted by SI Fastbreak for this year’s NBA awards. Here are the results of the voting for Most Improved Player.

Over the last few weeks, the NBA awards have been a hot topic of discussion around the NBA world.

The three finalists for each award were announced on Sunday, but SI Fastbreak has collected data from NBA media members around the country covering both the league at-large and individual teams.

These media members were asked to vote on their Top-3 for Most Improved Player this season with the voting process working as follows:

• 5 points for every first-place vote
• 3 points for every second-place vote
• 1 points for every third-place vote

Here is SI Fastbreak’s official voting results for the 2021-22 NBA Most Improved Player:

Official results from SI Fastbreak NBA Media Awards Polling 2021-22 - MIP

Most Improved Player: Darius Garland - Cleveland Cavaliers

The 2021-22 NBA Most Improved Player award race truly is one of the most fascinating awards to talk about this year simply because of all the emerging talent there is in the league.

This season, you could make a case for various players to win the award and that is reflective in the media poll seen above.

Darius Garland was voted Most Improved Player based on this poll by just one single point. Garland only finished with just 2 first-place votes, compared to Ja Morant with 7 first-place votes, but the Cleveland Cavaliers guard carried the second and third-place votes, ultimately giving him more total voting points than Morant.

While the Cavaliers’ season ended before they were able to reach the NBA Playoffs via the Play-In Tournament, Darius Garland still had an incredible year, averaging 21.7 points, 8.6 assists and shooting 38.3% from three-point range.

As for the rest of this list, Ja Morant and Dejounte Murray, the two other finalists for this year’s Most Improved Player award, finished second and fourth, respectively, in our media voting. Golden State Warriors guard Jordan Poole finished third in the voting, racking in the second-most first-place votes next to Ja Morant.

Desmond Bane, Tyrese Maxey and Miles Bridges all received multiple votes for Most Improved as well, as all three young talents had career-years with their respective teams.

Garland and Morant were separated by one vote in our media poll and it would not be shocking to see similar results in the real award voting process this year.

Very little separates the two players and the fact that Ja Morant was drafted second overall in 2019 could be an impactful factor in some voter’s minds, causing them to lean towards Darius Garland in terms of their first-place vote. 

Voting results for other NBA awards and honors:

• Most Valuable Player
• Rookie of the Year
• Most Improved Player
• Coach of the Year
• Sixth-Man of the Year
• Defensive Player of the Year
• All-NBA Teams
• All-Rookie Teams
• All-Defensive Teams