As the NBA regular season creeps toward its conclusion, the hype for all of the major awards is starting to build. When it comes to the Celtics, that talk has revolved around Jaylen Brown in the hunt for MVP and All-NBA, Joe Mazzulla and his pursuit of the Coach of the Year Award, and how Payton Pritchard isn’t eligible to defend his Sixth Man of the Year Award after starting in too many games.
But realistically, if there’s a player who should be getting award buzz, it’s Neemias Queta for the league’s Most Improved Player Award. Neemy has gone from a two-way guy, let go by the Kings, to earning a standard contract with the Celtics, to coming from out of the rotation last season, to being an above-average starter in the NBA.
Queta was drafted in 2021, and at age 26, he’s finally breaking through in a big way. Last season, Big Neem was just clinging to a spot on the end of the bench, barely ever seeing the floor with Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, and Luke Kornet all steadily in front of him on the depth chart.
With all three departing in the offseason, there was complete uncertainty around the center position in Boston, but Joe and the organization had full trust in Queta, giving him the starting job since day one, and he has rewarded their faith by anchoring the defense for the number two seed in the East, putting up 9.9 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game.
No player has improved more since last year than QuetaÂ
But despite this remarkable breakthrough from a guy whose place in the league was tenuous at best, to one of the most important players on a championship contender, there’s very little fanfare around Neemy, and he’s not being mentioned nearly enough in the mix for the MIP Award.
Instead, the award seems destined to go to one of the favorites like Jalen Duren, Jalen Johnson, Deni Avdija, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, or Ryan Rollins. Those players are having great years, and they’ve all taken big leaps, but let’s get real.
Duren is a former lottery pick who has been a solid starter already, Johnson was a budding star late last year, Avdija has been a 15/7/4 guy for several seasons already, NAW is a proven playoff guy from his time in Minnesota, and even Rollins was emerging as an important role player for the Bucks by the end of last season.
Vecenie and Simon laud Queta's improvement
These were all clearly established players coming into this season, with an expectation that they’d continue improving. They deserve praise, and they are all arguably better players than Queta, but to argue that any of them have actually improved more this season would be ridiculous.
On a recent episode of the Game Theory podcast, Sam Vecenie and Bryce Simon outlined this argument perfectly as Simon picked Neemy as one of his most under the radar players this season and Vecenie wondering aloud why he's not getting more love for MIP.
Ultimately, it’s an issue with the award itself more than anything else, as the league has chosen to reward players who make a jump from good young player to star. That’s fine, but it doesn’t capture the true spirit, something that Queta has embodied perfectly this season.