{"id":498580,"date":"2026-02-23T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498580\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T09:44:08","slug":"votes-are-in-who-will-be-crown-2025-26-mvp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498580\/","title":{"rendered":"Votes are in: Who will be crown 2025-26 MVP?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bryce Cotton vs Kendric Davis for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball.com.au\/news\/kendric-davis-bryce-cotton-nbl26-mvp-debate-analysis\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBL26 Most Valuable Player Award<\/a> will be decided tonight.<\/p>\n<p>The Andrew Gaze MVP Awards night is on now, watch in the player above or below.<\/p>\n<p>Davis spoke to Kelsey Browne about the respect he had for head coach Brian Goorjian during the show.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s like a father figure to me, he believed in me, I don&#8217;t have a dad, so he&#8217;s like my second dad,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It feels good, there is positive energy around me now, and I will stay true to myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked about his match-up with Bryce Cotton, Davis was coy but competitive (with a smile): \u201cI wanna bust his ass every chance I get \u2026 the respect is there. I grew up watching him. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;MVP wasn\u2019t my goal this year; it was being part of a brotherhood, a family, but every time I play him, I\u2019m trying to bust his ass.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Damon Lowery says Kendric Davis deserves the MVP, while former MVP Derek Rucker has picked Cotton to win.<\/p>\n<p>Fans NBL26 MVP\u200dBryce Cotton (Adelaide 36ers)Sixth Man of the Year\u200dAngus Glover (South East Melbourne Phoenix)FinalistsKouat Noi (Sydney Kings)Majok Deng (Tasmania JackJumpers)Step One Next Generation Award\u200dSam Mennenga (New Zealand Breakers)Finalists:Karim Lopez (New Zealand Breakers)Owen Foxwell (South East Melbourne Phoenix)NBL\u00a0Most Improved Player\u200dFlynn Cameron (Adelaide 36ers)Finalists:Makuach Maluach (Sydney Kings)Sam Mennenga (New Zealand Breakers)Gametime by Kmart Award\u200dMalith Machar &#8211; Melbourne UnitedExecutive of the Year\u200dNic Barbato (Adelaide 36ers CEO)<\/p>\n<p>Check out the Finalists for all awards below.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Gaze Trophy for Most Valuable Player\u200dBryce Cotton (Adelaide 36ers)Kendric Davis (Sydney Kings)Lindsay Gaze Coach of the Year\u200dBrian Goorjian (Sydney Kings)Josh King (South East Melbourne Phoenix)Defensive Player of the Year\u200dKristian Doolittle (Perth Wildcats)John Brown III (South East Melbourne Phoenix)Will Magnay (Tasmania JackJumpers)<\/p>\n<p>Other awards include All-NBL First Team, All-NBL Second Team, Executive of the Year, Referee of the Year presented by Europcar, Champion Fans\u2019 MVP and Tangerine Dunk of the Year and Three Pointer of the Year presented by Mitsubishi Motors Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bryce Cotton vs Kendric Davis for the NBL26 Most Valuable Player Award will be decided tonight. The Andrew&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-498580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}