Victor Wembanyama is going to win lots of awards in his NBA career. After winning the Rookie of the Year award, the San Antonio Spurs' young phenom might start racking up even more accolades as early as this season.

ESPN conducted a poll of its NBA experts for the contenders for each award in the 2024-25 season. Wembanyama came in first place in two awards: Most Improved Player and Defensive Player of the Year. Not since Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2019-20 has a player won two of the major NBA awards in the same season.

Wemby tied with Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams with 26 voting points but did get a greater share of the first-place votes, receiving 14 percent of them to J-Dub's 10. In DPOY voting, he ran away with 76 voting points and a whopping 67 percent of the first-place votes. No one else had more than 15 percent!

Victor Wembanyama leads charge for DPOY, MIP awards in ESPN poll

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There have been a few cases of players who were either drafted high (Ja Morant) or seen as likely to leap to stardom (Tyrese Maxey) that won the MIP award. Those two recipients were met with a lot of pushback because they didn’t fit the spirit of the MIP award, which is supposed to recognize players who come out of nowhere to become high-level players. Think Lauri Markkanen two seasons ago.

Wembanyama has already been stamped as the next NBA legend in the making. Everyone already sees him making major improvements in his game. Unless he becomes one of the undisputed best players in the league, it would be crazy for him to win that award, especially in just his second season.

Defensive Player of the Year is bound to go to Wembanyama this season. He was already making noise for it as a rookie but because the SPurs were such a bad defensive team, more voters opted for Rudy Gobert (who was also a very deserving candidate). Wemby raised San Antonio's defensive capabilities immensely when he was on the floor, making the Spurs one of the better defenses in the league when he was on the floor. Still, Gobert took home the hardware.

Now that the Spurs project to be better this season after adding some veterans and new rookie Stephon Castle, Wembanyama should be able to compete for the DPOY honor. He seems destined to win several in his NBA career, just like his countryman Gobert did.