SALT LAKE CITY — It's NBA award season.

By Thursday, media members from around the NBA must submit their votes to the league for the various individual player awards: Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player. The men in suits are also up for awards: there's Coach of the Year (voted on by the media) and Executive of the Year (voted on by fellow NBA executives).

How likely are representatives from the Jazz to win these awards? Let's break it down, from least likely to most likely.

Joe Ingles for Most Improved Player

Let's start here: Indiana's Victor Oladipo is going to win this award, and it should be unanimous. 'Dipo's jump from average starter to All-Star and honestly perhaps one of the 10 best NBA players this season is the kind of leap that just doesn't usually happen, not this late in a player's career. He's averaging 23 points per game, leads the league in steals, and has brought the Pacers 48 wins after winning just 42 last year with Paul George at the helm. He's been magnificent.

But voters must put second and third place selections on every ballot, and that's where you can have some fun.

• Detroit's Andre Drummond deserves a nod for being able to improve his defense and free throw shooting to stay in the game and become Detroit's best player.
• Los Angeles Lakers' Julius Randle became something interesting right as everyone assumed he wouldn't be.
• Steven Adams took big steps forward to become OKC's third-best player, and actually averages more offensive rebounds than defensive ones.
• Josh Richardson might be Miami's best player, and I'm not sure 80 percent of Heat fans could have named him coming into the season.

He won't finish in the top three of voting, though.

Dennis Lindsey for Executive of the Year

With Utah's recent run, now guaranteed to finish in the top five of the Western Conference, Jazz general manager has been garnering accolades from around the league for what he's done to the Jazz over the offseason.

Yes, the Jazz lost Gordon Hayward, but his peers (who vote for the award) don't blame him for that: they think the Jazz did all they could do, and the player just chose to leave. It happens.

But how the Jazz pivoted has been brilliant. The trade for Ricky Rubio has paid big dividends, as Rubio's figured out the Jazz's system. Signing all of Thabo Sefolosha, Jonas Jerebko, and Ekpe Udoh to very reasonable two-year contracts with the second years non-guaranteed was the kind of subtle masterstroke that can keep a team afloat. Sefolosha was great before getting injured, Jerebko's been a very important cog, and Udoh gives the Jazz a third center option that's almost as fearsome of a shot-blocker as Rudy Gobert on a per-minute basis.

And then there's the trade for Donovan Mitchell. In a draft where the Jazz entered with picks 24 and 30, to come out of it with the draft's best player is an astonishing feat, and Mitchell looks set to carry the Jazz for years to come.

I don't think Lindsey will win the award, as two candidates seem to have more buzz. Houston's Daryl Morey will probably win it, as acquiring Chris Paul to put next to James Harden and putting him next to some of the league's best role players (P.J. Tucker, Luc Mbah a Moute, Eric Gordon, Clint Capela, and more) was an impressive feat.

Boston's Danny Ainge acquired Hayward, sure, but also came out of the draft with an excellent player in Jayson Tatum and sold on Isaiah Thomas at the perfect time, using Thomas, Crowder, and a pick to get the younger and more versatile Kyrie Irving.

Donovan Mitchell for Rookie of the Year

This is one of the biggest award debates in recent memory. It's certainly the best rookie of the year contest since 2003 when the league was trying to decide between LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony.

Donovan Mitchell is incredible, something every Jazz fan knows and admires at this point. He can score from all three levels. He creates something out of nothing maybe ten times a game. He's a brilliant passer, especially out to the perimeter. He's a good defender, and he's probably the team's leader at age 21.

But because the race has gotten so much attention, many voters have already revealed their choice in the great talking point of 2018: Mitchell or Ben Simmons? I think we've heard from enough of the voters telling us their actual balloting preferences to get a pretty good idea that Simmons is going to win this award.

Simmons is a deserving winner. He's leading the Sixers to 15 straight wins right now, most of which without their best big man Joel Embiid. For a player who can't shoot, Simmons uses the space teams give him as a runway to the rim, finding creative angles to finish from and passing lanes to help his teammates out every time he attacks the rim. And he's a defensive monster, using his length, size and smarts to lock down all sizes of Philadelphia opponents.

I get that he had a redshirt year, not playing in Philadelphia last season. That certainly gave him advantages. But the NBA says he's a rookie, and so voters are duty-bound to consider him. And when they do, they shouldn't grade on a curve: just because Simmons has advantages doesn't mean we should dock his performance on the court. Blake Griffin won this award seven years ago without any controversy. Jazz fans shouldn't use their desire to see Mitchell win an award to tear down another fun NBA talent.

In nearly any other year, Mitchell would win the award outright, maybe unanimously. In this year, Simmons is going to win it. That's okay.

Quin Snyder for Coach of the Year

To be honest, I'm surprised that Snyder is more likely to win this award than Mitchell is his. I certainly wouldn't have seen this coming in January.

But Snyder's gotten some buzz in the last few weeks and deservingly so. ESPN's Zach Lowe voted for him, as did USA Today's Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt. Those three are among the league's most trusted voices, and honestly, there will be a few voters that look to those columns for advice and guidance as they make their decisions in the next 24 hours.

Snyder is brilliant in every sense of the word. There's a refrain I've heard from a couple people who know him well: "Everyone in the NBA thinks they're the smartest man in the room. The difference with Quin is that he is."

No one thinks more about the details of the game: attacking angles, screen locations, rotations, boxing out duties, and much more are drilled into the players' psyche to be inch-perfect. If you're even slightly out of place, Snyder will come move you until you fit his scheme.

Yet it's not like he's college-style overcoaching: the framework allows for Rubio, Mitchell, and Ingles to do their thing. They can spot opportunities to attack and freelance. Snyder's system just makes everything else work while they do.

Snyder is also set up his staff brilliantly, and there might be more player-coach trust in Utah's organization than anywhere in the league. Johnnie Bryant has Hayward, Mitchell, and Paul Millsap's incredible improvement to his bame. Igor Kokoskov has a really solid chance to become Phoenix's next head coach, especially if they get Luka Doncic. Rudy Gobert trust of Alex Jensen matters, especially when Jensen doesn't coddle the star. Look what Zach Guthrie has done with Ingles. The list goes on and on.

Boston's Brad Stevens is on the shortlist, as are Toronto's Dwane Casey, Indiana's Nate McMillan, Philadelphia's Brett Brown, and more. They all have really good cases, and this might be a case where the winner is decided as much by the second-place votes as the first-place ones. But Snyder is surging up the balloting, and he has a real shot at the award.

Rudy Gobert for Defensive Player of the Year

Spoiler alert: Gobert is going to be the league's Defensive Player of the Year. Truthfully, I can't find any ballot released so far that doesn't have Gobert first, such is the recognition of his talent.

And rightfully so: Gobert has the league's best defensive Real Plus-Minus, and has been the biggest catalyst for the Jazz going from also-rans to Western Conference home-court advantage seekers. It's not a coincidence that the Jazz's season turned around the moment Gobert returned. He blocks a ton of shots, but scares even more.

What Gobert has that most other shot blockers lack is mobility, which allows him to defend the pick and roll two-on-two in most cases. That means the Jazz don't have to rotate to help, which means they don't give up threes. I've written on this before at KSL.com as well.

That Gobert missed so much time due to injury is a real knock. But his competition doesn't have much more of a case: Embiid has only played about 100 more minutes than Gobert. San Antonio's Kawhi Leonard is injured, and Golden State's Draymond Green hasn't always been healthy or at his best either. OKC's Andre Roberson probably would have won the award if he stayed healthy, but he played far fewer games than Gobert.

Anthony Davis is the only player who has played most of the season, and it gives him a real advantage. But you look at his defensive impact, and it doesn't approach Gobert's, even when you consider the additional minutes played.

Gobert will run away with this award. It probably won't be unanimous, but it won't be close.

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