Hello everyone, welcome back! I hope everyone has been enjoying their bye week, it’s been nice to take a reset following an epic 3v3 regular season concluding with Magic Gaming winning the Switch Open. I want to make it clear that my end of season votes are NOT solidified and will likely change based on what happens in the playoffs. Internal voting for finalists will take place this week among staff, coaches, and players, and then fan voting will take place 4/24 – 5/5. Fan voting will just cover MVP and AOTY, First Team will be determined by coaches, players, league officials, and talent/media. I’ve always included playoffs in my award voting anyway and it’s never led me wrong so I doubt it will this year. However, this is a good snapshot of where we are and who’s the “clubhouse leader” as people say for each award. I threw in some fun awards as well, so without further ado, let’s jump into it.

 

Official Awards

 

Most Valuable Player (MVP): ShiftyKaii

HM: Unguardable, Gallow

 

This isn’t a huge surprise. While Lakers Gaming struggled on Championship Saturday during the Switch, Kaii has been easily the best overall player in 3v3 this season. He’s turned around the entire Lakers Gaming franchise and is bringing them to new heights this season. In classic Kaii fashion, he finished 2nd in PPG, 1st in FG% among guards, 1st in points per possession, and 2nd in 2KR, my own personal home cooked stat (basically PER for 2K). He put up one of the best, if not the best, individual 3v3 seasons that we’ve had so far. For me, this one is easy, but I hear the arguments for Unguradable and Gallow, both who had excellent seasons in their own right.

 

1st Team All-3V3: Kaii, Jboolin, LowkeyGodlike

 

Don’t need to go in too deep on the All–2KL teams yet, but this is where my head is heading into the playoffs. These 3 have really separated themselves at their position, but I think Jboolin’s lock spot is still up for grabs. A dominate lockdown performance to close the season could nip it away from him at the end. For Kaii or LowkeyGodlike, it’s going to take a superhuman effort to get them out of those spots at this point.

 

Amateur of the Year: Shifty
HM: SwagsReturn, Quickster

 

This award could really go to any of the 3 guys from Rim Runners, but I’ll side with their guard Shifty for now. He looks like a 2KL guard, he’s got all the moves and a great shot off the dribble to boot. He has these rgeat in-between moves that baffle defenders and create a ton of open looks. I love how he sets up his teammates too with quality drive and kick opportunities, he’s really astarted to look like a professional player as we’ve come down the stretch of the season. Swags or Quick are great options too, they’ve both been tremendous.

 

Unofficial “Fun” Awards: These awards aren’t real, just me having some fun!

 

Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY): Jboolin

HM: Dtrick, YooVC, Whatstick

 

This one was difficult since I don’t think we had a truly ICONIC defensive player in 3v3 this season. So, to figure out this award, I tried to think of the player that I saw make the most game-breaking plays and whether or not that lined up with their actual statistical outlook. After a hefty amount of time looking at the stats, I landed on Jboolin. The eye test is there without question, but when you dig deeper, it’s even better. He led the league in total steals along with being 3rd in steals per game. He forced the most turnovers of any lockdown this season and also finished 2nd among lockdowns in blocks per game. All of this happening while he was playing in the highest leverage games of any lock in the league…and he’s a rookie! Our other 3 candidates deserve plenty of acclaim too. Dtrick defined the big position this year in 3v3 and YooVC and Stick were massive for their respective teams. I think this award is still very much up in the air.

 

Coach of the Year (COY): Jonah

HM: Nacho, JMoney, Famous

 

This award is more “Executive of the Year” than it is coach of the year. The amount of coaching that goes into 3v3 is very hard to define, but putting your team together? Much easier to frame. Jonah gets the slight edge for me due to the quality of team he put together for the insane low cost. The 8th overall pick for LowkeyGodlike might be the biggest trade steal of all-time and his maneuvering to get #3 overall to nab the local Florida man Jboolin was a hell of a swipe. He had a clear vision of the team he wanted to surround Unguardable with and executed it as well as you possibly could. Nacho and famous are also in that boat, they did an excellent job building around their respective stars and putting together record seasons for their 3v3 teams. Jmoney gets a special shout out too due to this work in-game and also how well he’s done managing such a young team so far to start the year.

 

Most Improved Player (MIP): Gallow
HM: Dtrick, Leche

 

All due respect to Dtrick and Leche, both had very good seasons, I don’t think this award is even close this year. Gallow went from barely even making a blip of noise in the 3v3 game mode to being arguably the best player in the league in one season. Last year, he put up 10.2-2.2 on 70.2 FG% and 41.2 3P%. Just okay. This year? 10.6-3.4 on 73.1 FG% and 63.5 3P%. Across the board, he elevated his game and helped make Gen.G relevant in this mode. It’s an easy pick, very interested to see how this translates to 5v5.

 

Twitch Team Channel Award (TTCA): T-Wolves

 

This is similar to the League Pass Award for most exciting team to watch in the NBA, but since we have Twitch Team Channels now, I figured it would be funny. At least it is to me! Anyway, the T-Wolves got it this year. Tutak was a joy to watch this year with all the crazy shots and big defensive plays. Watching Bear learn a new role on the fly was fascinating for a 6-year league vet. Not to mention all the drama with Igymo between starting then benching then him shooting 70% from 3 during the Switch when put back in the lineup. It was a blast, T-Wolves were must-watch TV just as we hoped.

 

Chaos Award: MDS

 

This is a special award just for me. Watching MDS and Atlanta this year was complete and total chaos and I loved it.  Their streak of games where they were getting every single rebound for like 2 weeks was incredible to watch. None of us could believe it while it was happening and it was followed by them plummeting down the rankings once teams figured out how to play against the Inside Center. MDS was chucking up close to 6-7 threes a game just to make playing that inside build worth it. The whole point of the build was for MDS to purposefully take bad shots, have Glo get rebounds, then kick it back out for open 3s. That’s the whole idea and it eventually collapsed in on itself.

 

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