AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Just about everyone agreed that Ben Wallace had a sensational defensive season.
The NBA confirmed that Saturday when the Detroit Pistons forward won the Defensive Player of the Year award by a record-setting margin.
Wallace received 116 of 120 votes (96.7 percent) to become the first Pistons player to win the award since Dennis Rodman in 1991.
Kevin Garnett finished second with two votes, and Kobe Bryant and Dikembe Mutombo had the other two. The next-largest vote percentage was Alonzo Mourning's 75.4 percent in 1999.
"I've built my whole career around playing defense and rebounding, so there's no better feeling than to win this award," Wallace said. "I'm going to love and cherish this for the rest of my career and the rest of my life."
Wallace became the fourth player in league history to lead the league in rebounds (13.0 per game) and blocked shots (3.5), joining Hakeem Olajuwon and Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton.
While those three players were all picked first in the NBA draft after being college superstars, Wallace was undrafted out of little-known Virginia Union.
"Ben Wallace epitomizes everything that we want this team to be," Pistons coach Rick Carlisle said. "He has worked very hard to get to this point, and we are very proud of him. Ben is a great, great player and I'm surprised that anyone else got votes at all."
Wallace finished fifth in the voting in 2001 but was not named to the league's three All-Defense teams. Mourning or Mutombo had won the award every year since 1997.
Wallace, as he normally does, pushed most of the credit toward his teammates and coaches.
"A defender is only as good as his teammates, and these guys have been fighting in the trenches with me all season," he said.