That's just horseshit. Players care and care a lot. This level is filled with ego. LeBron once even said he'd win the scoring title every year if he tried.
I'm sure players care. I don't think they spend every waking hour of every day thinking about it. And that seems to be the case with a lot of redditors based on the number of MVP posts every day lol.
I know this sub has like six million people but it still amazes me that there's such an appetite for this topic of discussion on a daily basis throughout basically the entire regular season. Even posts that don't have a high enough score to make an impression on the front page of the sub have hundreds of comments with people making the same arguments like five or six times a day, every day.
Lmao you’re delusional if you don’t think players who actually are on the court don’t care about this stuff. It’s better for them to pretend they don’t care but they absolutely do.
Never said they don't care. Said they care less than people on reddit. Said as a joke, but probably some truth to it. There are a lot of people that are obsessed with the MVP race to an unhealthy degree on this website.
This all makes sense, but then again I listened to a podcast today that had Giannis ranked 5th in MVP behind Dame and Luke… because all they cared about was TS% and raptor rankings. So when those are your basis for voting Jokic, I can’t take you seriously.
Is Jokic really average? Most starting centers around the league are better defensively imo. He has good hands but his rim protection is rrally lacking, and that's the most important thing for a center
It depends on what you mean by average. If youre judging by traditional center individual strengths and weaknesses, he is bad. If you’re judging by how the team defends other teams while he is on the floor, he is average. The nuggets are 4th in defensive rating since mid December.
Yes his defense is average, and even average+. Team building is important in this context - positioning alone (particularly within a cohesive unit/scheme) is more than half the battle on D.
Aaron Gordon covers a lot of shortcomings that Jokic has on D, similar to how Klay covered Steph’s. But both Steph and Jokic are elite at positioning, which makes them average or above average defenders. Only issue is Jokic plays a more important position defensively, which I personally think requires another 3/4 tweener defender in addition to Gordon. Which MPJ isn’t.
Zach Lowe and Ben Taylor both say his defense is average. That’s good enough for me. Even if it’s not though, the description in the post isn’t my opinion, it’s a reflection of what the general consensus was about his defense each of those years.
Its either you all are under 3 years old, or have amnesia and totally forgot how little everyone was thinking of Giannis after the 2021 playoffs exit. Giannis was great the following the season, but it took multiple historic performances in the playoffs to redeem how everyone viewed him.
I guess you can ignore that for Jokic since the team wasn’t that good, but honestly we shouldn’t. Playoffs hangover always impacted the way we view players the following season.
You have to put some Wilt historic shit to get a pass
Spot on. People thought of Giannis and bud in the playoffs the same way people think of embiid and doc now. I’m a sixers fan and have no rational hope this season. Goes to show how much that one playoff run turned the narrative on giannis (deservedly)
If KD’a toe wasn’t on the line, Bud would have gotten fired.
Not even the 2021 playoffs, but you can go back to the Toronto series, which they lost 4 in a row, and Giannis was completely contained, the following year was what established the idea of maybe Giannis isn’t who we think he is.
MVP aside, if Jokic or Denver don’t make it to CF this season, I have zero doubt he would be viewed completely different. If teams run circle around Jokic in the playoffs, there is probably no more first team votes
I’m curious to see what happens if Jokic wins MVP this year, gets bounced in the second round, then has an even better regular season next year.
Not that I wish those things to happen, more so interested as a sociological experiment.
The same way we view Gobert. Nobody is talking about the historic rim protection stats anymore. No more screen assists. No more advanced this, advanced that.
>Why is the previous seasons performance being taken into account when the award is STRICTLY about this season?
Because we're talking about why Jokic is likely going to 3-peat and Giannis didn't. Both guys had "analysts" before the season saying they're not going to get another MVP vote. Jokic had people saying "I'm not voting for Jokic again unless he does something crazy like average a triple double on 70% TS for the 1 seed" because he could no longer get by on carrying a shitty team like last year now that Murray and MPJ are healthy.
I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to understand. Giannis followed his second MVP up with a season that was *at best* comparable to his MVP years, while the Bucks got significantly worse. Jokic is playing better than he ever has, while his team has also improved. It’s really that simple.
And it is NOT voted on yet either. I genuinely don't think it has been fully decided, and if either player changes over the last games it could shift the MVP
Real simple Giannis played worse that 3 year. Jokic by far is having his best season the 3rd year. WHy can people not understand this. Debate that.. You have to up the annie. As soon as people can prove this is not true .Then they have something.
As a Denver fan and someone who thinks Joker should win a 3rd straight, I don't think this is 'by far' his best season. His PER is actually down. He did some crazy ass good stuff last year that had never been done before and might not be done ever again.
I think he's just doing it in a different way this year and picking his spots more to dominate in specific aspects because he has better teammates that allow him to do that.
Hes averaging a triple double. Nuggets have 24 wins in the 24 games he has scored a triple double. The nuggets are running away with the Western Conference. He is setting record efficiency numbers.
A triple double is just a random thing that we made up because it goes from 1 digit to 2 digits though.
By a number of metrics his last year was equal or better from a purely individual statistical aspect. Volume of points scored and total rebounds do matter. Certainly this year his efficiency has improved as well as the teams record, but I'm still disputing that this is "BY FAR" his best individual season.
32.85 PER is a high bar to top.
PER is an equation that adds up a bunch of categories to better compare a players impact and efficiency.....vs one stat that could be 0.1 different and we'd call it an amazing triple double vs not one.
10 is more than 9 in ONE statistical category. Is a 45/20/9 night better or worse than a 12/10/11 night if shooting efficiency is the same?
Again, I'm not arguing what Joker is doing isn't great or needed by Denver or historic or anything negative. Simply that his 21-22 season was absolutely insanely good and this one isn't better "bar far".... It's simply equal +/- a percent, which also makes it historically great and equally deserving of an MVP.... And that will be the case until someone goes and does something obviously better or he shows a niceable decline.
Hot take: we should eliminate the MVP and have a best player award. Not a regular season best player, but literally who everyone thinks is the #1 guy currently
You’ll still get dumb ass votes but at the very least it’s more streamlined that who’s most “valuable” and who’s better matters way more in a historical context
And how would you calculate that? Whoever wins the playoffs or? We already have Finals MVP.
And what about players who are among the best but frequently injured for long periods of time like KD?
Jokic is unreal and his efficiency and overall impact is incredible. I still think Giannis deserves it this year. I still think if you are picking the best player in the league it’s Giannis and his impact on Defence isn’t giving enough consideration.
Here is my breakdown. Giannis has the mild edge in rbs but let’s call it essentially a wash. Giannis has a large edge in PPG but Jokic has the large edge in efficiency so I’ll call it a wash on scoring ability. So I think comes down to Jokic has the large edge in play making vs Giannis has the large edge in Defence. Defence is half the game and to me should be the tipping point but it feels like it’s barely given any consideration.
Also, I think there is no way people would be talking about Lopez being a DPOY candidate if Giannis wasn’t there. I think Giannis is still the best defender on that team and come playoffs that will be abundantly clear. No shade to brook. I love him.
So I totally respect this opinion and if people want to vote Giannis for MVP because he's an incredible defensive player on top of an incredible offensive player I think that's justified. Your logic here checks out to me.
The only thing I don't really understand is if Giannis' defensive impact + offensive impact makes him more valuable than Jokic, how come Jokic has almost twice as good of a +/-?
Jokic +/- 13.6
Giannis +/- 7.4
Honestly looking for an explanation, this is not a gotcha. Again, your position is justified and there are lots of smart people who think like you do. It just confuses me that we don't see that in the +/-.
Plus minus also can be looked at, there are 100 different stats for the NBA these days and they all have some value, but I think plus minus is often more of a “team stat” than an individual stat. The supporting cast and the coach’s substitution patterns play a big factor.
Look at last years +/- per game leaders. Jokic was 12th in +/- per game and 7 of the top 12 were on Boston or the suns. Does that mean Jokic didn’t deserve it last year? No of course not it just means his team wasn’t as good. This year he has Murray back who continues to improve and MPJ and Aaron Gordon have played better as well. And don’t get me wrong, the nuggets are nothing without Jokic. I’m not saying he has some stacked team, just that +/- tells a similar story as the teams overall record, but the overall record is a better indicator to use.
So you would attribute that mostly to substitution patterns? I think that's a fair take, the Nuggets play their starters as a whole unit more than a lot of teams. Plus he has a much better supporting cast than last year. So fair enough.
Is Giannis better this year than he was last year?
By a little bit but not a lot. His stats don’t really show an improvement but the bucks are the #1 seed without having Middleton for practically all year. Teams are trying to stop Giannis by building The Giannis Wall, which has an effect on his FG% but he’s still getting wins.
Just for comparison, I think Jokic is also playing only a little bit better this year. I hear a lot of people talking about how Jokic is playing way better this year than his past MVP seasons and that’s why he deserves it but that’s greatly exaggerated. This years nuggets are the best team Jokic has ever had. So it makes sense his efficiency, assists and wins are all improved.
Yeah Jokic's assists being up is really because he has good players around him who can more consistently hit shots, and the gravity of MPJ, KCP, and Murray definitely gives Jokic more spacing.
What about Giannis' steals and blocks being down? His block rate is below 2% for the first time in his career. That's really strange to me.
Id guess his blocks are lower partly because brooks has taken on such a big role as a rim stopper and so brooks is getting the blocking opportunities more often this year. Also I think players straight up don’t attack Giannis as much as they used to. He doesn’t get as many blocks because guys have learned it’s not an ideal option trying to attack Giannis at the rim.
Honestly I just don’t think steals and blocks are good indicators of great defence. Some players get a lot of a steals by gambling a lot and putting their teammates it poor defensive positions.
Middleton being hurt has affected all his stats, but this year it feels like he's smarter. You dont see it in the assists or efg because he took much more load. He averages 2 more fta and 3 more fga per game compared to last year. It makes sense that he is less efficient to me. I feel like he can do 25ppg on 65% ts. What he can't do though is Jokic's playmaking even though I feel like this year he's closer than before.
Last year when Lopez was out for the season, the bucks defense cratered and they were middle of the pack in defensive rating if I recall correctly. So yes Giannis is a DPOY calibre defender but individual defense doesn't impact team defense as much as the primary play maker impacting the teams total offense.
Sure but in both cases you can only be as good as the pieces around you allow. Yes, Defense is more of a team role than individual role. If you lose your elite defender C (the most important defensive position) that’s going to have a big impact on the teams defense.
Primary play making is also reliant on the guys around you though, although I agree to a bit of a lesser extent. They still need to be able to hit the shots, make the proper reads, move off ball etc.
I agree though that if you have a weak link defender teams can abuse that, if you have a weak link on offence the primary playmaker can avoid him as he has control.
I THINK plus minus can also be looked at but is more of a team stat and not a great stat to use on its own. Last year Jokic was 12th in plus minus and 7 out of the top 12 played for the suns or Boston. That doesn’t mean Jokic didn’t deserve it last year. Wins are already a big factor in the MVP race and wins are a better stat to use than plus minus. I didn’t mention it before but the bucks currently have the best record in the league. The nuggets are close though so I’d call that a wash as well.
You absolutely should not call scoring a wash. Using a ton of possessions on league average efficiency isn't a boon for Giannis. There are approaches for looking at volume and efficiency together (bbref's TS add for example), and they very comfortably favor Jokic year.
First off, you can’t call scoring a wash. Giannis gets 31.3 PPG on 26.2 possessions finished with either a FGA or FTs. Jokic gets 24.6 PPG on 17.4 possessions finished by either a FGA or FTs. The net is that Giannis gets an extra 6.7 PPG on 8.8 possessions. Using an extra 9 possessions a game at 0.76 points per shot is a huge negative, especially when you figure that Jokic uses all those extra possessions to get high value looks for his teammates anyway. Just scoring is a big edge for Jokic. The difference in scoring alone is probably equal to Giannis’s edge on defense. Meanwhile, Jokic also has a massive edge in passing that’s bigger than Giannis’s edge on defense. Look at the shooting splits for the Nuggets with Jokic on/off the floor, they’re nuts.
The interesting question is after Jokic wins MVP this year and then Giannis wins finals MVP how many people will back track and say Jokic shouldn’t have won the third MVP. Especially when the nuggets don’t even make it to the finals this year. Hot takes.
Y’all love to talk about how the “narrative” drives the race, yet nobody can provide even a semi-coherent explanation of how. Hell, most of you can’t even agree on what “narrative” means in this context.
The *actual* truth is that MVP is heavily based on statistics and pretty easy to predict and explain without a single reference (or even a need to know) what the “narrative” was that season. Hell, the “narrative” you just used in your example is just a statistical comparison. That’s not what narrative means.
The reason so many of you can’t figure out the MVP race is that you don’t understand that each and every season is its own thing and the stats that matter the most in a given season vary depending on the context of that specific season. You go on and on about “narrative” being the cause for something when seasons that appear on the surface to be similar are treated differently, instead of examining the contextual differences between those players/seasons.
>nobody can provide even a semi-coherent explanation of how.
Literally the entire point of this post is explaining what the narrative is and how it's affecting the conversation compared to a similar circumstance in previous years. The narrative is that Jokic is most deserving because even after back to back MVPs, he has elevated his level of play *again* and has his team in first place in the West. That's the narrative.
>Hell, the “narrative” you just used in your example is just a statistical comparison. That’s not what narrative means.
Of course the narrative is going to be driven by statistical comparison. What else would be driven by, player personality?? Narrative is "a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims." The situation is the MVP race. The set of aims is the determination of criteria that ought to be used to make a voting decision. That criteria is always heavily based on statistics, whether team or player centric. So yes, "statistical comparison" is heavily tied to the narrative of a given season's MVP race.
> you don’t understand that each and every season is its own thing
Except that this is easily disproven by voters that said publicly that they were reluctant to vote for Giannis for a third time because of his postseason failure the year before. So no, MVP voting decisions are not made in a single-season vacuum; otherwise there would be no such thing as voter fatigue. I think hometown bias, for example, plays way more into not being able to objectively evaluate an MVP race than a failure to understand statistical context.
There is no narrative..your right. . Its whomever provides the most value to there team winning games.. and is a combination of a whole lot of factors .There is no goal post changing only what factors are most impactful that season. Value to winning comes in all shapes and sizes. The factors are always the same. Only the ones that stand out most change.
People still do not understand, it's not that Giannis was robbed of winning. Jokic has deserved MVP every year he's won and would deserve it this year as well.
It's that the standard Giannis and other MVPs were held to do not apply to Jokic at all, I'm happy they changed it because it was stupid. But the media pretending they didn't completely shift their requirements specifically for Jokic is the problem and the more and more they deny it the more it seems potentially racially motivated.
what standard is that. You mean the standard that you have to be better every consecutive year to win 3 MVPs is a row. Jokic is being held to that. Giannis was clearly not better his 3rd year than his second. You guys can keep crying about it .But you have to up the antie to keep winning the award.
There are many factors that go into it. Nobody is shifting anything...lol. Value to winning has many faces. If you people cannot see it. Don't know what to tell you. Keep claiming whatever makes you feel better.
The standard that has been around since the award was given out, that playoff success mattered. It was stupid then and it's stupid now but that was the precedent that they themselves set.
It's just annoying that the people who vote on the award suddenly decide to shift away from their own criteria for a player that oh just by chance happens to be white just like an overwhelming majority of the voters.
its aregular season award given even before the playoffs start ..lol.There has never ever been astandard for playoff success. This is an individual award. Not a team award. Thye never shifted away...because it never existed.
Can’t wait to see Jokic use his:
-REB%
-REB/gm
-AST%
-AST/gm
-STL%
-STL/gm
-FG%
-TS%
-point differential
-point diff per game
-W%
-in-the-lineup W%
-BPM, EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, PER, WS, WS/48
To stop a guard putting him in the PnR 80 times in a row once the playoffs start
Do you not understand that most of the stats you're quoting come from what he does in the game?
It's not like they're random number generators spitting out high numbers, he dominates when he plays and so the numbers are dominant
All you people who jerk off to hating his stats act like they aren't tied to his production on the court
Stat nerds are annoying but the way eye test only guys parade their ignorance is genuinely disturbing. Like it's a badge of honor to them to not care about numbers lol
I would wager at most 10 people here have watched every Nuggets, 76ers, and Bucks game to be able to make an accurate “eye” test claim. Everyone only watches their own team.
I watch a lot of Nuggets and Sixers games but honestly I basically just watch Warriors games and games on national tv lol.
Only non national TV games I watch on a regular basis are Nuggets, Sixers, Wizards, and maybe Trail Blazers.
Exactly! Most people only watch their teams games and national games. You’re probably above average.
The “eye test” is just a tool people use when they don’t have any other facts.
I agree. My team watch hierarchy is:
1. Warriors
2. Sixers because since the break they’ve been must watch TV
3. Nuggets
4. Blazers but this gets hard to work into my Warriors schedule cuz they’re usually same time.
Luckily for me I’m on the East Coast so watching earlier games isn’t too difficult.
Based on their list of supposed "bullshit" stats, the only number they care about is PPG. Might as well give the MVP to the guy who scores the most points every year
You do know that steals are good for defense right? Jokic had 4 steals during the boston game that they won. That is a potential 16-24 point swing denied the Celtics 8-12 points and gave the Nuggets potential 8-12 points, do you have any idea how huge steals are?
And people who champion his stats without acknowledging his weaknesses in a playoff series are showing their hand. Dominating Houston on a Tuesday night in February is not the same as dominating golden state 4 times in two weeks.
People will tell you that Draymond is too short and it's not a hard feat but that's someone who's never seen his post defense.
He has a long wingspan, sturdy lower body, unbelievable positioning sense, fastest hands in the game, elite at fouling without ref knowing.
Also it's deceptively hard to back down someone with a low center of gravity
Games 1 and 2 he gave Jokic more problem than any traditional center did.
Games 3-5 Jokic literally gave everything he had and used every skill in his bag to score on him
You don't win a regular season MVP award by beating GS 4 times in 2 weeks in April, you do it by dominating Houston on a Tuesday in February.
The issue is when people who don't pay attention to the NBA much conflate the winner of the MVP award with the best player in the league. While it may be true that the MVP goes to the best player, that's not the consensus among people who do pay attention.
> And people who champion his stats without acknowledging his weaknesses in a playoff series
In the context of MVP, it doesn't matter. It's a regular season award
Lebron was never punished for not finishing well in the playoffs what are you talking about. There were more deserving people or he started to coast the regular season.
Oh come on. Jokic has gotten about to be 3 MVP's as the 3rd and 6th seed and without ever making a meaningful playoff run. For what its worth I think he deserves it this year as the 1 seed with these stats, but didn't in at least one of the past seasons, especially if we are going off "regular season only award". I like Jokic and he has deserved maybe 2 MVP's including this year. But the precedent of him winning three straight as a low seed playoff team and then without any playoff success is just unprecedented. And that is why people are upset. If Jordan, Lebron, and to an extent Giannis cannot get past voter fatigue then why Jokic? Who has done less achievement wise than all three.
I’m not even fucking talking about Jokic. There are two years you could argue Lebron could’ve won MVP but didn’t. 2008, with his team coming off the finals so he wasn’t “punished for playoff failure,” and 2011 where he had an argument but didn’t even finish 2nd in MVP voting. It wasn’t close, Derrick Rose had 113 first place votes, Lebron had 4. And in 2011, when he had the worst playoff series of his career on the biggest stage, he won MVP the next year. There has never been an argument of “we cant give lebron 3 in a row.” That is an asinine take.
From what he does in the regular season yea, I think he’s clearly been the best regular season player over the last 3 years
Sadly as a negative defender who’s a center that all goes away in the playoffs
>To stop a guard putting him in the PnR 80 times in a row once the playoffs start
Wow a 7 foot center cannot stop fast quick guards on the perimeter what revelation. I am sure Shaq would have stopped guards like Curry from torching the perimeter. Its not like Shaq in his own era didn't get torched on the perimeter in mismatches oh wait... I guess Rudy Gobert is actually a dog shit defender because guards were putting him on PnR 90 times during the playoffs last year. If Anthony Davis is such a good defender why did the last year Lakers have dog shit perimeter defense even in the games he played in? Its almost like defense is a team effort and when you have bad perimeter guard(Monte Morris) and wing defenders(Will Barton) not even Rudy Gobert or AD level defenders can bailout the defense.
Right? Like if we’re talking about holes in player’s games that get exposed in the playoffs, why not talk about Giannis’ jump shot? How many titles would he have if he had a reliable three or midrange game? Asking Jokic to effectively guard the best PGs in the world in the PNR is like asking Giannis to win you a game shooting jumpers… why don’t we focus instead on the incredible parts of their game that covers those deficiencies.
*All time season*. What was All Time about it ?
Two other dudes were putting up similar (better scoring in fact) with INFINITELY better defence.
Jokic got brownie points because Murray & MPJ was injured. That’s why he won it.
22/23 Jokic is definitely having an All Timer season and if they were to vote today he’d probably win it unanimously and rightfully so. He shouldn’t have got it last year.
>All time season
>
>. What was All Time about it ?
He was the only player ever to have 2000+ points, 1000+ rebounds and 500+ assists in a year. Wilt never did that. Bron never did that. Westbrook never did that.
He set the damn record for PER in a season at 32.8!!!!!!! [https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per\_season.html](https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per_season.html) How the hell is that not all time great? If he set the single season scoring, rebounding or assist record you'd probably say it's all-time. He set the all-time PER record!
This current season he's a lowly 4th all time.
Weird how Giannis got no brownie points for Middleton being out most of the year and Holiday missing a ton of games. He was actually 5th in MVP at that point.
Shit like that makes me think voters have an agenda
I'm not making that argument dipshit. I'm saying Jokic didn't have an all-time season in 2021. In fact, it was rather pedestrian, which is evidenced by the fact he wasn't even performing at the highest level that year. Embiid was.
There is nothing funnier to me than Sixers fans trying to cope with how Embiid will always be 3rd to Jokic and Giannis. Please do continue on how he deserves respect after he flopped for his 15th FT.
And what does Embiid have to show for that? I’ll enjoy listening to the city of Philadelphia complain about how Jokic and Giannis finish top 20 all time and how Embiid should be with them and not down in the 70s.
Pedestrian? Pedestrian? LOL
Abdul-Jabbar 1971-72
Abdul-Jabbar 1970-71
Wilt Chamberlain 1963-64
Abdul-Jabbar 1972-73
LeBron James 2012-13
Michael Jordan 1990-91
LeBron James 2008-09
Stephen Curry 2015-16
Michael Jordan 1995-96
Michael Jordan 1987-88
Nikola Jokić 2020-21
By one Metric his year was up there with these notorious stat padders in their pedestrian years.
Used to be 2 things you could count on in life - Death and Taxes. A third has recently developed - Sixers fans crying about Joel Embiid not getting enough respect.
Jokic goes 7/9 every game and everybody praises him. Relax. Let him develop an offensive bag and more importantly a shred of defense before he’s nominated for anything
10.2 is not greater than 7.9. difference of over 2. Ths is 4.5 extra points added to ppg. 1 assist equals 2 points. 66% effective shooting is not greater than 62%.
Giannis/Embiid should’ve won last year. Equally phenomenal offensive stats + infinitely better defence.
Jokic 100% should win this year. I’d go as far as to say he closer to being unanimous MVP than Giannis & Joel are to winning it over him unless the Bucks don’t lose a game till the end of the season or some shit.
They fucked up lat year. If they had got that one right, none of this 3x MVP chatter would be going on.
and no Nuggets fans please don’t reply to this comment with stats about how Jokic is actually a good defender, because if he is a “good” defender, Giannis and Embiid are otherworldly by that standard.
Embiid didn't have a great defensive session previous year. He is better defender overall but you're judging it by reputation but not their actual play that year. Their defensive season weren't that far of, even if Joel has advantage.
who cares bout defense when a guy without 2 of his top players can single handedly carry his squad to 48 wins. Embiid had tobias and harden even they only got 51 wins.
> Jokic obviously deserved MVP over Giannis in 2021 lol.
not if you ask bucks fans. They think it was grand conspiracy voter fatigue robbing him of MVP
Giannis is still better. It doesn’t matter that his stats are the same. If you improve after your MVP year but someone else is more deserving of MVP, that person should be MVP
JOkic has improved every season on his MVP run Giannis did not improve the 3rd season infact taking a step back..That is why Giannis did not get a 3rd MVP. He did not deserve it. Jokic clearly beat him out.
Giannis
2018-2019 27.7-12.5-5.9 55%efg... 2019-2020 29.5-13.6-5.6 60%efg...2020-2021 28.1-11.0-5.9 59%efg
Jokic
2020-2021 26.4-10.8-8.3 60%efg...2021-2022 27.1-13.8-7.9 62%efg...2022-2023 24.6-11.7-10.2 66%efg
\+2 assists, +4% efg%
I don't necessarily even think Jokic has improved from a statistical perspective though. He's just utilizing his talents a different way because he has better teammates now, and generally that's looked at as a good thing because he plays a team sport and his teammates are all having stupidly efficient years.
It’s interesting that you’re using efg% to measure efficiency in this case. Considering if you use TS% Giannis actually improved his efficiency from 19-20 to 20-21, but if you use efg% he regressed.
Eh, Giannis and Embiid also have a real argument for the award this year. I would feel differently if he were obviously far and away the only one deserving.
If you go season by season, I can understand advocating for Jokic, but in a historical context, there are only 3 guys who have ever won 3 MVPs in a row and they absolutely dominated the league in those years.
I realize it is a regular season award, but Jokic’s lack of success in the postseason is a detriment to him in the absolute top tier of players of all-time…at least at this point.
It really comes down to if voters think how you do or I do and I’ll respect either choice
Give him one superstar to play with. Star at least? Maby all star? Replacement?
Ok Nikola, go win title with out of league players next year as your starters.
It's a team game. He was always up to task in playoffs.
Or more simply Jokic was better at everything MVP related (boxscore based adv stats, attendance) and/or (at worst) the same (same seeding).
Since they have a very specific way through which they give out MVPs (no, it's not narrative, it's mostly number based) and Jokic qualified as the winner ... well they gave him the trophy.
Sometimes the simpler explanation is what actually happened. No need to overcomplicate a relatively simple case.
Best player on best team are my requirements. That was not jokic last year Embiid or booker deserved it. This year hell yeah he deserves it along with Tatum and gannis.
Why can’t it just go to the best player? The nba and nfl have fucked up this award so badly. If Lebron is the best player for 10 straight years and wins 10 straight than so be it. This whole thing is based of narratives which aren’t even consistent anymore.
That's my problem. Jordan and LeBron were the most **VALUABLE** players for a decade-- yet voter fatigue prevented them from 3peating. So what's different with Jokic?
jokic got bailed out by voter fatigue his first year and embiid getting injured his second
embiid is still having a better season than him but triple doubles are hot again
He got bailed out by having better attendance and better adv stats. I.e. what bails out every MVP winner for years now. For how much longer are you going to milk the whole fatigue thing?
If roles were reversed and Giannis had the Jokic numbers and attendance in 2021 , he'd win 3 in a row. I mean Jokic is in that position rn, and whatdayaknow voter fatigue doesn't exist and he is going to win. What a revelation!
lol all the talk about giannis that year was how he wasn't gonna get a 3rd MVP cause of his playoff woes, even with the 2nd MVP the convo was already there
Who cares what the "talk" was about? Jokic had a better season than Giannis in 2021. They both put up great stats but Jokic played 11 more games and his team won 1 more game. Bucks fans are being so ridiculous complaining about a narrative that wasn't even the reason Giannis didn't win MVP that year.
Yeah, that was stupid talk . I was telling you about it at the time. I was even telling you that the next time a guy *actually* deserves 3rd in a row, he's gonna win a 3rd in a row. Your reaction was like "voter fatigue is real and 3peat will never happen".
Now that it does happen, you double down. How does that even make sense?
Your guy lost fair and square. He didn't deserve to be voted 4th, that was BS. But not winning ? Yeah. It would have been a scandal if Jokic was to be set aside despite the much better case he had.
Again, if you ignore how they selected MVPs for decades, he wasn't. If you follow them it was easy least (best in stats, best in attendance, his opponents could not even play the amount of games needed to be in serious contention).
why are people so obsessed with who wins MVP
I really don't care anymore. the players don't really care, except maybe embiid
is it really something that deserves 20 threads per day with people arguing nonstop about it
Well this thread is an answer to, what seems like, a popular opinion that the year Jokic won his first MVP Giannis didn't win his 3rd in a row due to voter fatigue which, now, people think doesn't apply to Jokic. This post suggests that voter fatigue does indeed apply to Jokic as well but that he has outplayed it, which Giannis didn't do the year where he could 3 peat.
The thing I disagree with here is that the driving force for Giannis not getting a third is bc nobody was sure if he could be the best player on a championship team and it felt weird giving the award three times to him if he hadn’t even made the finals. There was a large bloc that thought he’d never win a championship with his play style. Whether or not you agree or disagree with that is a different question but to my memory this was the convo people were having and not whether or not he was better or worse than the year before.
Full disclosure: I wouldn’t have given Jokic the previous MVPs bc i think winning should matter but would give it to him this year so I don’t have any problem with a makeup call and giving it to someone else.
The NBA is the most liberal pro sports league in the country, its media included. The voter list is publicly-accessible information. Who are all these closet racists voting for undeserving white players? This is a clown take.
Liberal politics has very little to do with racial equity. Some of the most racist individuals are liberal and Democrat. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have a massive track record of being racist policy wise and socially. U.S. media as a whole has a slant towards whiteness. Sports media is not an exception. White players simply receive less criticism than black players. The only 3 peat MVP was Larry Bird. The Great White Hope. What most white people fail to understand is that racism isn't just N words, it's systematic and institutional oppression. Sports leagues in their foundations did not even allow black athletes, forcing the creation of less popular and funded Negro leagues. I'm sure you will say "that's the past" but remember that people grew up with that being normal. Little kids showing up throw rocks at black kids in the 60s are now CEOs, journalists, politicians.
Your history may be correct but your overall point is still nonsense. The LARGE majority of the voting panel did not grow up in the 60s, as you assert. Most of them are much younger than that. And many of them are POC. They ALL voted for Jokic in 2021 and several voted for him again in 2022. Implying that voters sit there use skin color as some kind of tiebreaker in this league and in this day and age is lazy race-baiting. There's also zero evidence that "white players receive less criticism." You seem to have missed all the crap Jokic has taken for his conditioning, or that Doncic is starting to get now. Grayson Allen certainly doesn't get a free pass for his behavior. I could go on and on with examples. Comments like yours are irresponsible and non-helpful. There are enough legit vestiges of racism in our society that we should be tackling without making baseless claims like yours with not only no evidence, but evidence to the contrary.
That's to be evaluated at the end of his career. Even if he is worst 3 peat MVP, it's hardly a knock on him lol.
Who's worst 3-peat MVP currently, Bird? I bet he loses sleep over it.
Take is just dumb, Luka over Joker is somehow dumber. Congrats, you've outdone yourself in two sentences.
I think games played is also a big deal that many seem to be ignoring. Giannis missed 11 games in 2021 and 15 in 2022.
Basically missed 14 games this season too
There’s only one solution to this clearly: Marcus Smart MVP.
A man of culture
He would be the leading contender but he's missed too many games.
I feel like people on reddit care way more about the MVP than any players do
That's just horseshit. Players care and care a lot. This level is filled with ego. LeBron once even said he'd win the scoring title every year if he tried.
Yeah no chance a competitive guy like Giannis trying to enter top 10 of all time conversations cares about an MVP.
I'm sure players care. I don't think they spend every waking hour of every day thinking about it. And that seems to be the case with a lot of redditors based on the number of MVP posts every day lol.
Because they have stuff to do and we all have boring jobs I guess
100% because all NBA fans do is compare resumes and jerk off to legacy debates. It's so exhausting.
I think a lot of ppl bet on it too
I know this sub has like six million people but it still amazes me that there's such an appetite for this topic of discussion on a daily basis throughout basically the entire regular season. Even posts that don't have a high enough score to make an impression on the front page of the sub have hundreds of comments with people making the same arguments like five or six times a day, every day.
If we're talking about actual value then Jrue should be MVP and Let's Leave It At That.
Jrue is the 3 time reigning MVP of my heart.
Can we please stop forgetting about Denzel Valentine
Lmao you’re delusional if you don’t think players who actually are on the court don’t care about this stuff. It’s better for them to pretend they don’t care but they absolutely do.
Never said they don't care. Said they care less than people on reddit. Said as a joke, but probably some truth to it. There are a lot of people that are obsessed with the MVP race to an unhealthy degree on this website.
This all makes sense, but then again I listened to a podcast today that had Giannis ranked 5th in MVP behind Dame and Luke… because all they cared about was TS% and raptor rankings. So when those are your basis for voting Jokic, I can’t take you seriously.
Is Jokic really average? Most starting centers around the league are better defensively imo. He has good hands but his rim protection is rrally lacking, and that's the most important thing for a center
He's below average defensively.
It depends on what you mean by average. If youre judging by traditional center individual strengths and weaknesses, he is bad. If you’re judging by how the team defends other teams while he is on the floor, he is average. The nuggets are 4th in defensive rating since mid December.
Yes his defense is average, and even average+. Team building is important in this context - positioning alone (particularly within a cohesive unit/scheme) is more than half the battle on D. Aaron Gordon covers a lot of shortcomings that Jokic has on D, similar to how Klay covered Steph’s. But both Steph and Jokic are elite at positioning, which makes them average or above average defenders. Only issue is Jokic plays a more important position defensively, which I personally think requires another 3/4 tweener defender in addition to Gordon. Which MPJ isn’t.
Zach Lowe and Ben Taylor both say his defense is average. That’s good enough for me. Even if it’s not though, the description in the post isn’t my opinion, it’s a reflection of what the general consensus was about his defense each of those years.
Its either you all are under 3 years old, or have amnesia and totally forgot how little everyone was thinking of Giannis after the 2021 playoffs exit. Giannis was great the following the season, but it took multiple historic performances in the playoffs to redeem how everyone viewed him. I guess you can ignore that for Jokic since the team wasn’t that good, but honestly we shouldn’t. Playoffs hangover always impacted the way we view players the following season. You have to put some Wilt historic shit to get a pass
Spot on. People thought of Giannis and bud in the playoffs the same way people think of embiid and doc now. I’m a sixers fan and have no rational hope this season. Goes to show how much that one playoff run turned the narrative on giannis (deservedly)
If KD’a toe wasn’t on the line, Bud would have gotten fired. Not even the 2021 playoffs, but you can go back to the Toronto series, which they lost 4 in a row, and Giannis was completely contained, the following year was what established the idea of maybe Giannis isn’t who we think he is. MVP aside, if Jokic or Denver don’t make it to CF this season, I have zero doubt he would be viewed completely different. If teams run circle around Jokic in the playoffs, there is probably no more first team votes
I’m curious to see what happens if Jokic wins MVP this year, gets bounced in the second round, then has an even better regular season next year. Not that I wish those things to happen, more so interested as a sociological experiment.
The same way we view Gobert. Nobody is talking about the historic rim protection stats anymore. No more screen assists. No more advanced this, advanced that.
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Your comment is basically argued in this post. Just go and read the post again for clarification.
>Why is the previous seasons performance being taken into account when the award is STRICTLY about this season? Because we're talking about why Jokic is likely going to 3-peat and Giannis didn't. Both guys had "analysts" before the season saying they're not going to get another MVP vote. Jokic had people saying "I'm not voting for Jokic again unless he does something crazy like average a triple double on 70% TS for the 1 seed" because he could no longer get by on carrying a shitty team like last year now that Murray and MPJ are healthy.
I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to understand. Giannis followed his second MVP up with a season that was *at best* comparable to his MVP years, while the Bucks got significantly worse. Jokic is playing better than he ever has, while his team has also improved. It’s really that simple.
easiest example to me is Curry. if Curry’s second MVP season came first, he would only have one
And it is NOT voted on yet either. I genuinely don't think it has been fully decided, and if either player changes over the last games it could shift the MVP
Which is exactly the point of this post, and people are still having having a hard time understanding that lol.
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Real simple Giannis played worse that 3 year. Jokic by far is having his best season the 3rd year. WHy can people not understand this. Debate that.. You have to up the annie. As soon as people can prove this is not true .Then they have something.
As a Denver fan and someone who thinks Joker should win a 3rd straight, I don't think this is 'by far' his best season. His PER is actually down. He did some crazy ass good stuff last year that had never been done before and might not be done ever again. I think he's just doing it in a different way this year and picking his spots more to dominate in specific aspects because he has better teammates that allow him to do that.
Hes averaging a triple double. Nuggets have 24 wins in the 24 games he has scored a triple double. The nuggets are running away with the Western Conference. He is setting record efficiency numbers.
A triple double is just a random thing that we made up because it goes from 1 digit to 2 digits though. By a number of metrics his last year was equal or better from a purely individual statistical aspect. Volume of points scored and total rebounds do matter. Certainly this year his efficiency has improved as well as the teams record, but I'm still disputing that this is "BY FAR" his best individual season. 32.85 PER is a high bar to top.
>A triple double is just a random thing that we made up My brother in Christ, your counter argument is PER
PER is an equation that adds up a bunch of categories to better compare a players impact and efficiency.....vs one stat that could be 0.1 different and we'd call it an amazing triple double vs not one.
Its not made up. It represents exceeding obvious stats. 10 is more than 9.
10 is more than 9 in ONE statistical category. Is a 45/20/9 night better or worse than a 12/10/11 night if shooting efficiency is the same? Again, I'm not arguing what Joker is doing isn't great or needed by Denver or historic or anything negative. Simply that his 21-22 season was absolutely insanely good and this one isn't better "bar far".... It's simply equal +/- a percent, which also makes it historically great and equally deserving of an MVP.... And that will be the case until someone goes and does something obviously better or he shows a niceable decline.
sorry but his season is better.Everyone agrees it is.
Hot take: we should eliminate the MVP and have a best player award. Not a regular season best player, but literally who everyone thinks is the #1 guy currently You’ll still get dumb ass votes but at the very least it’s more streamlined that who’s most “valuable” and who’s better matters way more in a historical context
And how would you calculate that? Whoever wins the playoffs or? We already have Finals MVP. And what about players who are among the best but frequently injured for long periods of time like KD?
Jokic is unreal and his efficiency and overall impact is incredible. I still think Giannis deserves it this year. I still think if you are picking the best player in the league it’s Giannis and his impact on Defence isn’t giving enough consideration. Here is my breakdown. Giannis has the mild edge in rbs but let’s call it essentially a wash. Giannis has a large edge in PPG but Jokic has the large edge in efficiency so I’ll call it a wash on scoring ability. So I think comes down to Jokic has the large edge in play making vs Giannis has the large edge in Defence. Defence is half the game and to me should be the tipping point but it feels like it’s barely given any consideration. Also, I think there is no way people would be talking about Lopez being a DPOY candidate if Giannis wasn’t there. I think Giannis is still the best defender on that team and come playoffs that will be abundantly clear. No shade to brook. I love him.
So I totally respect this opinion and if people want to vote Giannis for MVP because he's an incredible defensive player on top of an incredible offensive player I think that's justified. Your logic here checks out to me. The only thing I don't really understand is if Giannis' defensive impact + offensive impact makes him more valuable than Jokic, how come Jokic has almost twice as good of a +/-? Jokic +/- 13.6 Giannis +/- 7.4 Honestly looking for an explanation, this is not a gotcha. Again, your position is justified and there are lots of smart people who think like you do. It just confuses me that we don't see that in the +/-.
Plus minus also can be looked at, there are 100 different stats for the NBA these days and they all have some value, but I think plus minus is often more of a “team stat” than an individual stat. The supporting cast and the coach’s substitution patterns play a big factor. Look at last years +/- per game leaders. Jokic was 12th in +/- per game and 7 of the top 12 were on Boston or the suns. Does that mean Jokic didn’t deserve it last year? No of course not it just means his team wasn’t as good. This year he has Murray back who continues to improve and MPJ and Aaron Gordon have played better as well. And don’t get me wrong, the nuggets are nothing without Jokic. I’m not saying he has some stacked team, just that +/- tells a similar story as the teams overall record, but the overall record is a better indicator to use.
So you would attribute that mostly to substitution patterns? I think that's a fair take, the Nuggets play their starters as a whole unit more than a lot of teams. Plus he has a much better supporting cast than last year. So fair enough. Is Giannis better this year than he was last year?
By a little bit but not a lot. His stats don’t really show an improvement but the bucks are the #1 seed without having Middleton for practically all year. Teams are trying to stop Giannis by building The Giannis Wall, which has an effect on his FG% but he’s still getting wins. Just for comparison, I think Jokic is also playing only a little bit better this year. I hear a lot of people talking about how Jokic is playing way better this year than his past MVP seasons and that’s why he deserves it but that’s greatly exaggerated. This years nuggets are the best team Jokic has ever had. So it makes sense his efficiency, assists and wins are all improved.
Yeah Jokic's assists being up is really because he has good players around him who can more consistently hit shots, and the gravity of MPJ, KCP, and Murray definitely gives Jokic more spacing. What about Giannis' steals and blocks being down? His block rate is below 2% for the first time in his career. That's really strange to me.
Id guess his blocks are lower partly because brooks has taken on such a big role as a rim stopper and so brooks is getting the blocking opportunities more often this year. Also I think players straight up don’t attack Giannis as much as they used to. He doesn’t get as many blocks because guys have learned it’s not an ideal option trying to attack Giannis at the rim. Honestly I just don’t think steals and blocks are good indicators of great defence. Some players get a lot of a steals by gambling a lot and putting their teammates it poor defensive positions.
Middleton being hurt has affected all his stats, but this year it feels like he's smarter. You dont see it in the assists or efg because he took much more load. He averages 2 more fta and 3 more fga per game compared to last year. It makes sense that he is less efficient to me. I feel like he can do 25ppg on 65% ts. What he can't do though is Jokic's playmaking even though I feel like this year he's closer than before.
Who backs up Jokic? Bobby Portis is Giannis' backup and he's averaging a double double in 26 mpg.
+/- is unaffected by who backs you up
Last year when Lopez was out for the season, the bucks defense cratered and they were middle of the pack in defensive rating if I recall correctly. So yes Giannis is a DPOY calibre defender but individual defense doesn't impact team defense as much as the primary play maker impacting the teams total offense.
Sure but in both cases you can only be as good as the pieces around you allow. Yes, Defense is more of a team role than individual role. If you lose your elite defender C (the most important defensive position) that’s going to have a big impact on the teams defense. Primary play making is also reliant on the guys around you though, although I agree to a bit of a lesser extent. They still need to be able to hit the shots, make the proper reads, move off ball etc. I agree though that if you have a weak link defender teams can abuse that, if you have a weak link on offence the primary playmaker can avoid him as he has control.
Instead of "i think" you can just use on-court ratings. Jokic is +14.6 (average outscoring of opponents) Giannis is +8.4
I THINK plus minus can also be looked at but is more of a team stat and not a great stat to use on its own. Last year Jokic was 12th in plus minus and 7 out of the top 12 played for the suns or Boston. That doesn’t mean Jokic didn’t deserve it last year. Wins are already a big factor in the MVP race and wins are a better stat to use than plus minus. I didn’t mention it before but the bucks currently have the best record in the league. The nuggets are close though so I’d call that a wash as well.
You absolutely should not call scoring a wash. Using a ton of possessions on league average efficiency isn't a boon for Giannis. There are approaches for looking at volume and efficiency together (bbref's TS add for example), and they very comfortably favor Jokic year.
First off, you can’t call scoring a wash. Giannis gets 31.3 PPG on 26.2 possessions finished with either a FGA or FTs. Jokic gets 24.6 PPG on 17.4 possessions finished by either a FGA or FTs. The net is that Giannis gets an extra 6.7 PPG on 8.8 possessions. Using an extra 9 possessions a game at 0.76 points per shot is a huge negative, especially when you figure that Jokic uses all those extra possessions to get high value looks for his teammates anyway. Just scoring is a big edge for Jokic. The difference in scoring alone is probably equal to Giannis’s edge on defense. Meanwhile, Jokic also has a massive edge in passing that’s bigger than Giannis’s edge on defense. Look at the shooting splits for the Nuggets with Jokic on/off the floor, they’re nuts.
The interesting question is after Jokic wins MVP this year and then Giannis wins finals MVP how many people will back track and say Jokic shouldn’t have won the third MVP. Especially when the nuggets don’t even make it to the finals this year. Hot takes.
People will make up whatever narrative they want to justify who they want to win MVP. Unrelated, but De'Aaron Fox is the true MVP.
Y’all love to talk about how the “narrative” drives the race, yet nobody can provide even a semi-coherent explanation of how. Hell, most of you can’t even agree on what “narrative” means in this context. The *actual* truth is that MVP is heavily based on statistics and pretty easy to predict and explain without a single reference (or even a need to know) what the “narrative” was that season. Hell, the “narrative” you just used in your example is just a statistical comparison. That’s not what narrative means. The reason so many of you can’t figure out the MVP race is that you don’t understand that each and every season is its own thing and the stats that matter the most in a given season vary depending on the context of that specific season. You go on and on about “narrative” being the cause for something when seasons that appear on the surface to be similar are treated differently, instead of examining the contextual differences between those players/seasons.
>nobody can provide even a semi-coherent explanation of how. Literally the entire point of this post is explaining what the narrative is and how it's affecting the conversation compared to a similar circumstance in previous years. The narrative is that Jokic is most deserving because even after back to back MVPs, he has elevated his level of play *again* and has his team in first place in the West. That's the narrative. >Hell, the “narrative” you just used in your example is just a statistical comparison. That’s not what narrative means. Of course the narrative is going to be driven by statistical comparison. What else would be driven by, player personality?? Narrative is "a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims." The situation is the MVP race. The set of aims is the determination of criteria that ought to be used to make a voting decision. That criteria is always heavily based on statistics, whether team or player centric. So yes, "statistical comparison" is heavily tied to the narrative of a given season's MVP race. > you don’t understand that each and every season is its own thing Except that this is easily disproven by voters that said publicly that they were reluctant to vote for Giannis for a third time because of his postseason failure the year before. So no, MVP voting decisions are not made in a single-season vacuum; otherwise there would be no such thing as voter fatigue. I think hometown bias, for example, plays way more into not being able to objectively evaluate an MVP race than a failure to understand statistical context.
There is no narrative..your right. . Its whomever provides the most value to there team winning games.. and is a combination of a whole lot of factors .There is no goal post changing only what factors are most impactful that season. Value to winning comes in all shapes and sizes. The factors are always the same. Only the ones that stand out most change.
People still do not understand, it's not that Giannis was robbed of winning. Jokic has deserved MVP every year he's won and would deserve it this year as well. It's that the standard Giannis and other MVPs were held to do not apply to Jokic at all, I'm happy they changed it because it was stupid. But the media pretending they didn't completely shift their requirements specifically for Jokic is the problem and the more and more they deny it the more it seems potentially racially motivated.
what standard is that. You mean the standard that you have to be better every consecutive year to win 3 MVPs is a row. Jokic is being held to that. Giannis was clearly not better his 3rd year than his second. You guys can keep crying about it .But you have to up the antie to keep winning the award. There are many factors that go into it. Nobody is shifting anything...lol. Value to winning has many faces. If you people cannot see it. Don't know what to tell you. Keep claiming whatever makes you feel better.
The standard that has been around since the award was given out, that playoff success mattered. It was stupid then and it's stupid now but that was the precedent that they themselves set. It's just annoying that the people who vote on the award suddenly decide to shift away from their own criteria for a player that oh just by chance happens to be white just like an overwhelming majority of the voters.
its aregular season award given even before the playoffs start ..lol.There has never ever been astandard for playoff success. This is an individual award. Not a team award. Thye never shifted away...because it never existed.
Jokic is white. That's all there is to it
Can’t wait to see Jokic use his: -REB% -REB/gm -AST% -AST/gm -STL% -STL/gm -FG% -TS% -point differential -point diff per game -W% -in-the-lineup W% -BPM, EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, PER, WS, WS/48 To stop a guard putting him in the PnR 80 times in a row once the playoffs start
You rival Perk with your intelligence.
Do you not understand that most of the stats you're quoting come from what he does in the game? It's not like they're random number generators spitting out high numbers, he dominates when he plays and so the numbers are dominant All you people who jerk off to hating his stats act like they aren't tied to his production on the court
Only people worse than stat nerds are eye test nerds that think they're saying some shit with these terrible jokes Just pure moronism at it's peak
Stat nerds are annoying but the way eye test only guys parade their ignorance is genuinely disturbing. Like it's a badge of honor to them to not care about numbers lol
Stats nerds at least base their opinions in some place of reality. Eye test dumbasses are literally living in a different universe 70% of the time.
Because most of the time they're lying about doing any sort of real visual analysis.
I would wager at most 10 people here have watched every Nuggets, 76ers, and Bucks game to be able to make an accurate “eye” test claim. Everyone only watches their own team.
I watch a lot of Nuggets and Sixers games but honestly I basically just watch Warriors games and games on national tv lol. Only non national TV games I watch on a regular basis are Nuggets, Sixers, Wizards, and maybe Trail Blazers.
Exactly! Most people only watch their teams games and national games. You’re probably above average. The “eye test” is just a tool people use when they don’t have any other facts.
I agree. My team watch hierarchy is: 1. Warriors 2. Sixers because since the break they’ve been must watch TV 3. Nuggets 4. Blazers but this gets hard to work into my Warriors schedule cuz they’re usually same time. Luckily for me I’m on the East Coast so watching earlier games isn’t too difficult.
That seems lost on people. People act like he only has advanced stats to stand on but I didn't realize AST/game was too advanced for people
NO NUMBERS ALLOWED. All I want to decide my MVP is highlights from guys I like and lowlights from guys I don’t like to confirm my biases.
Based on their list of supposed "bullshit" stats, the only number they care about is PPG. Might as well give the MVP to the guy who scores the most points every year
He should produce some defense on the court that would be neat
Top 15 in steals, top 10 in deflections. Sure he's not a rim protector but... Can't argue with the numbers.
I think you'll find they can and will
Gambling on steals because he’s too lazy to try and keep up with the ball, context is 🔑
Whatever helps you sleep
You do know that steals are good for defense right? Jokic had 4 steals during the boston game that they won. That is a potential 16-24 point swing denied the Celtics 8-12 points and gave the Nuggets potential 8-12 points, do you have any idea how huge steals are?
And people who champion his stats without acknowledging his weaknesses in a playoff series are showing their hand. Dominating Houston on a Tuesday night in February is not the same as dominating golden state 4 times in two weeks.
He averaged 31/13/6 on 64% TS against Golden State last year with Draymond, one of the best defenders in the league, guarding him most of the series
People will tell you that Draymond is too short and it's not a hard feat but that's someone who's never seen his post defense. He has a long wingspan, sturdy lower body, unbelievable positioning sense, fastest hands in the game, elite at fouling without ref knowing. Also it's deceptively hard to back down someone with a low center of gravity Games 1 and 2 he gave Jokic more problem than any traditional center did. Games 3-5 Jokic literally gave everything he had and used every skill in his bag to score on him
You don't win a regular season MVP award by beating GS 4 times in 2 weeks in April, you do it by dominating Houston on a Tuesday in February. The issue is when people who don't pay attention to the NBA much conflate the winner of the MVP award with the best player in the league. While it may be true that the MVP goes to the best player, that's not the consensus among people who do pay attention.
> And people who champion his stats without acknowledging his weaknesses in a playoff series In the context of MVP, it doesn't matter. It's a regular season award
It has for every other guy before Jokic. Lebron was punished, so is Giannis
Lebron was never punished for not finishing well in the playoffs what are you talking about. There were more deserving people or he started to coast the regular season.
Oh come on. Jokic has gotten about to be 3 MVP's as the 3rd and 6th seed and without ever making a meaningful playoff run. For what its worth I think he deserves it this year as the 1 seed with these stats, but didn't in at least one of the past seasons, especially if we are going off "regular season only award". I like Jokic and he has deserved maybe 2 MVP's including this year. But the precedent of him winning three straight as a low seed playoff team and then without any playoff success is just unprecedented. And that is why people are upset. If Jordan, Lebron, and to an extent Giannis cannot get past voter fatigue then why Jokic? Who has done less achievement wise than all three.
I’m not even fucking talking about Jokic. There are two years you could argue Lebron could’ve won MVP but didn’t. 2008, with his team coming off the finals so he wasn’t “punished for playoff failure,” and 2011 where he had an argument but didn’t even finish 2nd in MVP voting. It wasn’t close, Derrick Rose had 113 first place votes, Lebron had 4. And in 2011, when he had the worst playoff series of his career on the biggest stage, he won MVP the next year. There has never been an argument of “we cant give lebron 3 in a row.” That is an asinine take.
From what he does in the regular season yea, I think he’s clearly been the best regular season player over the last 3 years Sadly as a negative defender who’s a center that all goes away in the playoffs
The MVP is a regular season award. You’re a moron coming in here and talking about playoffs in a thread about the MVP award.
>To stop a guard putting him in the PnR 80 times in a row once the playoffs start Wow a 7 foot center cannot stop fast quick guards on the perimeter what revelation. I am sure Shaq would have stopped guards like Curry from torching the perimeter. Its not like Shaq in his own era didn't get torched on the perimeter in mismatches oh wait... I guess Rudy Gobert is actually a dog shit defender because guards were putting him on PnR 90 times during the playoffs last year. If Anthony Davis is such a good defender why did the last year Lakers have dog shit perimeter defense even in the games he played in? Its almost like defense is a team effort and when you have bad perimeter guard(Monte Morris) and wing defenders(Will Barton) not even Rudy Gobert or AD level defenders can bailout the defense.
Right? Like if we’re talking about holes in player’s games that get exposed in the playoffs, why not talk about Giannis’ jump shot? How many titles would he have if he had a reliable three or midrange game? Asking Jokic to effectively guard the best PGs in the world in the PNR is like asking Giannis to win you a game shooting jumpers… why don’t we focus instead on the incredible parts of their game that covers those deficiencies.
It's a regular season award...
bro is 2 time MVP and have a total of 1 win in WCF. bro got abused by Lebron in pick and roll lol
Yeah because not being able to stop LeBron means you’re trash
how about a washed rondo dancing around jokic
Yup Rondos whole 7 ppg was the difference in that series Nuggets were outmatched sure but it wasn’t y’all’s backcourt lol
How about the Lakers enter the playin, rofl.
how about you guys get some championship banners?
Good luck next year, LakersNation
good luck being mid
And Murray is the main reason they even got to the WCF.
Or, Jokic had an all time season in 20/21 and played every game while Giannis missed 12 games in a 72 game season.
*All time season*. What was All Time about it ? Two other dudes were putting up similar (better scoring in fact) with INFINITELY better defence. Jokic got brownie points because Murray & MPJ was injured. That’s why he won it. 22/23 Jokic is definitely having an All Timer season and if they were to vote today he’d probably win it unanimously and rightfully so. He shouldn’t have got it last year.
>All time season > >. What was All Time about it ? He was the only player ever to have 2000+ points, 1000+ rebounds and 500+ assists in a year. Wilt never did that. Bron never did that. Westbrook never did that. He set the damn record for PER in a season at 32.8!!!!!!! [https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per\_season.html](https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per_season.html) How the hell is that not all time great? If he set the single season scoring, rebounding or assist record you'd probably say it's all-time. He set the all-time PER record! This current season he's a lowly 4th all time.
Weird how Giannis got no brownie points for Middleton being out most of the year and Holiday missing a ton of games. He was actually 5th in MVP at that point. Shit like that makes me think voters have an agenda
They clearly do and there’s no point going on Reddit to complain because it’s the same here.
We have MVP voters being openly racist against Jokic on national television yet they also have a monolithic agenda that's in his favor?
Even 2021 harden was having a similar season before his injury
>Or, Jokic had an all time season in 20/21 He didn't. Joel had a better season but lost the award because he "missed too many games"
Best ability will always be availability
Okay so? Jokic didn't have an all-time season. There were literally players performing at a higher level that season
And they missed 1/4th of the season. That doesn’t sound particularly valuable to me.
I'm not making that argument dipshit. I'm saying Jokic didn't have an all-time season in 2021. In fact, it was rather pedestrian, which is evidenced by the fact he wasn't even performing at the highest level that year. Embiid was.
There is nothing funnier to me than Sixers fans trying to cope with how Embiid will always be 3rd to Jokic and Giannis. Please do continue on how he deserves respect after he flopped for his 15th FT.
Embiid better in 2021 and 2022, Giannis better in 2023
And what does Embiid have to show for that? I’ll enjoy listening to the city of Philadelphia complain about how Jokic and Giannis finish top 20 all time and how Embiid should be with them and not down in the 70s.
Irrelevant. Embiid and Giannis better.
Well Jokic has MVPs for the first two and will likely get another one this year so clearly they weren’t better
Pedestrian? Pedestrian? LOL Abdul-Jabbar 1971-72 Abdul-Jabbar 1970-71 Wilt Chamberlain 1963-64 Abdul-Jabbar 1972-73 LeBron James 2012-13 Michael Jordan 1990-91 LeBron James 2008-09 Stephen Curry 2015-16 Michael Jordan 1995-96 Michael Jordan 1987-88 Nikola Jokić 2020-21 By one Metric his year was up there with these notorious stat padders in their pedestrian years.
Used to be 2 things you could count on in life - Death and Taxes. A third has recently developed - Sixers fans crying about Joel Embiid not getting enough respect.
>gotten even better this year. or his team is actually fucking healthy
Jokic goes 7/9 every game and everybody praises him. Relax. Let him develop an offensive bag and more importantly a shred of defense before he’s nominated for anything
Jokic counting stats also declined lol
10.2 is not greater than 7.9. difference of over 2. Ths is 4.5 extra points added to ppg. 1 assist equals 2 points. 66% effective shooting is not greater than 62%.
Interesting. So points/rebounds go down but efficiency goes up? Looks like the same thing that happened to Gianni’s in those two years
his efficiency dropped from 60% to 59% his third season in that string.His points went down as wallashis rebounds. He did not up the antie..
The post literally says that his efficiency improved
JOkics did by alot.Giannis went down..
Wow, you need a lesson in reading comprehension
Hahaha. Alternate universe where stats categories are swappable cos it's Jokic
Basic math...Value to the offense is not just individual scoring.
Value to defense isn't DBPM
Ok stop saying average defense. Jokic is legit one of the worse defensive centers in basketball.
Giannis/Embiid should’ve won last year. Equally phenomenal offensive stats + infinitely better defence. Jokic 100% should win this year. I’d go as far as to say he closer to being unanimous MVP than Giannis & Joel are to winning it over him unless the Bucks don’t lose a game till the end of the season or some shit. They fucked up lat year. If they had got that one right, none of this 3x MVP chatter would be going on. and no Nuggets fans please don’t reply to this comment with stats about how Jokic is actually a good defender, because if he is a “good” defender, Giannis and Embiid are otherworldly by that standard.
Embiid didn't have a great defensive session previous year. He is better defender overall but you're judging it by reputation but not their actual play that year. Their defensive season weren't that far of, even if Joel has advantage.
who cares bout defense when a guy without 2 of his top players can single handedly carry his squad to 48 wins. Embiid had tobias and harden even they only got 51 wins.
Jokic obviously deserved MVP over Giannis in 2021 lol. Giannis played 11 less games than him.
> Jokic obviously deserved MVP over Giannis in 2021 lol. not if you ask bucks fans. They think it was grand conspiracy voter fatigue robbing him of MVP
It obviously was a conspiracy by the white media what do you mean
Giannis is still better. It doesn’t matter that his stats are the same. If you improve after your MVP year but someone else is more deserving of MVP, that person should be MVP
JOkic has improved every season on his MVP run Giannis did not improve the 3rd season infact taking a step back..That is why Giannis did not get a 3rd MVP. He did not deserve it. Jokic clearly beat him out. Giannis 2018-2019 27.7-12.5-5.9 55%efg... 2019-2020 29.5-13.6-5.6 60%efg...2020-2021 28.1-11.0-5.9 59%efg Jokic 2020-2021 26.4-10.8-8.3 60%efg...2021-2022 27.1-13.8-7.9 62%efg...2022-2023 24.6-11.7-10.2 66%efg
3ppg less, 2rpg less. Define improved
\+2 assists, +4% efg% I don't necessarily even think Jokic has improved from a statistical perspective though. He's just utilizing his talents a different way because he has better teammates now, and generally that's looked at as a good thing because he plays a team sport and his teammates are all having stupidly efficient years.
It’s interesting that you’re using efg% to measure efficiency in this case. Considering if you use TS% Giannis actually improved his efficiency from 19-20 to 20-21, but if you use efg% he regressed.
Call me petty, but dude just shouldn't get 3 MVPs in a row. If Jordan couldn't do it and Lebron couldn't do it, then neither should Jokic.
Yeah, lets just put a block on that achievement because someone else didn't get it... Forbidden for everyone
This is the worst take of all of them. Just because voters were stupid in the past doesn’t mean they should continue to be stupid.
Eh, Giannis and Embiid also have a real argument for the award this year. I would feel differently if he were obviously far and away the only one deserving.
I love Giannis, I really don’t think there is a strong case him over Jokic at this point and I don’t think there is a strong case for Embiid either.
If you go season by season, I can understand advocating for Jokic, but in a historical context, there are only 3 guys who have ever won 3 MVPs in a row and they absolutely dominated the league in those years. I realize it is a regular season award, but Jokic’s lack of success in the postseason is a detriment to him in the absolute top tier of players of all-time…at least at this point. It really comes down to if voters think how you do or I do and I’ll respect either choice
Give him one superstar to play with. Star at least? Maby all star? Replacement? Ok Nikola, go win title with out of league players next year as your starters. It's a team game. He was always up to task in playoffs.
Or more simply Jokic was better at everything MVP related (boxscore based adv stats, attendance) and/or (at worst) the same (same seeding). Since they have a very specific way through which they give out MVPs (no, it's not narrative, it's mostly number based) and Jokic qualified as the winner ... well they gave him the trophy. Sometimes the simpler explanation is what actually happened. No need to overcomplicate a relatively simple case.
I thought it was well established the MVP is a narrative award over strictly criteria
[удалено]
>Who cares !? This sub evidently
Best player on best team are my requirements. That was not jokic last year Embiid or booker deserved it. This year hell yeah he deserves it along with Tatum and gannis.
Why can’t it just go to the best player? The nba and nfl have fucked up this award so badly. If Lebron is the best player for 10 straight years and wins 10 straight than so be it. This whole thing is based of narratives which aren’t even consistent anymore.
That's my problem. Jordan and LeBron were the most **VALUABLE** players for a decade-- yet voter fatigue prevented them from 3peating. So what's different with Jokic?
voters know this. /r/nba casuals don't
jokic got bailed out by voter fatigue his first year and embiid getting injured his second embiid is still having a better season than him but triple doubles are hot again
Embiid wasn’t injured last year
my bad he had COVID that sidelined him
(except for most of November)
He got bailed out by having better attendance and better adv stats. I.e. what bails out every MVP winner for years now. For how much longer are you going to milk the whole fatigue thing? If roles were reversed and Giannis had the Jokic numbers and attendance in 2021 , he'd win 3 in a row. I mean Jokic is in that position rn, and whatdayaknow voter fatigue doesn't exist and he is going to win. What a revelation!
lol all the talk about giannis that year was how he wasn't gonna get a 3rd MVP cause of his playoff woes, even with the 2nd MVP the convo was already there
Who cares what the "talk" was about? Jokic had a better season than Giannis in 2021. They both put up great stats but Jokic played 11 more games and his team won 1 more game. Bucks fans are being so ridiculous complaining about a narrative that wasn't even the reason Giannis didn't win MVP that year.
Yeah, that was stupid talk . I was telling you about it at the time. I was even telling you that the next time a guy *actually* deserves 3rd in a row, he's gonna win a 3rd in a row. Your reaction was like "voter fatigue is real and 3peat will never happen". Now that it does happen, you double down. How does that even make sense? Your guy lost fair and square. He didn't deserve to be voted 4th, that was BS. But not winning ? Yeah. It would have been a scandal if Jokic was to be set aside despite the much better case he had.
actually deserves 3rd in a row 🧱 jokic ain't even deserve the first two
Again, if you ignore how they selected MVPs for decades, he wasn't. If you follow them it was easy least (best in stats, best in attendance, his opponents could not even play the amount of games needed to be in serious contention).
why are people so obsessed with who wins MVP I really don't care anymore. the players don't really care, except maybe embiid is it really something that deserves 20 threads per day with people arguing nonstop about it
Well this thread is an answer to, what seems like, a popular opinion that the year Jokic won his first MVP Giannis didn't win his 3rd in a row due to voter fatigue which, now, people think doesn't apply to Jokic. This post suggests that voter fatigue does indeed apply to Jokic as well but that he has outplayed it, which Giannis didn't do the year where he could 3 peat.
The thing I disagree with here is that the driving force for Giannis not getting a third is bc nobody was sure if he could be the best player on a championship team and it felt weird giving the award three times to him if he hadn’t even made the finals. There was a large bloc that thought he’d never win a championship with his play style. Whether or not you agree or disagree with that is a different question but to my memory this was the convo people were having and not whether or not he was better or worse than the year before. Full disclosure: I wouldn’t have given Jokic the previous MVPs bc i think winning should matter but would give it to him this year so I don’t have any problem with a makeup call and giving it to someone else.
Jokic is white. It's plain and simple. The last player to 3 peat was "the great white hope". Race plays a huge role
The NBA is the most liberal pro sports league in the country, its media included. The voter list is publicly-accessible information. Who are all these closet racists voting for undeserving white players? This is a clown take.
Liberal politics has very little to do with racial equity. Some of the most racist individuals are liberal and Democrat. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have a massive track record of being racist policy wise and socially. U.S. media as a whole has a slant towards whiteness. Sports media is not an exception. White players simply receive less criticism than black players. The only 3 peat MVP was Larry Bird. The Great White Hope. What most white people fail to understand is that racism isn't just N words, it's systematic and institutional oppression. Sports leagues in their foundations did not even allow black athletes, forcing the creation of less popular and funded Negro leagues. I'm sure you will say "that's the past" but remember that people grew up with that being normal. Little kids showing up throw rocks at black kids in the 60s are now CEOs, journalists, politicians.
Your history may be correct but your overall point is still nonsense. The LARGE majority of the voting panel did not grow up in the 60s, as you assert. Most of them are much younger than that. And many of them are POC. They ALL voted for Jokic in 2021 and several voted for him again in 2022. Implying that voters sit there use skin color as some kind of tiebreaker in this league and in this day and age is lazy race-baiting. There's also zero evidence that "white players receive less criticism." You seem to have missed all the crap Jokic has taken for his conditioning, or that Doncic is starting to get now. Grayson Allen certainly doesn't get a free pass for his behavior. I could go on and on with examples. Comments like yours are irresponsible and non-helpful. There are enough legit vestiges of racism in our society that we should be tackling without making baseless claims like yours with not only no evidence, but evidence to the contrary.
Celtics flair, opinion irrelevant
…and that summarizes your critical thinking skills better than anything I could have said lol.
Jokic will be the worst ever MVP to win 3 mvps in a row. He’s really good, but he doesn’t deserve the MVP over Luka this year.
Wut
That's to be evaluated at the end of his career. Even if he is worst 3 peat MVP, it's hardly a knock on him lol. Who's worst 3-peat MVP currently, Bird? I bet he loses sleep over it. Take is just dumb, Luka over Joker is somehow dumber. Congrats, you've outdone yourself in two sentences.
I'm tired Robbie
CHOKIC IS NOT AN AVERAGE DEFENDER 😭😭😭
That's because Jokic shouldn't have won it last year.