2016-17 MVP Discussion Thread Pt 2

[miman15]

So I've been thinking about it lately:

Why isn't LeBron a top contender for the MVP right now?

He's the consensus best player in the league.
His team is #1 in their conference.
His box score stats are stellar.
His +/- stats are stellar.
He's playing plenty of minutes.

I understand that he isn't at his personal best, but no one is.

I say this having basically not thought of him as a top MVP candidate myself this season, but I look at things now, and while I still see arguments for others over him, it seems to me at the very least he should be a top contender.

Not any more. Also plays in the east.

Lebron is easily still thebest player in the game. THough the gap is getting smaller each year... When focused, Lebron still dominates the game that no other player in the league can do. He's just not as consistently dominaing games like he used to.

[inDe_eD]

I'm torn on Kawhi. Both the praise and the criticism of his impact make sense to me.

Part of what's tough here is that Harden is not LeBron. LeBron vs Kawhi, it really just becomes a question of how close to 100% LeBron is before he gets the nod over Kawhi, none of us have any debate over who the better player truly is.

But Harden, man, what if I think Harden is more impactful but his lack of 2-way versatility means I'd rather have Kawhi? I don't think there's a single right answer there.

Also, on Harden even though I think you already know how I feel - while scaling my prove to be a factor, as things stand I don't really see a scaling issue with Harden on offense. I think he has a great argument for being the best offensive player in the league and hence it's not really an issue of whether you can build a championship team around him and just whether you can more easily build around Kawhi.

Last thought on Kawhi: I don't agree with people who dismiss Kawhi because of how Pop has been to his development. I think it's absolutely true that in another setting Kawhi never becomes what he is today, but he's not going to forget things just because he goes to another setting. Additionally, what if the unprecedented positive culture of the Spurs makes it so that no matter who is the star, the team won't fall off that badly without him, are we really going to say that that means that no Spur should win the MVP?

I always think it's important to consider what others would do in an analogous position. If, say, Harden has more impact than Kawhi right now, but Harden wouldn't have as much actual lift as Kawhi were he in a position like Kawhi's in, then to me Kawhi should get the nod.

As I say all this though, I should come right out and say that when Houston had a GOAT level offense earlier in the season, I found it very tough to seriously consider anyone other than Harden for MVP. It's irrational that a slight drop from that changes my perspective, but that doesn't mean my changed perspective is the irrational one. I'll need to think further on all of this before I make up my mind.

Thanks for the response Doc,

So, i'm going here: Are we sure about the “carrying elite offenses” argument? Let's discount defense for now and look at just offense for the three guys we’ve been talking about. I'll counter with the “more with less" argument first. Here are the Ortg/Drtg for the top 7 players in minutes played for each of Houston, San Antonio, and Cleveland (I included drtg for tiebreaking):

Cleveland

Thompson - 129/107
Lebron - 118/107
Love - 116/105
Kyrie - 115/111
Frye - 114/108
Shumpert - 110/110
Jefferson - 109/112

Houston

Capela - 120/105
Anderson - 119/111
Harden - 118/106
Beverly - 117/106
Dekker - 116/109
Ariza - 112/106
Gordon - 110/112

San Antonio

Kawhi - 122/102
Lee - 122/103
Gasol - 114/102
Mills - 114/107
Aldridge - 112/104
Parker - 110/109
Green - 107/104

The amount of offensive firepower for Houston and Cleveland is vastly superior to that of the Spurs, and yet despite that, San Antonio is still pretty elite at 112.3, just about 2.0 points behind Cleveland and Houston. I know analyzing individual impact vs team effectiveness is more complicated and intricate than this, but I think the numbers and names are too significant to come to any conclusion other than this one: Kawhi is absolutely carrying his top 5 Offense, even more so than Harden or James, with the much more flawed cast.

^ Add to that that what Kawhi is doing is antithetical to Pop's standard operating procedure, but he has him do it anyway because the supporting cast runs out of gas more often than not. For instance, I don't have the exact quote, just my personal recall from post game interviews this year, Pop was asked about Kawhi's scoring and said that he'd like it to come down to around 22 points per game.

I'm pretty confident in saying that Kawhi doesn't need the "two-way player" label to compare to the top dogs anymore. If you want to discount the defense entirely, I'm still not sure I wouldn't rather have Kawhi anyway.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm torn on Kawhi. Both the praise and the criticism of his impact make sense to me.

Part of what's tough here is that Harden is not LeBron. LeBron vs Kawhi, it really just becomes a question of how close to 100% LeBron is before he gets the nod over Kawhi, none of us have any debate over who the better player truly is.

But Harden, man, what if I think Harden is more impactful but his lack of 2-way versatility means I'd rather have Kawhi? I don't think there's a single right answer there.

Also, on Harden even though I think you already know how I feel - while scaling my prove to be a factor, as things stand I don't really see a scaling issue with Harden on offense. I think he has a great argument for being the best offensive player in the league and hence it's not really an issue of whether you can build a championship team around him and just whether you can more easily build around Kawhi.

Last thought on Kawhi: I don't agree with people who dismiss Kawhi because of how Pop has been to his development. I think it's absolutely true that in another setting Kawhi never becomes what he is today, but he's not going to forget things just because he goes to another setting. Additionally, what if the unprecedented positive culture of the Spurs makes it so that no matter who is the star, the team won't fall off that badly without him, are we really going to say that that means that no Spur should win the MVP?

I always think it's important to consider what others would do in an analogous position. If, say, Harden has more impact than Kawhi right now, but Harden wouldn't have as much actual lift as Kawhi were he in a position like Kawhi's in, then to me Kawhi should get the nod.

As I say all this though, I should come right out and say that when Houston had a GOAT level offense earlier in the season, I found it very tough to seriously consider anyone other than Harden for MVP. It's irrational that a slight drop from that changes my perspective, but that doesn't mean my changed perspective is the irrational one. I'll need to think further on all of this before I make up my mind.

Thanks for the response Doc,

So, i'm going here: Are we sure about the “carrying elite offenses” argument? Let's discount defense for now and look at just offense for the three guys we’ve been talking about. I'll counter with the “more with less" argument first. Here are the Ortg/Drtg for the top 7 players in minutes played for each of Houston, San Antonio, and Cleveland (I included drtg for tiebreaking):

Cleveland

Thompson - 129/107
Lebron - 118/107
Love - 116/105
Kyrie - 115/111
Frye - 114/108
Shumpert - 110/110
Jefferson - 109/112

Houston

Capela - 120/105
Anderson - 119/111
Harden - 118/106
Beverly - 117/106
Dekker - 116/109
Ariza - 112/106
Gordon - 110/112

San Antonio

Kawhi - 122/102
Lee - 122/103
Gasol - 114/102
Mills - 114/107
Aldridge - 112/104
Parker - 110/109
Green - 107/104

The amount of offensive firepower for Houston and Cleveland is vastly superior to that of the Spurs, and yet despite that, San Antonio is still pretty elite at 112.3, just about 2.0 points behind Cleveland and Houston. I know analyzing individual impact vs team effectiveness is more complicated and intricate than this, but I think the numbers and names are too significant to come to any conclusion other than this one: Kawhi is absolutely carrying his top 5 Offense, even more so than Harden or James, with the much more flawed cast.

^ Add to that that what Kawhi is doing is antithetical to Pop's standard operating procedure, but he has him do it anyway because the supporting cast runs out of gas more often than not. For instance, I don't have the exact quote, just my personal recall from post game interviews this year, Pop was asked about Kawhi's scoring and said that he'd like it to come down to around 22 points per game.

I'm pretty confident in saying that Kawhi doesn't need the "two-way player" label to compare to the top dogs anymore. If you want to discount the defense entirely, I'm still not sure I wouldn't rather have Kawhi anyway.

Right but the main counterargument is still that Kawhi's doing it within the Spurs culture and that people believe that regardless of talent levels, the Spurs would be great no matter what.

[inDe_eD]

I'm torn on Kawhi. Both the praise and the criticism of his impact make sense to me.

Part of what's tough here is that Harden is not LeBron. LeBron vs Kawhi, it really just becomes a question of how close to 100% LeBron is before he gets the nod over Kawhi, none of us have any debate over who the better player truly is.

But Harden, man, what if I think Harden is more impactful but his lack of 2-way versatility means I'd rather have Kawhi? I don't think there's a single right answer there.

Also, on Harden even though I think you already know how I feel - while scaling my prove to be a factor, as things stand I don't really see a scaling issue with Harden on offense. I think he has a great argument for being the best offensive player in the league and hence it's not really an issue of whether you can build a championship team around him and just whether you can more easily build around Kawhi.

Last thought on Kawhi: I don't agree with people who dismiss Kawhi because of how Pop has been to his development. I think it's absolutely true that in another setting Kawhi never becomes what he is today, but he's not going to forget things just because he goes to another setting. Additionally, what if the unprecedented positive culture of the Spurs makes it so that no matter who is the star, the team won't fall off that badly without him, are we really going to say that that means that no Spur should win the MVP?

I always think it's important to consider what others would do in an analogous position. If, say, Harden has more impact than Kawhi right now, but Harden wouldn't have as much actual lift as Kawhi were he in a position like Kawhi's in, then to me Kawhi should get the nod.

As I say all this though, I should come right out and say that when Houston had a GOAT level offense earlier in the season, I found it very tough to seriously consider anyone other than Harden for MVP. It's irrational that a slight drop from that changes my perspective, but that doesn't mean my changed perspective is the irrational one. I'll need to think further on all of this before I make up my mind.

Thanks for the response Doc,

So, i'm going here: Are we sure about the “carrying elite offenses” argument? Let's discount defense for now and look at just offense for the three guys we’ve been talking about. I'll counter with the “more with less" argument first. Here are the Ortg/Drtg for the top 7 players in minutes played for each of Houston, San Antonio, and Cleveland (I included drtg for tiebreaking):

Cleveland

Thompson - 129/107
Lebron - 118/107
Love - 116/105
Kyrie - 115/111
Frye - 114/108
Shumpert - 110/110
Jefferson - 109/112

Houston

Capela - 120/105
Anderson - 119/111
Harden - 118/106
Beverly - 117/106
Dekker - 116/109
Ariza - 112/106
Gordon - 110/112

San Antonio

Kawhi - 122/102
Lee - 122/103
Gasol - 114/102
Mills - 114/107
Aldridge - 112/104
Parker - 110/109
Green - 107/104

The amount of offensive firepower for Houston and Cleveland is vastly superior to that of the Spurs, and yet despite that, San Antonio is still pretty elite at 112.3, just about 2.0 points behind Cleveland and Houston. I know analyzing individual impact vs team effectiveness is more complicated and intricate than this, but I think the numbers and names are too significant to come to any conclusion other than this one: Kawhi is absolutely carrying his top 5 Offense, even more so than Harden or James, with the much more flawed cast.

^ Add to that that what Kawhi is doing is antithetical to Pop's standard operating procedure, but he has him do it anyway because the supporting cast runs out of gas more often than not. For instance, I don't have the exact quote, just my personal recall from post game interviews this year, Pop was asked about Kawhi's scoring and said that he'd like it to come down to around 22 points per game.

I'm pretty confident in saying that Kawhi doesn't need the "two-way player" label to compare to the top dogs anymore. If you want to discount the defense entirely, I'm still not sure I wouldn't rather have Kawhi anyway.

Right but the main counterargument is still that Kawhi's doing it within the Spurs culture and that people believe that regardless of talent levels, the Spurs would be great no matter what.

If that's the case, why isn't the other talent flourishing? Lamarcus Aldridge, Tony Parker, and Danny Green clearly aren't benefiting in the same way. Can the organizational argument really be made when one dude clearly stands out this much? I don't see it.

[Gil]

Rockets have the most stacked team in the League after the Warriors. Gordon, Lou Will, Ariza, Beverley, Anderson, Capela, Dekker, Harrell wow. One of the deepest teams I've ever seen.


MVP has to go to Kawhi or LeBron who have way more inferior teams & play both ends.

[K_chile22]

I'm torn on Kawhi. Both the praise and the criticism of his impact make sense to me.

Part of what's tough here is that Harden is not LeBron. LeBron vs Kawhi, it really just becomes a question of how close to 100% LeBron is before he gets the nod over Kawhi, none of us have any debate over who the better player truly is.

But Harden, man, what if I think Harden is more impactful but his lack of 2-way versatility means I'd rather have Kawhi? I don't think there's a single right answer there.

Also, on Harden even though I think you already know how I feel - while scaling my prove to be a factor, as things stand I don't really see a scaling issue with Harden on offense. I think he has a great argument for being the best offensive player in the league and hence it's not really an issue of whether you can build a championship team around him and just whether you can more easily build around Kawhi.

Last thought on Kawhi: I don't agree with people who dismiss Kawhi because of how Pop has been to his development. I think it's absolutely true that in another setting Kawhi never becomes what he is today, but he's not going to forget things just because he goes to another setting. Additionally, what if the unprecedented positive culture of the Spurs makes it so that no matter who is the star, the team won't fall off that badly without him, are we really going to say that that means that no Spur should win the MVP?

I always think it's important to consider what others would do in an analogous position. If, say, Harden has more impact than Kawhi right now, but Harden wouldn't have as much actual lift as Kawhi were he in a position like Kawhi's in, then to me Kawhi should get the nod.

As I say all this though, I should come right out and say that when Houston had a GOAT level offense earlier in the season, I found it very tough to seriously consider anyone other than Harden for MVP. It's irrational that a slight drop from that changes my perspective, but that doesn't mean my changed perspective is the irrational one. I'll need to think further on all of this before I make up my mind.

Thanks for the response Doc,

So, i'm going here: Are we sure about the “carrying elite offenses” argument? Let's discount defense for now and look at just offense for the three guys we’ve been talking about. I'll counter with the “more with less" argument first. Here are the Ortg/Drtg for the top 7 players in minutes played for each of Houston, San Antonio, and Cleveland (I included drtg for tiebreaking):

Cleveland

Thompson - 129/107
Lebron - 118/107
Love - 116/105
Kyrie - 115/111
Frye - 114/108
Shumpert - 110/110
Jefferson - 109/112

Houston

Capela - 120/105
Anderson - 119/111
Harden - 118/106
Beverly - 117/106
Dekker - 116/109
Ariza - 112/106
Gordon - 110/112

San Antonio

Kawhi - 122/102
Lee - 122/103
Gasol - 114/102
Mills - 114/107
Aldridge - 112/104
Parker - 110/109
Green - 107/104

The amount of offensive firepower for Houston and Cleveland is vastly superior to that of the Spurs, and yet despite that, San Antonio is still pretty elite at 112.3, just about 2.0 points behind Cleveland and Houston. I know analyzing individual impact vs team effectiveness is more complicated and intricate than this, but I think the numbers and names are too significant to come to any conclusion other than this one: Kawhi is absolutely carrying his top 5 Offense, even more so than Harden or James, with the much more flawed cast.

^ Add to that that what Kawhi is doing is antithetical to Pop's standard operating procedure, but he has him do it anyway because the supporting cast runs out of gas more often than not. For instance, I don't have the exact quote, just my personal recall from post game interviews this year, Pop was asked about Kawhi's scoring and said that he'd like it to come down to around 22 points per game.

I'm pretty confident in saying that Kawhi doesn't need the "two-way player" label to compare to the top dogs anymore. If you want to discount the defense entirely, I'm still not sure I wouldn't rather have Kawhi anyway.

That's really not how you should use offensive rating. Clint and TT for example have high offensive ratings because all their looks come off of easy looks created by Harden and LBJ. They have higher offensive ratings because Harden and LBJ are much better at creating for others than Kawhi (not meant to belittle him, it's just true) if anything this is an argument for those guys.

The way youre using it David Lee grades out as the best sidekick and LOL

[Screwston]

So I've been thinking about it lately:

Why isn't LeBron a top contender for the MVP right now?

He has 2 allstars (Harden has none), n Houston is gonna finish with a better record than Cle, thats why.

[MisterHibachi]

So I've been thinking about it lately:

Why isn't LeBron a top contender for the MVP right now?

He has 2 allstars (Harden has none), n Houston is gonna finish with a better record than Cle, thats why.

How do you figure that? And having all-star teammates hasn't stopped LeBron from winning MVP before.

[Thundershock88]

Russell with 17, 18 rebounds, and 17 assists tonight. No big deal.

[Inigo Montoya]

Has any player in NBA history ever had a 20-20-20 game? If not, Westbrook is the one who can do it.

[Thundershock88]

Has any player in NBA history ever had a 20-20-20 game? If not, Westbrook is the one who can do it.

Wilt did it. Russ has only the 9th 15/15/15 game though. Also, only the 3rd player in the last 40 years to drop 17/17/17

[laika]

Russell with 17, 18 rebounds, and 17 assists tonight. No big deal.

4 for 18 with 6 turnovers.
Stealing rebounds from the bigs is not impressive. It's easy to get assists when you have an insane usage rate. Also, you were playing at home against the 2nd worst team in the league so stat accumulation should be taken with a grain of salt.

[bondom34]

Russell with 17, 18 rebounds, and 17 assists tonight. No big deal.

4 for 18 with 6 turnovers.
Stealing rebounds from the bigs is not impressive. It's easy to get assists when you have an insane usage rate.

And a +19.
And yes, it is impressive.
And assists and usage rate are unrelated.
Edited.

[laika]

Russell with 17, 18 rebounds, and 17 assists tonight. No big deal.

4 for 18 with 6 turnovers.
Stealing rebounds from the bigs is not impressive. It's easy to get assists when you have an insane usage rate.

Assists and usage rate are unrelated.

I highly doubt that.

[bondom34]

4 for 18 with 6 turnovers.
Stealing rebounds from the bigs is not impressive. It's easy to get assists when you have an insane usage rate.

Assists and usage rate are unrelated.

I highly doubt that.

In which case you don't know the formula for usage rate.

[QPR]

Assists and usage rate are unrelated.

I highly doubt that.

In which case you don't know the formula for usage rate.

He is focusing on FG% and turnovers when a guy has just had 17/19/17 and got the win, I highly doubt he is looking indepth at stats.

[laika]

Assists and usage rate are unrelated.

I highly doubt that.

In which case you don't know the formula for usage rate.

There is a minuscule chance that I am wrong, but I would be absolutely amazed if usage rate and assists did not correlate. I'm not going to bother to input hundreds of data points and graph it though, so you can pretend I'm wrong if you want.

FYI, Westbrook has easily the highest usage rate in NBA history this year so his stats should be discounted. It's why Westbrook isn't close to breaking the PER record despite averaging a triple double.

[bondom34]

I highly doubt that.

In which case you don't know the formula for usage rate.

There is a minuscule chance that I am wrong, but I would be absolutely amazed if usage rate and assists did not correlate. I'm not going to bother to input hundreds of data points and graph it though, so you can pretend I'm wrong if you want.

FYI, Westbrook has easily the highest usage rate in NBA history this year so his stats should be discounted. It's why Westbrook isn't remotely close to breaking the PER record despite averaging a triple double.

I don't care for PER, as it overrates volume scoring. But he is 1st. He is 2nd in ORPM,1st in BPM.

As for the miniscule chance you're wrong, here's BBR's glossary:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html

Usg%
Usage Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV)). Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.

[laika]

In which case you don't know the formula for usage rate.

There is a minuscule chance that I am wrong, but I would be absolutely amazed if usage rate and assists did not correlate. I'm not going to bother to input hundreds of data points and graph it though, so you can pretend I'm wrong if you want.

FYI, Westbrook has easily the highest usage rate in NBA history this year so his stats should be discounted. It's why Westbrook isn't remotely close to breaking the PER record despite averaging a triple double.

I don't care for PER, as it overrates volume scoring. But he is 1st. He is 2nd in ORPM,1st in BPM.

As for the miniscule chance you're wrong, here's BBR's glossary:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html

Usg%
Usage Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV)). Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.

That definition does not at all oppose my point.
Since this is the MVP thread, someone really should bring up usage rates. The bottom line with usage is that when you have the ball your teammates don't. So players with really high usage rates should be discounted somewhat since they are preventing their teammates from doing as much. If your efficiency is great then this can be excused since you could argue that their teammates could not have done better. But if you have mediocre efficiency as Westbrook does then this must be held against you.

Usage rates-
Westbrook- 41.8
Harden- 34.3
Leonard- 31.0
Lebron- 29.4
Curry- 29.1
Durant- 27.7

Curry and Lebron should be higher in the MVP race since they aren't getting their stats at the expense of their teammates.

[bondom34]

There is a minuscule chance that I am wrong, but I would be absolutely amazed if usage rate and assists did not correlate. I'm not going to bother to input hundreds of data points and graph it though, so you can pretend I'm wrong if you want.

FYI, Westbrook has easily the highest usage rate in NBA history this year so his stats should be discounted. It's why Westbrook isn't remotely close to breaking the PER record despite averaging a triple double.

I don't care for PER, as it overrates volume scoring. But he is 1st. He is 2nd in ORPM,1st in BPM.

As for the miniscule chance you're wrong, here's BBR's glossary:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html

Usg%
Usage Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV)). Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.

That definition does not at all oppose my point.
Since this is the MVP thread, someone really should bring up usage rates. The bottom line with usage is that when you have the ball your teammates don't. So players with really high usage rates should be discounted somewhat since they are preventing their teammates from doing as much. If your efficiency is great then this can be excused since you could argue that their teammates could not have done better. But if you have mediocre efficiency as Westbrook does then this must be held against you.

Usage rates-
Westbrook- 41.8
Harden- 34.3
Leonard- 31.0
Lebron- 29.4
Curry- 29.1
Durant- 27.7

Curry and Lebron should be higher in the MVP race since they aren't getting their stats at the expense of their teammates.

It actually does. Because you said assists would go up with usage. Usage and assists are not related. Unless you see assists in that formula.

As well, if you'd care to see Westbrook's teammates numbers with and without him, please let me know how he's getting stats at the expense of teammates. I'd be interested.