pillwenney wrote:winforlose wrote:pillwenney wrote:
All fair. But I still feel like this downplays Monk's value AS a guard. Being an offensive engine by nature requires a lot more heavy lifting. If executed comparably, it's generally a far more valuable role and certainly accounts a lot for the discrepancy in efficiency.
Availability is a fine metric in some circumstances. This is not one of them IMO. Find me an example of anyone losing an award because they "only" played 72 games. It certainly had an impact, but not because of availability, but because of recency bias. Had Monk missed 9 games in December, this wouldn't be a conversation.
It’s not 6th guard of the year. If you weight his position in his favor (something that happens all too often sadly,) then you discount the value of rebounding, interior defense, and more. Heavy lifting comes in all forms. Naz earned this, and anyone who says otherwise ignores the fact that this process goes to 100 outside voters with their own biases and agendas specifically to drown out as much noise as possible.
81 minus 72 equals 9. 9 divide by 82 equals 10.97%. You cannot with a straight face tell me that two players who put up similar numbers and are essential to their teams success are of equal value when one plays 11% less games than the other. If we are talking 2 or 3 games maybe you have a point, but once the number starts climbing past 4 (approximately 5% of the season,) it can and should be a factor.
Of course it should all be taken into account. But leading an offense is, I would argue, the most valuable role. Losing Monk would (and well, did) hurt the Kings way more than losing Naz would hurt Minnesota because he played a bigger, more essential, more valuable role.
I would again ask for any example ever of a guy not getting an award because he only played 72 games. You can argue it
should be a factor. That's a matter of opinion. But there's no precedent for it being one when a guy has played this much.
I honestly have no way of knowing what has gone into the consideration of past years or this year. The “should” argument is the one I am making. Especially in light of total stats. 100 people got to make the choice and I believe some of them weighed Naz being available for 9 more games (which is not nothing.)
I strongly disagree with your point that Monk was more necessary than Naz. There were plenty of nights where KAT or Ant had a bad game and Naz saved the day. Our offense struggled all season often being ranked between 16 and 19. Our 3 point make percentage was high, but our volume was also low. Karl wouldn’t commit to taking the necessary number of 3s until much later in the season. Meanwhile Ant and Jaden were inconsistent. It was Mike Conley, Naz Reid, and NAW who would often be the difference makers from deep. Naz especially consistently upped his volume without a drop off in efficiency and had a historic year for anyone playing the 4/5 from deep (in a bench role.) Finally, once KAT went down Naz became a consistent 20 PPG on efficient shooting and kept us afloat. The Kings might need Monk, but the Wolves needed every bit of Naz Reid. That the Wolves were more successful should count in Naz’s favor rather than against him. You lost Monk and Huerter, we lost KAT. If you lost Fox could Monk replace him? Naz replaced KAT and we went 10-3 on short rest in the games Naz started.
I am sorry, but Naz earned this in just about every way possible. If you want to argue that Guards should always have an advantage over Bigs we can have that conversation, but I think that speaks more to your bias and opinion than they actual reality of the game.
