2023-24 NBA Season Discussion

[Clyde Frazier]

I know what you've been spouting on Discord, and I know that isn't true.

Post the screenshots. That's a ridiculous take for you to think I have that Ant is obliterating this guy who's clearly still dominating .

The most disparaging thing I said was: "Remember when the nuggets fans tried to pretend they didn't have an amazing supporting cast cuz they lost 2 games". Arguing just to argue, take the kneepads off lil bro. You must be confusing me with someone else.

I mean if you will just shrug off whatever I share as pure analysis, why bother.

Also didnt you get ousted/temporary suspended from the GB because you got mad about glowingly they talked about Jokic? Seems you definitely have some kind of emotional attachment, which would suggest you are closer to getting on your knees in this analogy then anyone else, but please correct me if I am misremembering.

You both need to chill. This is bordering on derailing. Let's drop it and get back to discussing the playoffs. Thanks.

[rk2023]

Shai had a god damn mesmerizing performance to give OKC new life in the series.. felt like one Dallas was almost inevitable to get throughout.

There have been some translation questions with Shai and his overall package of skills, but his tough shot making has absolutely translated this series. His support and spacing (in tandem) with one another have tailed off this series to a decent extent though. He is going to need help if OKC wants to get to four first.

[GSP]

Daigneault is a top 5 coach. One of the major things that held back the other Okc core was Scott Brooks was one of the worst coaches in the Nba and had no business coaching.

Fouling up 3 won them this game. We **** on coaches all the time for not doing it and getting burned. He did it and they had a comfortable win afterwards. No trading 3s, Ot potential or gamewinner.

[rk2023]

SGA is clearly better than Luka

Yeah its hard to argue. Sga has by far been best player of the series.

Were finally seeing a bad playoff series from Luka too. Seems like hes always gone off in playoffs but Lu Dort has completely shut him down. Outside of the 1st quarter of game 2 Luka hasnt had any success scoring on him.

He’s been faring well on Dort, Lu has sort of Dillon Brooks’d his way with regards to defensive reputation.

The bigger story here is how a series with two , on paper , offensive powerhouses has been relegated to a slugfest due to how minor skillset gaps (Luka’s injury too) from players on both sides have been exploited well. A few Kyrie and Luka scoring stinkers will do it as well

[bigboi]

SGA is clearly better than Luka

Yeah its hard to argue. Sga has by far been best player of the series.

Were finally seeing a bad playoff series from Luka too. Seems like hes always gone off in playoffs but Lu Dort has completely shut him down. Outside of the 1st quarter of game 2 Luka hasnt had any success scoring on him.

Moreso than Luka, I keep telling people that Kyrie hasn’t been good in the playoffs since leaving Bron. Kyrie to me alongside Melo are the two most overhyped players ever. People on social media calling him most skilled ever. Luka is just a euro James harden

[OhayoKD]

The bar for Jokic really is incredibly high. He’s caught flak here and elsewhere, but the guy is averaging 28/14/9 on 63% TS in the playoffs.

The bar for Jokic, as it should be for any bitw candidate one is claiming as bitw, has been best player in the league, which he has not been these playoffs. The incessant attempt form pc boarders to gatekeep the critcism despite this doesn't make much sense if you legimately believe he's the best player in the world. not someone you need to put significant resources towards if you don't want them to be a big defensive negative.

Now that Jokic's finally had a great game, some people here are trying to shift the goalposts from "bitw" to "still good"

Also as it's 2024, and not 2022, pulling up BPM for the player giving up more than anyone else in the playoffs defensively, and whose handles were clearly showcased as a massive potential liability in the first 2 games if you don't have a primary ball-handler playing well, and was horrifically ineffecient up until his team was 20 to 24 points up in a mach to avoid going 3-0 down is unlikely to convince people who didn't already agree with you.

The tldr is people who pushed the bar being incredibly high now want to lower it dramtically to prevent what should come with "clear bitw" expectations. If you thought he was clear bitw, then this playoffs thus far strongly suggests he's overrated, just like 2020, 2021, and 2022 did.

I personally, will not be lowering the bar. And I hope most of the board follows suit.

[lessthanjake]

The bar for Jokic really is incredibly high. He’s caught flak here and elsewhere, but the guy is averaging 28/14/9 on 63% TS in the playoffs.

The bar for Jokic, as it should be for any bitw candidate one is claiming as bitw, has been best player in the league, which he has not been these playoffs. The incessant attempt to gatekeep the critcism despite this doesn't make much sense if you legimately believe he's the best player in the world, let alone an arguable goat peak. As it's 2024 and not 2022, I'm also skeptical throwing BPM is going to convince anyone here who doesn't already agree with you.

No player who is anywhere near the discussion for best player in the world has been better than Jokic in these playoffs so far. When we’re talking about only like 8 or 9 games, there’s often going to be an argument that *someone* has played better, because *someone* is likely going to have played incredibly in such a small sample. But, if we’re actually talking rationally, the fact that Jokic has been clearly better than the other actual candidates for best-in-the-world pretty obviously bolsters his case for being the best player in the world.

As for BPM, what else do you want? It’s probably the best box stat we have (since it is actually designed to correlate well with impact), and trying to use actual impact data in a portion of a playoff is just obviously dumb, so there’s no real alternative to box stats if we are looking for data to assess performance in these playoffs specifically. Therefore, beyond the eye test, the only thing we really have is box data like BPM. And Jokic looks incredible in that sort of box data in these playoffs. You may not like that, but it’s the reality.

[OhayoKD]

The bar for Jokic really is incredibly high. He’s caught flak here and elsewhere, but the guy is averaging 28/14/9 on 63% TS in the playoffs.

The bar for Jokic, as it should be for any bitw candidate one is claiming as bitw, has been best player in the league, which he has not been these playoffs. The incessant attempt to gatekeep the critcism despite this doesn't make much sense if you legimately believe he's the best player in the world, let alone an arguable goat peak. As it's 2024 and not 2022, I'm also skeptical throwing BPM is going to convince anyone here who doesn't already agree with you.

or BPM, what else do you want? It’s probably the best box stat we have (since it is actually designed to correlate well with impact)

You're the party here interested in the outputs of advanced all-in-ones. My interest in metrics that do not count defenders dribbled by, or average time of possession, or carries, or paint-load/rim deterrence tracking for a player whose ball-handling is a potential major liability and whose limited paint-protection and lack of mobility is a potentially massive one excepting a rare combination of personell is close to nil because...they are basically useless for capturing what seperates Jokic negatively from other superstars.

PS: I would hold back from using a lower-time of possession as a positive from now-on in comparison to actual impact outliers like you know who; it's probably a negative.

The big rs to playoff delta that occurs with aaron gordon staggering also tells us Jokic's real impact is somewhere between those nice rs marks and those horribad playoff ones(though he has managed to lift himself to a only terrible +4 for his career thanks to that game 3 blowout), so I'm going to taking pretty much all the remaining stock i had in on/off(not that much) into his wowy and rapm when trying to ballpark value, much to your chagrin i imagine.

[lessthanjake]

The big rs to playoff delta that occurs with aaron gordon staggering also tells us Jokic's real impact is somewhere between those nice rs marks and those horribad playoff ones(though he has managed to lift himself to a only terrible +4 for his career thanks to that game 3 blowout), so I'm going to taking pretty much all the remaining stock i had in on/off(not that much) into his wowy and rapm when trying to ballpark value, much to your chagrin i imagine.

This is silly. Jokic and Gordon do stagger more in the playoffs (because the Nuggets don’t have a viable backup center that can be played in the playoffs), but the fact that those Gordon-on-Jokic-off minutes have gone well in the playoffs is the output of a super noisy tiny sample. In the regular season since Gordon arrived, the Nuggets have a -12.24 net rating in minutes where Gordon is on and Jokic is off, in games they both played. And that’s still -8.02 just in the last two seasons. So those staggered minutes with Gordon generally have gone quite badly (while the Jokic-on-Gordon-off minutes have gone well—+6.65 since Gordon arrived, and +7.51 in the last two seasons). I guess you can base your view of Jokic’s on-off impact on plus-minus data from like a 200-minute total playoff sample that isn’t remotely consistent with larger analogous regular season samples, but that’s really just plainly silly and the type of argument that someone only makes when they’ve started at their conclusion and worked backwards and haven’t found any actually good way to get there.

And no, it really wouldn’t be to my chagrin for you to focus on RAPM, where Jokic is #1 for his career in the play-by-play era. Nor would it be to my chagrin for you to focus on WOWY, in which peak Jokic slightly outdoes peak LeBron in WOWY SRS impact once you take out end-of-season garbage off games for both (See the bottom of this post: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=112905068#p112905068). But I digress and would direct you to respond to such statistical comparisons between those players in the thread I just linked, rather than here.

You're the party here interested in the outputs of advanced all-in-ones. My interest in metrics that do not count defenders dribbled by, or average time of possession, or carries, or paint-load/rim deterrence tracking for a player whose ball-handling is a potential major liability and whose limited paint-protection and lack of mobility is a potentially massive one excepting a rare combination of personell is close to nil because...they are basically useless for capturing what seperates Jokic negatively from other superstars.

PS: I would hold back from using a lower-time of possession as a positive from now-on in comparison to actual impact outliers like you know who; it's probably a negative.

Lol, so, when assessing Jokic, you’re expressly only interested in a stat if it’s a granular stat that you think might paint Jokic negatively. Amazing. Of course, not all the things you mentioned even *are* a negative (such as average time of possession, which for someone like Jokic is indicative of quick and decisive decision-making). And I actually addressed Jokic’s playoff rim protection stats in the post you were responding to. But that’s all really beside the point, because you’re just explicitly telling everyone that your entire approach regarding Jokic is to not care about stats whatsoever unless they’re something that you think you can argue as being negative for Jokic. It’s clearly telling as to your agenda—not that this confession was necessary for anyone to see it.

[Colbinii]

Minnesota is one of the teams I would have entertained prior to this series but at 2-2 it feels pretty clear which team has benefitted more from its non-primary options. And while Finch may become a better coach than Malone with time, at this moment he certainly is not, nor is his staff anywhere near as notably excellent.

I think it's important to remember a coach on a bench has significant less impact than a coach who is actually coaching.

My understanding is Finch/Micah prepare the game plan, but during a game, it is going to be Micah who needs to make the adjustments.

I like to think about it like playing high-level Chess in a Rapid match where you are playing 10 Minute, match after match for 3 hours. You are a professional player, maybe a GM level play, but you get to lean on a Hikaru/Fabianno/Nepo to get advice from. However, you can't just go to them after every single move and say 'What should I do next'.

Finch isn't the one playing the game, Micah is. Finch has input on the matches, but ultimately the first 4 games of the series have been Micah vs Malone.

I think it's telling that the game plan for the first 2 games was clearly an advantage for Minnesota. The next 2 games, Denver made some key adjustments, notably with Aaron Gordon attacking with his strength and the Nuggets running different actions to get Murray/Jokic going compared to what they did in G1/G2.

The 2nd half of Game 4 was relatively close, and both teams seem to have made the adjustments. Denver is clear favorites at this point with 2 games at home and winners of the past 2 game.

Minnesota did what I thought they would do--play Kyle Anderson less. I think one more change they can do is play Monte Morris the 10 minutes instead of Kyle Anderson.

As for Denver, if Aaron Gordon is the 3rd or 4th best player in a game, they likely win.

[lessthanjake]

In general, I would be *really* hesitant about assessing how good a coach (or coaching staff) is. We have virtually no visibility into the vast majority of things that these coaches do. We don’t know virtually anything about their man management skills, for instance. We don’t know how they run practices. We don’t know what they see in practice or in talking to players that causes them to make certain decisions with the rotation. Even in terms of what happens on the court, we usually don’t actually know to what extent the players figured something out or decided to do something, as opposed to the coaches directing it. We have very limited windows of information into coaching quality, because we aren’t players on their team. And with limited info, our conclusions are likely just going to be marred by various biases—confirmation bias, bandwagon effects, winners’ or losers’ bias, etc. I certainly wouldn’t index almost any basketball view on an assessment of coaching quality, since the confidence in that assessment should usually be close to zero. That doesn’t mean coaching quality doesn’t actually matter. It surely does. It’s just that we are really not typically in a position to assess it with any remote degree of confidence.

[OhayoKD]

The big rs to playoff delta that occurs with aaron gordon staggering also tells us Jokic's real impact is somewhere between those nice rs marks and those horribad playoff ones(though he has managed to lift himself to a only terrible +4 for his career thanks to that game 3 blowout), so I'm going to taking pretty much all the remaining stock i had in on/off(not that much) into his wowy and rapm when trying to ballpark value, much to your chagrin i imagine.

This is silly. Jokic and Gordon do stagger more in the playoffs (because the Nuggets don’t have a viable backup center that can be played in the playoffs)

Yes, definitely viable in the regular-season but not the playoffs.

, but the fact that those Gordon-on-Jokic-off minutes have gone well in the playoffs is the output of a super noisy tiny sample. In the regular season since Gordon arrived, the Nuggets have a -12.24 net rating in minutes where Gordon is on and Jokic is off, in games they both played. And that’s still -8.02 just in the last two seasons. So those staggered minutes with Gordon generally have gone quite badly (while the Jokic-on-Gordon-off minutes have gone well—+6.65 since Gordon arrived, and +7.51 in the last two seasons).

Well yes, teammates also tend to look worse without you when you're platooning and/or they're playing high minutes without key teammates

In the regular-season, since Jokic has had good on/off(crossed +10 in 2022):

-> Gordon has played more minutes without Jamal than with, nearly 2/3rds of his Jokic-less minutes are without Jamal.
-> Gordon has played nearly as many minutes without MPJ as with, and nearly 2/3rds of his Jokic-less minutes come without MPJ
-> Gordon has played nearly as many minutes without KCP as with, and more than 2/3rds of his Jokic-less minutes come without KCP

In the playoffs

-> Gordon has played 3 times with Jamal as much as he played without(970-274), Gordon has played roughly 5 times as many of his Jokic-less minutes with Jamal as without (176-39)
-> Gordon has played 2 times as many minutes with MPJ as without(808-405), roughly 5 times as many of his Jokic-less minutes with MPJ as without (88-16)
-> Gordon has played 2 times as many minutes with KCP as without (820-394), played roughly 1/2 as many of his Jokic-less minutes with KCP as without (67-148)

In the RS jokic-less minutes are largely throwaways played with bench pieces. In the playoffs, it is a deliberate strategy from the Nuggets to make-up for some of Jokic's offense with better defense when he isn't on the court. Some of this is also Jokic simply being a better rs defender than a playoff defender and Gordon playing better the other way, but that is why I said "in-between".

Arguing staggering does not negatively effect on/off when you also admit the Nuggets do not have a viable backup center seems alot more "working backwards from a conclusion" to me.

And no, it really wouldn’t be to my chagrin for you to focus on RAPM, where Jokic is #1 for his career in the play-by-play era.

He is #1 in a career-sample from a JE set. He drops to 7th by that same source if you adjust for him playing far less minutes and having an unusually good start as an older arrival in the league, (and yes this was all shown to you only for you to promptly ignore it):

Spoiler:

He already posted an updated RAPM career sheet adjusting for these things. The rankings were (top 12 cuz that’s where KD is)

I meant to tag

^ why are you bringing up the career RAPM results that J.E cautioned that didn’t adjust for the rubber band effect, age, and “coaches?” and bringing up “non prime years” which absolutely is going to hurt players who finished their careers more + Lebron being out of his “impact peak” for years now

It feels incredibly disingenuous to talk about him cherry picking and that Jokic’s results being so impressive despite him being early ish in his career, his career RAPM is high BECAUSE of those early years being far better most players early years or especially post prime washed years. If you go by ranks for example, per shotcharts (which has issues but is way better than the other sites don’t get me wrong) 3 of his “top 5” rapm years were years 1-3.

Ohayo makes a good point too with the fact that the multi year data doesn’t look alike a complete outlier (while still being fantastic mind you) throughout the years we’d define as his peak isn’t some sort of historical outlier


He already posted an updated RAPM career sheet adjusting for these things. The rankings were (top 12 cuz that’s where KD is)

Lebron - 10.8
Garnett - 9.5
CP3 - 9.4
Stockton - 9.2
Curry - 8.5
Ginobli - 8.5
Jokic - 8.5
Dirk - 8.4
Duncan - 8.2
Kawhi - 7.7
Shaq - 7.3
KD - 7.2

J.E already posted an updated numbers on Twitter. The coaching adjustment can be a bit weird and age adjustments are a bit weird with bron specifically but it’s pretty much the exact same results as you would expect

As I said above, an age adjustment obviously favors LeBron here, and it does go to career value and whatnot. Jokic is highly unlikely to have a superior career to LeBron—who was better at a young age than Jokic and virtually certainly will be better at an old age than Jokic. But this thread isn’t about that. I’m also not a fan of a “coaching adjustment” and I think neither are most people here, but that’s a rabbit hole not worth going down. Ultimately, one can always layer on different adjustments and box score components and whatnot and get to fairly different numbers or rankings. We see that all the time, with different impact measures saying different things in the same season. We also see that pretty clearly with JE’s numbers, where the addition of certain adjustments changed the rankings. I’m not positing that Jokic will be #1 in all versions of impact data. He wouldn’t (nor would anyone else). But the fact that he was #1 in the pre-controversial-adjustments version of JE’s 1997-2024 data certainly suggests that Jokic’s impact numbers are up there in GOAT-tier territory, rather than that he “has no impact case” and gets “clobbered” by other players, as was suggested. That is the point I’m making. Impact measures are inherently flawed and can be massaged a lot of different ways, such that we should take them with a real grain of salt, but if a guy shakes out as well in them as Jokic does, then he does have an “impact case,” even if he’s not the only one with an impact case. And beyond that, he does also have a box score data case too. And, for me, both of those things just validate the fact that my eye test tells me he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.

I mean Jokic's per-possession impact by RAPM was greater than Lebron's the first 3 years I would argue, so I don't get the idea that his age-adjusting hurts him.

Jokic's NBA Shot Charts LA RAPM rankings.

Rookie Year (Age 20): 7th
Sophomore Year: 12th
Third Year: 6th


Lebron's PI Englemann RAPM ranking

Rookie Year (Age 19): 112th
Sophomore Year: 24th
Third Year: 21st

If we look at Intraocular APM

Jokic

Rookie Year: +3
Sophomore Year: +5.7
Third Year: +3.9

Lebron

Rookie Year: +0.1
Sophomore Year: +2.5
Third Year: +4.6

Also in multi-year RAPM

-NBAShot Charts 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #7.

-NBA Shot Charts Luck Adjusted 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #4.

By DARKO, Jokic had a stronger star earlier in his career

Read on Twitter

Jokic looks better than Lebron in very early career RAPM, so I am not sure if I am buying that Jokic's RAPM would be suppressed against Lebron. Jokic came out the strong with a historically GOATed rookie profile for someone of his age, that I think a lot of people slept on due to draft position, etc.

Jokic, like Steph before him, is not nearly as good by RAPM as you say if you use RAPM properly. Speaking of which

Nor would it be to my chagrin for you to focus on WOWY, in which peak Jokic slightly outdoes peak LeBron in WOWY SRS impact once you take out end-of-season garbage off games for both (See the bottom of this post: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=112905068#p112905068). But I digress and would direct you to respond to such statistical comparisons between those players in the thread I just linked, rather than here.

And yet you felt the need to

A. Compare uneven samples(5 years of Lebron: 4 for Jokic)
B. Not choose the best sample for Lebron (swap 2013 for 2008 and...he peaks higher than Jokic)
C. gigantically shrink the sample in a way that throws out Lebron's best data

And the two are still basically tied.

The fact Lebron has multiple 5-year stretches comparable(and one better) to the 4-year one you picked for Jokic(15-17 would also be up there) is a big hint that these are not comparable players. And of course, if you were really worried about "end of season games", you could have always went with what was a similar off-sample with a similar rotation concentrated in a single year(making it a much larger sample per-season):

Spoiler:

Like Nash, LeBron was supercharging dependent talent — finishers who disproportionately benefited from shots served to them on a silver platter. So with his talents in South Beach, Cleveland crumbled in 2011. While most teams fall off after losing a superstar, none imploded like the Lebron-less Cavs; in 21 games with a similar group of players, they played at an anemic 18-win pace (-8.9 SRS) before injuries ravaged their lineup. LeBron’s not worth 40 wins on a typical club, but no player in history has correlated more strongly with such massive, worst-to-first impact.

That was the start of the season after ownership boldly declared they would win without Lebron not quite accounting for him he's being the most valuable basketball player of the last 50 years:

lebron 09-21
656-263 with lebron 0.714% win rate
37-73 without lebron 0.336% win rate
net rating with lebron +6.49 (59 win pace level)
net rating without lebron -5.50 (25 win pace level)
+8.6 ortg difference
-3.68 drtg difference
+12 total swing



jokic 2022-24
136-68 (66.7% win rate) with jokic
8-15 (34.8% win rate) without jokic
+4.1 net rating with jokic (53 win pace)
-4.6 net rating without jokic (28 win pace)
+6.5 ortg change
-2.2 drtg change
+8.7 overall change

Lebron over 13 seasons sees a significantly bigger delta than Jokic manages over 3. Just like he outclasses Jokic in 1-year WOWY, 2-year WOWY, 3-year WOWY, and so on.

There's also a stat you ironically, if unsurprisingly, excluded:







Going to let posterity decide who looks better there.

Lol, so, when assessing Jokic, you’re expressly only interested in a stat if it’s a granular stat that you think might paint Jokic negatively.

Was that what I said?

You're the party here interested in the outputs of advanced all-in-ones.My interest in metrics that do not count defenders dribbled by, or average time of possession, or carries, or paint-load/rim deterrence tracking for a player whose ball-handling is a potential major liability and whose limited paint-protection and lack of mobility is a potentially massive one excepting a rare combination of personell is close to nil because...they are basically useless for capturing what seperates Jokic negatively from other superstars.

Odd, I don't see "granular" anywhere in the passage you replied to.

To clarify, I am uninterested in all-in-one which do not factor in the major negatives for a player. That you are interested in such metrics is why I don't take you seriously.

Of course, not all the things you mentioned even *are* a negative (such as average time of possession, which for someone like Jokic is indicative of quick and decisive decision-making)

No, it's indicative of Jokic being a bad ball-handler relative to most offensive greats. I would reccommend rewatching the first 2 games of the series if you wish to cultivate a "deeper knowledge" on the matter.

But that’s all really beside the point, because you’re just explicitly telling everyone that your entire approach regarding Jokic is to not care about stats whatsoever unless they’re something that you think you can argue as being negative for Jokic

Factoring in negatives =/ only looking at negatives.

I don't know about everyone, but what you're telling me is you didn't read.

[Heej]

I know what you've been spouting on Discord, and I know that isn't true.

Post the screenshots. That's a ridiculous take for you to think I have that Ant is obliterating this guy who's clearly still dominating .

The most disparaging thing I said was: "Remember when the nuggets fans tried to pretend they didn't have an amazing supporting cast cuz they lost 2 games". Arguing just to argue, take the kneepads off lil bro. You must be confusing me with someone else.

I mean if you will just shrug off whatever I share as pure analysis, why bother.

Also didnt you get ousted/temporary suspended from the GB because you got mad about glowingly they talked about Jokic? Seems you definitely have some kind of emotional attachment, which would suggest you are closer to getting on your knees in this analogy then anyone else, but please correct me if I am misremembering.

I got kicked off GB for calling someone an idiot for saying the NBA doesn't play defense anymore when it's painfully obvious to anyone watching how much ground is covered in high level games nowadays. And these playoffs have been a stellar example of this given how physical teams are allowed to be now while playing in highly specialized and targeted schemes.

Pretty sure every Knicks fan burst a blood vessel last game seeing Neismith shove and slap Brunson's arms on every drive without a call. Nice try once again arguing just to argue tho lmao. Pathetic. Go troll on GB if you need attention this badly, I'm trying to discuss playoff ball

[Heej]

Daigneault is a top 5 coach. One of the major things that held back the other Okc core was Scott Brooks was one of the worst coaches in the Nba and had no business coaching.

Fouling up 3 won them this game. We **** on coaches all the time for not doing it and getting burned. He did it and they had a comfortable win afterwards. No trading 3s, Ot potential or gamewinner.

Think this year a lot of people finally wised up to that being the more statistically sound solution. Guys are too good at making something out of nothing with 3s nowadays

[Heej]

The bar for Jokic really is incredibly high. He’s caught flak here and elsewhere, but the guy is averaging 28/14/9 on 63% TS in the playoffs.

The bar for Jokic, as it should be for any bitw candidate one is claiming as bitw, has been best player in the league, which he has not been these playoffs. The incessant attempt to gatekeep the critcism despite this doesn't make much sense if you legimately believe he's the best player in the world, let alone an arguable goat peak. As it's 2024 and not 2022, I'm also skeptical throwing BPM is going to convince anyone here who doesn't already agree with you.

No player who is anywhere near the discussion for best player in the world has been better than Jokic in these playoffs so far. When we’re talking about only like 8 or 9 games, there’s often going to be an argument that *someone* has played better, because *someone* is likely going to have played incredibly in such a small sample. But, if we’re actually talking rationally, the fact that Jokic has been clearly better than the other actual candidates for best-in-the-world pretty obviously bolsters his case for being the best player in the world.

As for BPM, what else do you want? It’s probably the best box stat we have (since it is actually designed to correlate well with impact), and trying to use actual impact data in a portion of a playoff is just obviously dumb, so there’s no real alternative to box stats if we are looking for data to assess performance in these playoffs specifically. Therefore, beyond the eye test, the only thing we really have is box data like BPM. And Jokic looks incredible in that sort of box data in these playoffs. You may not like that, but it’s the reality.

I think Embiid was playing better tbh. His post up game was more resilient vs a similar scheme the Knicks played because he's a much better face up player, not to mention being tougher to consistently go at in PnR. I shudder to think what Jokic would've looked like in drop coverage vs this version of Brunson who's looking like a top 5 player sans the game 4 stinker

[itsxtray]

That's fine. Still doesn't disprove the fact that Edwards is having a better 2-way series right now and that Jokic's sub-par paint protection is a big reason why.

So I'll just say:

1. I think first and foremost we should just all agree that Edwards has emerged again as a totally different beast in the playoffs compared to the regular season, and that if this is what we can expect from him going forward, we may well be looking at the best player of the upcoming era (ahem, kinda assuming the Wemby era is the next era after that).

Just looked up their birthdays, and wow, despite being only 2 years and 5 months older than Wemby, Ant's already played 4 NBA seasons to his one. Wemby's birthday is Jan 4th, so he had to wait another year to enter the draft. If he was born 4 days earlier, he could've been the youngest player in the 2022 draft. Ant has an August birthday, so he was able to enter the draft as a 19 year old. (Sidenote, this helps a player like Cooper Flagg as well, he has a December birthday so he'll enter the draft as a 19 year old as well) But anyway Ant & Wemby are definitely in the same era.

[parsnips33]

So cool that we got to see a LeBron passing the torch to Jokic moment these past 2 playoffs. You couldn't write it any better. These guys legacies and names will be inextricably linked for the rest of history, and with 1 more MVP, Jok will tie his spiritual predecessor

[parsnips33]

Daigneault is a top 5 coach. One of the major things that held back the other Okc core was Scott Brooks was one of the worst coaches in the Nba and had no business coaching.

Fouling up 3 won them this game. We **** on coaches all the time for not doing it and getting burned. He did it and they had a comfortable win afterwards. No trading 3s, Ot potential or gamewinner.

I still thought they waited weirdly long to foul - if PJ Washington (?) had shot it instead of passing to the corner at the end he probably gets 3 FTs

[Ambrose]

All the slander getting thrown Jokic's way in this thread really should be going towards Luka. He's basically been what people are pretending Jokic was for having two off games, except it's been nearly all postseason for Luka. He was moving fine last night too, so hard to say it was because he was hobbled.

[Colbinii]

That's fine. Still doesn't disprove the fact that Edwards is having a better 2-way series right now and that Jokic's sub-par paint protection is a big reason why.

So I'll just say:

1. I think first and foremost we should just all agree that Edwards has emerged again as a totally different beast in the playoffs compared to the regular season, and that if this is what we can expect from him going forward, we may well be looking at the best player of the upcoming era (ahem, kinda assuming the Wemby era is the next era after that).

Just looked up their birthdays, and wow, despite being only 2 years and 5 months older than Wemby, Ant's already played 4 NBA seasons to his one. Wemby's birthday is Jan 4th, so he had to wait another year to enter the draft. If he was born 4 days earlier, he could've been the youngest player in the 2022 draft. Ant has an August birthday, so he was able to enter the draft as a 19 year old. (Sidenote, this helps a player like Cooper Flagg as well, he has a December birthday so he'll enter the draft as a 19 year old as well) But anyway Ant & Wemby are definitely in the same era.

There are some more interesting factoids surrounding ANT and his age.

He is younger than Jalen Williams who is 2 drafts after. He is younger than Scottie Barnes and Evan Mobley and he is only 1 year older than Brandon Miller.

Edwards in 20 career PS games is at 8.5 BPM, 63 TS% and 30% Usage.

I expect a jump in his regular season play next year with the combination of post-season experience this year AND the Olympics, which has been the Hallmark of Impact-jumps for ATG players.