All-Season Other Awards Discussion thread

[E-Balla]

I don't think the media has elected the rightful DPOY in a while, but them getting DeAndre Jordan would be beyond silly.

To the media's credit, the last few DPOYs haven't been guys who put up the best boxscore stats. I do think defensive intangibles are recognized. We may always have a scare every year that guys like Serge Ibaka and DeAndre Jordan may win, but something like that hasn't happened since Marcus Camby.


My general gut feeling is that Draymond Green will be the favorite to get the award.

When was the last time, and who would you have voted for the past four or five seasons?

2014: Joakim Noah won - I thought Paul George should have won.

2013: Marc Gasol won - Was close between George & Hibbert. I thought Gasol was a solid pick though.

2012: Tyson Chandler won - I thought Dwight Howard should have won.


For 2015, I had Bogut as the winner of the award, but Kawhi was probably a very close 2nd. I could be convinced he deserved it (missing games and a slow start is really the only thing holding him back).

Wait is this a common thing? Do people think PG has deserved DPOY or hell even DPOP (Defensive Player of the Pacers) before? And do people still think this with hindsight letting them know the Pacers even when dealing with a crap load of injuries (Hill, West missing large parts of the season) and major players leaving (Stephenson and George) was still the 7th best defense?

[HeartBreakKid]

Wait is this a common thing? Do people think PG has deserved DPOY or hell even DPOP (Defensive Player of the Pacers) before?

It's not a common thing to say George was DPOY, but there were certainly metrics that implied he was the best defender.

And do people still think this with hindsight letting them know the Pacers even when dealing with a crap load of injuries (Hill, West missing large parts of the season) and major players leaving (Stephenson and George) was still the 7th best defense?

They weren't as good defensively when they didn't have West and Hill, so I don't really get how this proves anything. If you took a few studs off GSW they would still be a top ten defense.

There's a pretty big gap between the 1st rated d and 7th rated d (99.3 to 103.2).



He was generally believed to be the best perimeter defender, I don't get what's the big deal about him being possibly a DPOY. A lot of guys got injured on the Bulls and they still ended up being good defenses other than this year.

[Dr Spaceman]

There are essentially 6 players I'm considering for OPOY (in rough order):

1. Curry
2. Paul
3. Harden
4. James
5. Korver
6. Westbrook

Okay, so Korver's placement in here is going to raise some eyebrows. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to weigh games/minutes for this award... whether I'm going to play it like the MVP or just do a straight ranking of players. So... more thinking to do.

Anyway, I've posted a lot on Korver, but I'll just rehash that I think his gravity as an off-ball shooter is unprecedented and can be more valuable than anyone who's not an elite on-ball player (basically disqualifies all but the elite point guards and LeBron). It's stunning how involved he is in the offense and the dude's impact is not only astronomical but is endlessly transferrable, and that matters. I expect people to chafe at the idea of an 11 PPG scorer being here, but all I can say is watch the tape. Everything the Hawks do revolves around him, and defenses are so scared of him they'll give up WIDE open dunks and shots just to prevent him shooting. It's absurd. He's been brilliant in the playoffs so far too, two 20 point games already. He's damn good.

Westbrook will be over him if I don't factor in games played, I think... but including playoffs Korver is a guy that could break into the top 3. All of these guys could basically except Westbrook (might just take him off the candidate list, but I wanted to include him to adress the elephant in the room re: KOrver) if everything breaks right. Basically anyone in the 5 there could break top 3, with the top 3 guys having a shot at #1.

DPOY:

1. Draymond
2. Kawhi
3. Bogut
4. Tony Allen

Allen and Bogut are close due to durability. Don't see any other candidates.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

If you're gonna place such a high premium on portability (Korver mention) you should take WB out and put AD in or something.

[Dr Spaceman]

If you're gonna place such a high premium on portability (Korver mention) you should take WB out and put AD in or something.

If I thought AD's impact was on par with Korver or Westbrook I would.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
but Korver's impact (lift) is not on par with WB

[Dr Spaceman]

^
but Korver's impact (lift) is not on par with WB

I disagree, obviously.

Most RAPM data I've seen for this season suggests that Korver is not only better than Westbrook, but better than almost everyone. J. E. Just tweeted that Korver is #3 overall in multi-year RAPM for this season. I understand ESPN RPM has Korver below, but to me it's very clear that this is because Korver does not impress by literally any box score metric save 3p%. So it's only natural that a source that accounts for the box score will lean toward a guy with like a 30 PER.

Further, I have concerns about how Westbrook actually achieves this impact, due to the nature of WB's team and the way they went about things. To some extent it makes sense for them to totally sell out for offense and to let WB do everything for them, but he really tired at the end of the year and he's never done anything comparable over a full season so I have doubts that that style is anything sustainable.

But more generally I just watch Atlanta run every play through Korver's motion and realize that he's having massive impact every single possession without even needing to touch the ball. Defenses sell out harder to stop him than anyone I've seen this year save Curry. The portability thing is very relevant here too, and a gigantic edge in KK's favor

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
No that was NPI RAPM. I'd be shocked to see Korver over Westbrook offensively in multi year RPM/RAPM or any of the better SPMs.

[Doctor MJ]

^
No that was NPI RAPM. I'd be shocked to see Korver over Westbrook offensively in multi year RPM/RAPM or any of the better SPMs.

Well obviously Korver won't have the edge in SPMs: The box score has no ability to factor in Korver's spacing impact, and SPMs are simply box score driven.

As far as NPI vs PI, you may literally be right, but I'm not sure why you say what you do. I mean, I think it's clear you think it's only noise that puts Korver ahead of Westbrook, but to the extent PI will give Westbrook an edge here, it will simply be because he was more impactful the previous year and biased the numbers in that direction.. That's all the PI does. So why use it like that?

To be clear: Generally speaking I prefer PI to NPI, but it's specifically because it smooths out the measurement when looking at guys who have been consistent from year-to-year. Whenever we want the best estimate of a guy's impact when he took a major leap forward that year, NPI is the gold standard. (Particularly in this case because RPM should be expected to underrate Korver.)

In none of this am I saying Korver clearly is more impactful on offense than Westbrook though. Your instincts may well be right.

[Doctor MJ]

^
but Korver's impact (lift) is not on par with WB

So, this was in response to another guy saying he didn't think Davis was up there with Westbrook, and you responded by being skeptical about Korver's impact. ft., here's what the Offensive RAPM says about these guys:

Korver 5.67
Westbrook 4.05
Davis 2.95

Obviously, the most faithful approach to doing analysis from this metric is to rate them in that order. But whatever your take, Westbrook comes out looking considerably stronger as an offensive impactor than Davis does here, and in any other regression stat I've seen.

And this also makes sense to me: As amazing as Davis is, he's still a big man. His ability to impact the game on offense is dependent on his teammates ability to get him the ball consistently without error, and his game is such that it doesn't have huge gravity. He kind of pops up places & scores. That's great, but it's not something that may let his teammates breathe much easier on every possession the way other guys among the elite do at this time.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^ (both posts)
a) why would Korver necessarily get shafted by any SPM? 3PAR is in the box score, and BPM uses it to measure spacing. Yes, if I had 2 guess I would take the over on his impact vs his score in a box score stat, but it's not nearly as automatic as you're making it sound.
b) both guys had career years so I'm not sure why you're implying that PI would only have trouble with Korver in that regard.
c) Sorry, where are those ORAPM figures from? You mean that's (the as of yet unpublished AFAIK) JE PI RAPM? ORPM: WB- 7.80, KK- 4.55, AD- 4.02. Also note that we should really be thinking of "value over positional replacement" here and AD is the best big in the league by ORPM.

[Doctor MJ]

^ (both posts)
a) why would Korver necessarily get shafted by any SPM? 3PAR is in the box score, and BPM uses it to measure spacing. Yes, if I had 2 guess I would take the over on his impact vs his score in a box score stat, but it's not nearly as automatic as you're making it sound.
b) both guys had career years so I'm not sure why you're implying that PI would only have trouble with Korver in that regard.
c) Sorry, where are those ORAPM figures from? You mean that's (the as of yet unpublished AFAIK) JE PI RAPM? ORPM: WB- 7.80, KK- 4.55, AD- 4.02. Also note that we should really be thinking of "value over positional replacement" here and AD is the best big in the league by ORPM.

a) BPM doesn't use 3's to measure spacing, it just uses them. The stat maker may say that's why he put it in there, but in the end It's a mathematical function to which unless you personally believe that two thing are the same, you shouldn't expect them to be interchangeable.

Look generally: The box score doesn't see Korver as anything like a star, so there should never be an expectation that any box score metric will make him look like one. If it happens fine, but when it doesn't, it's not a reasonable rebuttal given that the entire arguments for Korver are based on acknowledging from the start that the box score doesn't agree. Fine to be unconvinced by the pro-Korver arguments in part because of the box score evidence, but the latter cannot logically be used as a further experiment to test the former.

b) "both guys had career years, so PI shouldn't have a temporal bias here". Eh, that would only be true if they improved in all the same ways, and making that assumption goes into far more murky territory than we were already in. It's possible that a PI would still favor Korver, but what I'm saying is that there isn't a real reason to be desperately wanting PI for this particularly comparison. Some comparisons yes, but even as a PI proponent, it's not something I'd be calling out for here as something that I think would tell us something huge and clear.

c) Where are the ORAPM figures from? Huh? It's from the NPI RAPM data that you were talking about. I understand that you're not a big fan of it, but I was simply trying to elaborate on the conversation that you were involved in because I felt I could clarify.

Re: We should really be thinking of VORP. In the general sense yes, but there's no reason to hold b-r's "VORP" in any particular high esteem. If you like BPM, cool, then use the accumulated version of it, which they call VORP, just as if you like WS/48 you should also use WS. I'm not a big fan of BPM though as I've stated elsewhere. I think it misses so hard on some players that it's hard to imagine embracing the stat more than a decade after we got PER. Not that you can't argue it's better than PER, but to me it's like coming out with a new premium version of the cassette tape in the age of CDs. The next step forward building all-in-one stats using weighted scorekeeping tallies will use player tracking, and that's been clear for years now.

Re: Davis has the best ORPM among bigs. And, what? I'm a huge Davis supporter leading the bandwagon for years, but if the data tells us he's much weaker on offense than all the top perimeter guys, then Davis has no business in an OPOY discussion. This isn't something you should be trying to adjust for, the low ORPM among bigs is a product of the top bigs not being able to separate from other bigs as well as the top perimeter players do.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
a) LOL didn't we have the exact same argument about steals, with you being vehemently on the other side of the aisle? But fine, it doesn't measure spacing per se but it helps spacers. Korver is 18th in OBPM, that doesn't seem far off 2 me.
b) I desperately want PI because NPI is awful. It's not a very subtle argument but I think it overwhelms any more nuanced second order effects.
c) Those figures came from a throwaway JE tweet that didn't include offense/deefnse splits... and I WAS talking about VORP in the general sense. AD can only be replaced by a big 99.99% of the time, so it makes perfect sense to "adjust" his offensive impact thus (and of course the same adjustment should then be made defensively).

[Doctor MJ]

^
a) LOL didn't we have the exact same argument about steals, with you being vehemently on the other side of the aisle? But fine, it doesn't measure spacing per se but it helps spacers. Korver is 18th in OBPM, that doesn't seem far off 2 me.
b) I desperately want PI because NPI is awful. It's not a very subtle argument but I think it overwhelms any more nuanced second order effects.
c) Those figures came from a throwaway JE tweet that didn't include offense/deefnse splits... and I WAS talking about VORP in the general sense. AD can only be replaced by a big 99.99% of the time, so it makes perfect sense to "adjust" his offensive impact thus (and of course the same adjustment should then be made defensively).

a) No I was on the exact same side of the argument: That the box score stat (steals, 3PG, whatever) is a flawed measure of the actual impact a guy has when working on that front, oftentimes to a huge degree. The fact that it means I say one guy is being underrated and another is being overrated doesn't remotely mean I'm contradicting myself.

Re: Korver's OBPM doesn't seem far off to you. Right so you're choosing the method that agrees with your hunch, and therefore coming to the conclusion that that method must not be underrating the guy...which is another way of saying you aren't using any metric at all really, you're just coming in with an opinion, and grabbing on to stats that say you're right.

I'm not actually alleging that's all you do, but that's the danger.

b) Because NPI is awful, and PI is better. Based on what? Your opinion of how players actually should be? That's not good enough.

Look, the way to use these stats is to understand where there is potential for issues, and to adjust your confidence levels accordingly. If you see a set of circumstances in which PI would give you much more confidence than NPI, then yes, you should really want to see the PI, but to simply "wait for the PI" whenever you see NPI values you don't like is quite problematic.

To put it another way: I don't use PI instead of NPI, I use them both. Typically the PI is the metric I have more confidence in, but not always. To know the full story though, I won't both, plus more raw +/-, plus RPM, plus more pure box score metrics. That's not a feel-good "Everything has something to offer!" statement, it's simply a truth that to max out my confidence, any particular metric or tally I see makes me ask a question that another metric or tally can help me answer.

c) "Those figures"? Hmm. So you weren't referring to Evan Z's complete set of NPI, you were referring to JE's lone tweet. Okay. I get your confusion now, but doesn't really change the reasons why I posted the numbers I did though.

Re: "Davis can only be replaced by a big so it does make sense to adjust." No, you're not understanding. To oversimplify for sake of clarity:

If there were a 2-on-2 NBA league, and one team had 2 pairs of players: 2 guards who substituted for each other, and 2 bigs that substituted for each other. And we saw the following measures:

Guard 1 +7
Big 1 +4
Big 2 -4
Guard 2 -7

"adjusting" as we're talking here would mean giving a +3 boost not simply to Big 1, but to Big 2. And if you're doing that, by what basis would you adjust all Bigs?

None. Look when folks say stuff like "Point guards aren't DPOY level defenders", what they are actually saying is "The amount of drop off you get when you substitute one point guard for another on defense just isn't that big." It makes no sense therefore to "adjust" your measure and make it so that the #1 point guard defender ranks just as highly as the #1 center defender, because one guy can transform his team with defense, and the other guy cannot.

Were we to extend the discussion to another sport, what you'd be saying is essentially:

"If a measure of impact rates the top quarterbacks ahead of the top running backs, therefore we need to adjust the running backs metrics up so that the #1 running back is seen as just as valuable as the quarterback." And such would be silly. There's no reason to assume that all roles are as tough to replace as others, which is why no one does. The salaries for the different positions in football vary greatly, because it's well established one shouldn't adjust like this.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
a) You're not following at all. You're contradicting yourself in the following sense: previously it was "steals are overrated because look at the coefficients" and now it's "well who knows if 3par measures spacing". And it seems right 2 me in the sense that it conforms with RPM and other SPM's that I've seen.
b) Spaceman was referencing that as well, so you were the 1 who was confused. NPI is trash out of sample, unbiased error is no better than biased error, I don't like being wrong.
c) there's no disagreement here, I'm saying adjust for position, if the spread for PG is larger then certainly that's important. I wasn't being quantitative at all so I don't get what your beef is. Also plz no football analogies, I got no idea WTF you're talking about.

[Clyde Frazier]

Interesting... the players will vote on these awards anonymously (maybe that wasn't clear before)

[tweet]https://twitter.com/HowardBeck/status/592762395510059008[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/HowardBeck/status/592764171349053440[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/HowardBeck/status/592765048826789888[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Barryathree/status/592764353771917316[/tweet]

https://twitter.com/HowardBeck

[penbeast0]

What's the difference between MVP and Global Impact Player (or, to put it another way . . . what does Global Impact Player mean if it isn't the MVP)? And, is Man of the Year a citizenship award or is it also based off on court play?

[penbeast0]

^
a) You're not following at all. You're contradicting yourself in the following sense: previously it was "steals are overrated because look at the coefficients" and now it's "well who knows if 3par measures spacing". And it seems right 2 me in the sense that it conforms with RPM and other SPM's that I've seen.
b) Spaceman was referencing that as well, so you were the 1 who was confused. NPI is trash out of sample, unbiased error is no better than biased error, I don't like being wrong.
c) there's no disagreement here, I'm saying adjust for position, if the spread for PG is larger then certainly that's important. I wasn't being quantitative at all so I don't get what your beef is. Also plz no football analogies, I got no idea WTF you're talking about.

Trying to think of a good tennis analogy but coming up with squaff.

[ceiling raiser]

What's the difference between MVP and Global Impact Player (or, to put it another way . . . what does Global Impact Player mean if it isn't the MVP)? And, is Man of the Year a citizenship award or is it also based off on court play?

I would think Global Impact Player here is an award based on how much a player contributes to promoting/popularizing/growing the game internationally.

If by some chance it did refer to something like, a player's on-court contributions on a team level, I would be pretty confused, since I'd think MVP would be the same.

[penbeast0]

Thanks, hadn't thought of that possibility.