Should Luka win MVP?

[Jaivl]

wait people really believe luka doncic this year had the best offensive season ever lol

what is 2024 lukas case over 2019 harden or 2020 harden using advanced stats

Ehh, Luka vs Shai is about as clear as Jokic vs Luka for me. Think Shai is overrated to the moon and is probably more like top 7 than top 3, but hey, it works for me

[LukaTheGOAT]

wait people really believe luka doncic this year had the best offensive season ever lol

what is 2024 lukas case over 2019 harden or 2020 harden using advanced stats

Ehh, Luka vs Shai is about as clear as Jokic vs Luka for me. Think Shai is overrated to the moon and is probably more like top 7 than top 3, but hey, it works for me

Nothing wrong with being objective, but you have to be the only OKC fan who I've seen say outright that Shai isn't on Luka's level
What about Shai's season do you find the numbers overrating? Is it the defense? I know his passing isn't stellar but in the context of just what we saw in the RS, it's the something that on average was not readily taken advantage of by opposing teams.

[LukaTheGOAT]

I'd go Jokic.

For those who believe they are neck and neck, the 8 game difference in GP is probably sufficient to put Jokic ahead.

[lessthanjake]

Luka is ahead of Jokic on EPM, EW and DRIP. Considering that he also leads the league in PPG, is second in APG and that the Mavs had a much worse luck with the injuries he probably should be the MVP.

Jokic is ahead in LEBRON, AuPM/g, DPM, and raw on-off. He’s ahead in BBREF BPM, Thinking Basketball BPM, win shares, and PER. On balance, impact data goes in Jokic’s favor (though, to Luka’s credit, he has made that discussion interesting). And Jokic is ahead in box metrics. Jokic’s team also did substantially better (both in wins and SRS), with Murray actually missing more games than Kyrie. Luka was great, but I think it’s pretty clear cut (as do most people, I think, since it seems Jokic is going to easily win).

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

AuPM/g is Thinking Basketball’s augmented plus minus per game stat. Jokic is far ahead of Luka in that metric. DPM is Daily Plus Minus—not a stat I love personally, but other people really like it, and it does have Jokic miles ahead of Luka.

My apologies on the Murray/Kyrie thing. I looked this up like a week ago and Kyrie had played one game more than Murray, but it looks like the Mavs not caring about the last couple games (and therefore not playing Kyrie) flipped which one of them had played slightly more, and I’d not realized that. The general point is that their 2nd best players were out essentially the same amount. Kyrie is also a bit better than Murray in general IMO, so the #2 player goes in the Mavs’ direction. The rest of the Nuggets roster was healthier, but realistically these sorts of issues of role player health just don’t overcome significantly more team success (in both wins and SRS) in the MVP assessment, for almost anyone. And especially not when the weight of individual statistics (both impact and box) goes in favor of the guy with the superior team success. Role player health is more of a tiebreaker factor, and there’s not a tie to break here.

[hagredionis]

Jokic is ahead in LEBRON, AuPM/g, DPM, and raw on-off. He’s ahead in BBREF BPM, Thinking Basketball BPM, win shares, and PER. On balance, impact data goes in Jokic’s favor (though, to Luka’s credit, he has made that discussion interesting). And Jokic is ahead in box metrics. Jokic’s team also did substantially better (both in wins and SRS), with Murray actually missing more games than Kyrie. Luka was great, but I think it’s pretty clear cut (as do most people, I think, since it seems Jokic is going to easily win).

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

AuPM/g is Thinking Basketball’s augmented plus minus per game stat. Jokic is far ahead of Luka in that metric. DPM is Daily Plus Minus—not a stat I love personally, but other people really like it, and it does have Jokic miles ahead of Luka.

My apologies on the Murray/Kyrie thing. I looked this up like a week ago and Kyrie had played one game more than Murray, but it looks like the Mavs not caring about the last couple games (and therefore not playing Kyrie) flipped which one of them had played slightly more, and I’d not realized that. The general point is that their 2nd best players were out essentially the same amount. Kyrie is also a bit better than Murray in general IMO, so the #2 player goes in the Mavs’ direction. The rest of the Nuggets roster was healthier, but realistically these sorts of issues of role player health just don’t overcome significantly more team success (in both wins and SRS) in the MVP assessment, for almost anyone. And especially not when the weight of individual statistics (both impact and box) goes in favor of the guy with the superior team success. Role player health is more of a tiebreaker factor, and there’s not a tie to break here.

Lively is not a role player tho, he's the starting center and I'd even argue that at least before the trade he was probably the most important player for the Mavs defensively. J.Green was a starter before the trade too. I'm pretty sure that without all the health issues the Mavs would win 7 or 8 games more.

[OhayoKD]

Luka is ahead of Jokic on EPM, EW and DRIP. Considering that he also leads the league in PPG, is second in APG and that the Mavs had a much worse luck with the injuries he probably should be the MVP.

Jokic is ahead in LEBRON, AuPM/g, DPM, and raw on-off. He’s ahead in BBREF BPM, Thinking Basketball BPM, win shares, and PER. On balance, impact data goes in Jokic’s favor (though, to Luka’s credit, he has made that discussion interesting). And Jokic is ahead in box metrics. Jokic’s team also did substantially better (both in wins and SRS), with Murray actually missing more games than Kyrie. Luka was great, but I think it’s pretty clear cut (as do most people, I think, since it seems Jokic is going to easily win).

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

Pulling out PER to argue for one player having an impact edge is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah. Luka has also consistently outpaced his on/off derivatives over full-games for his career, and was clearly dealing with a context less conducive to impact this year(roster turnover, more injuries, did not have an optimally fitting roster until the deadline) soooo...

yeah Jokic's argument is fine, but it's a stretch to call it better than Luka's this year, let alone placing him as "clearly" ahead. Majority of people also likely prefer Luka for MVP, so I'm not sure what the ad-populum play here is.

When talking about team success people seem to forget that as soon as the Mavs were healthy they went on a 14-2 run. And the last time the Mavs played against the Nuggets, which was a month ago, Luka outscored Jokic 37 points vs 16 points.

I think most people itt are well aware how good Dallas has played since the deadline. And who cares about points scored in a single matchup. Nobody should be considering that in MVP discussion.

Of course nobody should be hyper-focused on quality of teammates in an MVP discussion, yet we always do....

Fascinating line from someone who believes Jokic was obviously the MVP with less than 50 wins (not even a top 10 record in the league), and that Lebron should have won 10 MVP.

[lessthanjake]

Jokic is ahead in LEBRON, AuPM/g, DPM, and raw on-off. He’s ahead in BBREF BPM, Thinking Basketball BPM, win shares, and PER. On balance, impact data goes in Jokic’s favor (though, to Luka’s credit, he has made that discussion interesting). And Jokic is ahead in box metrics. Jokic’s team also did substantially better (both in wins and SRS), with Murray actually missing more games than Kyrie. Luka was great, but I think it’s pretty clear cut (as do most people, I think, since it seems Jokic is going to easily win).

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

Pulling out PER to argue for one player having an impact edge is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah. Luka has also consistently outpaced his on/off derivatives over full-games for his career, and was clearly dealing with a context less conducive to impact this year(roster turnover, more injuries, did not have an optimally fitting roster until the deadline) soooo...

I think you misunderstood my post. The first sentence was about impact metrics Jokic is ahead in. The second sentence was about box metrics Jokic is ahead in. The next two sentences then briefly summarized the lay of the land in the two types of metrics (addressing the two metric types in the same order as I addressed them in the first two sentences), keeping in mind both what I’d said in the first two sentences and what hagredionis’s post had mentioned. I was not saying PER is an impact metric, and I suspect you knew that. If you didn’t then I’m telling you now. Meanwhile, the rest of what you said is just handwaving that is not given much credence in MVP voting except perhaps as a real tiebreaker (which is not what we have here).

yeah Jokic's argument is fine, but it's a stretch to call it better than Luka's this year, let alone placing him as "clearly" ahead. Majority of people also likely prefer Luka for MVP, so I'm not sure what the ad-populum play here is.

This seems like a baseless statement that you’re hedging on by saying “likely.” The fact that Jokic is absolutely going to win the award is a strong suggestion otherwise. To the extent that journalists and “people” are a different category for you, FWIW, the General Board also has a thread asking who *should* win MVP, and, with quite a lot of votes, more than twice as many people have said Jokic as Luka.

[Texas Chuck]

Jokic is ahead in LEBRON, AuPM/g, DPM, and raw on-off. He’s ahead in BBREF BPM, Thinking Basketball BPM, win shares, and PER. On balance, impact data goes in Jokic’s favor (though, to Luka’s credit, he has made that discussion interesting). And Jokic is ahead in box metrics. Jokic’s team also did substantially better (both in wins and SRS), with Murray actually missing more games than Kyrie. Luka was great, but I think it’s pretty clear cut (as do most people, I think, since it seems Jokic is going to easily win).

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

Pulling out PER to argue for one player having an impact edge is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah. Luka has also consistently outpaced his on/off derivatives over full-games for his career, and was clearly dealing with a context less conducive to impact this year(roster turnover, more injuries, did not have an optimally fitting roster until the deadline) soooo...

yeah Jokic's argument is fine, but it's a stretch to call it better than Luka's this year, let alone placing him as "clearly" ahead. Majority of people also likely prefer Luka for MVP, so I'm not sure what the ad-populum play here is.

When talking about team success people seem to forget that as soon as the Mavs were healthy they went on a 14-2 run. And the last time the Mavs played against the Nuggets, which was a month ago, Luka outscored Jokic 37 points vs 16 points.

I think most people itt are well aware how good Dallas has played since the deadline. And who cares about points scored in a single matchup. Nobody should be considering that in MVP discussion.

Of course nobody should be hyper-focused on quality of teammates in an MVP discussion, yet we always do....

Fascinating line from someone who believes Jokic was obviously the MVP with less than 50 wins (not even a top 10 record in the league), and that Lebron should have won 10 MVP.

What is the relevance? Jokic should be MVP because he's the best, most valuable player in the league. Just as Lebron was year after year. Teammates don't enter into for me at all.

Fine to disagree with me but at least find a real reason lol.

[OhayoKD]

What are AuPM/g and DPM? Murray did not miss more games than Kyrie, he played 59 games and Kyrie played 58 games. But the Mavs also had Lively missed 27 games, J.Green 25 Kleber 39 and Exum 27 games. Dallas had by far the worse luck with the injuries this season.

Pulling out PER to argue for one player having an impact edge is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah. Luka has also consistently outpaced his on/off derivatives over full-games for his career, and was clearly dealing with a context less conducive to impact this year(roster turnover, more injuries, did not have an optimally fitting roster until the deadline) soooo...

I think you misunderstood my post. The first sentence was about impact metrics Jokic is ahead in. The second sentence was about box metrics Jokic is ahead in.

Fair. Let me revise: Pulling out AUPM(a combination of on/off and bpm) to argue for one player having a impact is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah.

There being a "box-score advantage" at all is just a non-starter etymologically as the numbers you pulled up have not really been justified as more useful in interpreting "production" for jokic and luka than what the person your replied to you used. Even keeping things to the BBR box-score, most people interpret Luka as having better numbers, and obviously you don't have any real argument against any sort of interpretation that values creation more, replacing assists with box-creation, shots created, # of defenders bypassed, or any interpretation that values ball-handling more.

Pretty much all the "impact" stuff you list can be sorted as "box-score" as well and we again get to you counting outputs which doesn't really prove anything logically.

Meanwhile, the rest of what you said is just handwaving that

Jokic's last MVP was heavily built on "handwaving". Not really sure your point. Luka certainly has his own statistical case(one that doesn't require made-up numbers):

Well, as you've commented on, there is the "net-rating without the starters" bit where Luka massively outshines everyone.

But there is also just what happens when we drop spot minutes and focus on full games:

Mavericks without Luka

4-8, 27 win pace, -10 net rating

Mavericks with Luka

46-24, 53 win pace, +4 net rating

That sort of swing is pretty rare over substantial samples(my filter is > 10 games) and it adds to a career trend where Luka's teams look alot better without him in a few minutes without him than they do when they have to hold the fort for full games.

For this season (with that sample filter), that's the 2nd best differential (behind Joel Embid) and comparable to what we saw with Jokic last season

Looking at how their teams get along for full games rather than a few minutes (why would we do that?), that +14 is a higher split than we've seen from any Jokic year including last year over a similar off sample. Ditto applies if we go with record, and it's not a one-off:

I guess my thing is 2-1 is a very small sample, and most other years, including last, Denver has been awful when Jokic misses games. Luka's sample is both large (in total) and has consistently shown big drops in team performance.

2024: 46-24 (54 pace), 4-8 (27 pace)
2023: 33-33 (41 pace), 5-11 (26 pace)
2022: 43-21 (55 pace), 8-9 (39 pace)
2021: 40-26 (50 pace), 2-4 (27 pace)
2020: 36-25 (48 pace), 7-7 (41 pace)

Moreover, if we look at how teammates affect things:

Spoiler:

Nuggets lineups analysis
Looking at the 9 most played lineups for the Nuggets, Jokic is part of 5 of those lineups. Of those 5 lineups, 4 include 3 or more starters. The most played lineup of K. Caldwell-Pope - A. Gordon - N. Jokic - J. Murray - M. Porter Jr. has played 895 minutes and the second 420, which is the same as the first but replacing Murray with Reggie when he is injured. A total of 1315 minutes played for the two most used lineups.

Overall, this tells us that the Nuggets rely heavily on the lineup mentioned above but also play a lot of lineups without starters or just 1 starter. Specifically, 3 of the top 9 lineups include Murray and bench players and the other is Reggie and bench players.

For reference, the third most played lineup is R. Jackson - Z. Nnaji - J. Strawther - C. Braun - P. Watson. I believe we can all tell this is vastly inferior to their starting lineup and yet has played 86 minutes. 81 minutes for the 4th lineup with Murray and bench players.

Naturally, because Jokic and most of the Nuggets starting lineup play so much together, their advanced stats that compare them to the players that replace them are inflated.

Mavericks lineups analysis
Now let's compare this to the Mavericks. Starting off, their most played lineup is K. Irving - D. Jones Jr. - P. Washington - L. Doncic - D. Gafford and comes at 122 minutes played. A staggering 773 minute difference, that would be good for the 3rd most used lineup in the entire league, behind Thunder's starting lineup.

Now let's look at Luka specifically. Out of the 25 most played lineups, he is part of 24 of them. Meaning that he plays equally as many minutes with basically every player on the roster (accounting for each player's minutes off course). Additionally, just the two most played lineups for the Nuggets have played 1315 minutes together, meanwhile the top 25 Mavs' lineups have played a total of 1096 minutes.

This means that Luka plays tons of minutes with every player on the Mavs roster, while Jokic plays the majority of his minutes with at least 3 starters. Plus the Nuggets' 2 main lineups have seen the floor more that the totality of the Mavs most played lineups.

We see, perhaps unsurprisingly, that Luka, who creates more than Jokic and scores more than Jokic, while efficiently having more of the offense run through him sees much better results without his fellow starters, looks more indispensable over full games, and less situationally affected by lineup fluctuations, being more tested on the latter front.

Simply put, Luka looks more valuable and he looks more valuable on a better team, especially if we go by relative standing(top 6 in the league vs not even top 10) than when Jokic last won MVP.

Pretty straightforward case I'd say. And certainly far less convoluted statistically than what I've seen from the Jokic proponents this thread.

The fact that Jokic is absolutely going to win the award is a strong suggestion otherwise.

Not really.

To the extent that journalists and “people” are a different category for you, FWIW, the General Board also has a thread asking who *should* win MVP, and, with quite a lot of votes, more than twice as many people have said Jokic as Luka.

Noted.

Fascinating line from someone who believes Jokic was obviously the MVP with less than 50 wins (not even a top 10 record in the league), and that Lebron should have won 10 MVP.

What is the relevance? Jokic should be MVP because he's the best, most valuable player in the league. Just as Lebron was year after year. Teammates don't enter into for me at all.

Fine to disagree with me but at least find a real reason lol.

Hard to justify a player being the most valuable player in the league while simultaneously being nowhere near the most successful, without a "hyperfocus" on teammates.

Unless "value" is just "whose game i have an aesthetic preference for" which may well be your "deep down" criteria.

[Texas Chuck]

Oh if its whose game I like watching the most, Maxi Kleber is the MVP.

But that's reductive and stupid and I forgot why I don't engage with you often. You never are willing to engage with the points I make in the posts you quote but rather invent windmills to tilt at.

I'm not telling you how to internet, you like that approach and should do you, but I need to run along.

[lessthanjake]

Pulling out PER to argue for one player having an impact edge is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah. Luka has also consistently outpaced his on/off derivatives over full-games for his career, and was clearly dealing with a context less conducive to impact this year(roster turnover, more injuries, did not have an optimally fitting roster until the deadline) soooo...

I think you misunderstood my post. The first sentence was about impact metrics Jokic is ahead in. The second sentence was about box metrics Jokic is ahead in.

Fair. Let me revise: Pulling out AUPM(a combination of on/off and bpm) to argue for one player having an impact is a decent indication there's no real advantage yeah.

Um, I also pulled out every other impact metric I’m aware of existing this season, except for the one that the other poster had already mentioned. In terms of impact metrics, Jokic is ahead of Luka in all but one. This is advantage Jokic, though as I said Luka is close enough to make it a discussion.

There being a "box-score advantage" at all is just a non-starter etymologically as the numbers you pulled up have not really been justified as more useful in interpreting "production" for jokic and luka than what the person your replied to you used. Even keeping things to the BBR box-score, most people interpret Luka as having better numbers, and obviously you don't have any real argument against any sort of interpretation that values creation more, replacing assists with box-creation, shots created, # of defenders bypassed, or any interpretation that values ball-handling more.

That’s just not really true. Both versions of BPM have been crafted to actually correlate well with impact. So yes, they have generally been justified as more useful in interpreting production than raw box score stats.

Pretty much all the "impact" stuff you list can be sorted as "box-score" as well and we again get to you counting outputs which doesn't really prove anything logically.

What is your point here? The only thing that wouldn’t have any box-score component at all would be something like raw RAPM. As far as I know, we don’t have that for the 2023-2024 season, so if you’re arguing that that’s what we should use instead then it’s just a totally null argument. The closest we have to that at this point is simply raw on-off, where Jokic is miles ahead of Luka. And, in any event, there’s good reason that these impact stats include a box component—which is that raw RAPM (or any similar type of measure) is really noisy in single-season samples, such that a box component is generally understood to make it more accurate. So you’re basically arguing for something that doesn’t exist and isn’t better anyways, instead of the better and readily available stuff that on balance shows Jokic ahead.

Meanwhile, the rest of what you said is just handwaving that

Jokic's last MVP was heavily built on "handwaving". Not really sure your point. Luka certainly has his own statistical case(one that doesn't require made-up numbers):

No, Jokic’s last MVP wasn’t “heavily built on ‘handwaving.’” I’ve written about that in this thread—the terribleness of Jokic’s team ended up merely being essentially a tiebreaker between guys who were statistically similar and with similar team success. But, more importantly, unfortunately for Luka, he isn’t trying to win MVP over 2022 Jokic. He’s trying to win it over 2024 Jokic. This is a much tougher lift, precisely because 2024 Jokic had much more team success than 2022 Jokic and factors like team quality aren’t weighed very highly. 2024 Jokic would very easily win MVP over 2022 Jokic, so invoking 2022 Jokic is a worthless point.

Well, as you've commented on, there is the "net-rating without the starters" bit where Luka massively outshines everyone.

But there is also just what happens when we drop spot minutes and focus on full games:

Mavericks without Luka

4-8, 27 win pace, -10 net rating

Mavericks with Luka

46-24, 53 win pace, +4 net rating

That sort of swing is pretty rare over substantial samples(my filter is > 10 games) and it adds to a career trend where Luka's teams look alot better without him in a few minutes without him than they do when they have to hold the fort for full games.

For this season (with that sample filter), that's the 2nd best differential (behind Joel Embid) and comparable to what we saw with Jokic last season

Looking at how their teams get along for full games rather than a few minutes (why would we do that?), that +14 is a higher split than we've seen from any Jokic year including last year over a similar off sample.

And as I’ve explained in another thread, this is basically just complete nonsense low-sample-size data that is highly reliant on the existence of blowout losses in a couple games at the end of the season that the Mavs were not trying to win (because their first-round matchup was already set). See my post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=112470860#p112470860.

The upshot is that when we take out the completely garbage data points that massively skew the data, and also adjust for strength of schedule, we find that the Mavericks had a +4.10 SRS with Luka and a -2.95 SRS without Luka. That’s a +7.05 SRS WOWY impact this season. Completely different than the number you’re pushing here, which is just driven by end-of-season garbage games where the team didn’t care. And, by the way, that +7.05 SRS WOWY impact is still really good, but is lower than the +8.09 SRS WOWY impact I’ve demonstrated that Jokic had in the last four seasons (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=112389098#p112389098).

Ditto applies if we go with record, and it's not a one-off:

I guess my thing is 2-1 is a very small sample, and most other years, including last, Denver has been awful when Jokic misses games. Luka's sample is both large (in total) and has consistently shown big drops in team performance.

2024: 46-24 (54 pace), 4-8 (27 pace)
2023: 33-33 (41 pace), 5-11 (26 pace)
2022: 43-21 (55 pace), 8-9 (39 pace)
2021: 40-26 (50 pace), 2-4 (27 pace)
2020: 36-25 (48 pace), 7-7 (41 pace)

I really don’t see what your point is here. The Nuggets have gone 9-15 without Jokic in that exact same timeframe, while going 242-125 with Jokic. That’s a 54-win pace with Jokic and a 31-win pace without Jokic. That’s compared to this data for Luka showing a total of a 50-win pace with Luka and a 31-win pace without Luka. This doesn’t go in Luka’s favor.

Moreover, if we look at how teammates affect things:

This is small sample-size theater. Look at the number of possessions and consider that there’s about 100 possessions per game . It’s the equivalent of looking at players’ net ratings a handful of games into the regular season. It’s really just noise.

It’s also not even full-season data. And, if we’re going to go with such low-sample size data, just for reference, the net rating for the Nuggets with Jokic off and Murray/Porter/Gordon on was -9.28. The net rating for the Nuggets with Jokic off and Murray/Porter/KCP on was -10.32. The net rating for the Nuggets with Jokic off and Murray/Gordon/KCP on was -0.20. The net rating for the Nuggets with Jokic off and Gordon/KCP/Porter on was +1.46. These are all tiny samples, but those are all the combinations of 3+ of their actual starters without Jokic. So it’s a little hard to tell what the data you’re citing is based off of. The Nuggets starting players really did not do well together without Jokic. And, of course, more generally looking at how the teams did with their best player off and their second best player on, the Nuggets were -14.02 with Murray on and Jokic off. The Mavs were +1.17 with Kyrie on and Luka off.

It’s also hard to tell what it’s referring to with the playing-with-three-bench-players part. The Nuggets with Jokic on and Murray/Porter/Gordon off had a +4.31 net rating (in 281 mins). The Nuggets with Jokic on and Murray/Porter/KCP off had a +6.20 net rating (in 171 mins). The Nuggets with Jokic on and Murray/Gordon/KCP off had a -0.29 net rating (in 171 mins). The Nuggets with Jokic on and Porter/KCP/Gordon off had a +7.42 net rating (in 170 mins). The Nuggets objectively did well with Jokic on and 3+ other starters off. For reference, the Mavs starting lineups were obviously more in flux, but if we just look at their three most started players besides Luka this season, the Mavs with Luka on and Kyrie/Jones/Lively off had a -5.67 net rating in 301 minutes. The numbers you’re citing seem to be highly influenced by the fact that the Mavs had a +17.69 net rating in minutes with Jones/Lively/Green off, but Luka and *Kyrie* on. Which is great, but kind of defeats the purpose of seeing what these guys do with lesser players around them. On that note, the Mavs were +1.74 with Luka on and Kyrie off, while the Nuggets were +7.73 with Jokic on and Murray off. The Nuggets were very clearly better than the Mavs when both teams had their clear second best player off the floor. Most of this stuff is just small sample size nonsense, but it doesn’t really go against Jokic. Probably more importantly, what happens in all these lineup combinations gets taken into account in impact measures anyways (except AuPM/g, which just uses on-off).

[eminence]

Here is a publicly available single season rapm: https://psteve.shinyapps.io/RAPM/

1 year 2024
Jokic: +2.95 (11th)
Luka: +1.18 (89th)

3 year 2024
Jokic: +7.78 (1st)
Luka: +2.77 (63rd)

5 year 2024
Jokic: +6.39 (3rd)
Luka: +2.8 (51st)

As noted, don't go too hard on the single season. It is what it is (I've found my vertex weighting seems stable in smaller samples than regression). I personally prefer the 3 year samples the most.

[lessthanjake]

Here is a publicly available single season rapm: https://psteve.shinyapps.io/RAPM/

1 year 2024
Jokic: +2.95 (11th)
Luka: +1.18 (89th)

3 year 2024
Jokic: +7.78 (1st)
Luka: +2.77 (63rd)

5 year 2024
Jokic: +6.39 (3rd)
Luka: +2.8 (51st)

As noted, don't go too hard on the single season. It is what it is (I've found my vertex weighting seems stable in smaller samples than regression). I personally prefer the 3 year samples the most.

Thanks! I was not aware this existed!

[DraymondGold]

There being a "box-score advantage" at all is just a non-starter etymologically as the numbers you pulled up have not really been justified as more useful in interpreting "production" for jokic and luka than what the person your replied to you used. Even keeping things to the BBR box-score, most people interpret Luka as having better numbers, and obviously you don't have any real argument against any sort of interpretation that values creation more, replacing assists with box-creation, shots created, # of defenders bypassed, or any interpretation that values ball-handling more.

That’s just not really true. Both versions of BPM have been crafted to actually correlate well with impact. So yes, they have generally been justified as more useful in interpreting production than raw box score stats.

Hey jake! Just to provide a little more context for the accuracy of BPM:

Thinking Basketball's BPM, which the most accurate box stat on the market, is significantly closer to APM and PIPM than PER or PPG in accuracy of evaluating current season value, and actually outperforms single-season APM and PIPM in predicting future value since 1998. It does a better job than other box stats at capturing defense (Russell has the 6th best career in Backpicks VORP, compared to Basketball Reference VORP ranking Russell 20th, despite a dearth of defensive box stats back in the 60s) and playmaking (Magic has the 5th best career in Backpicks VORP, compared to Basketball Reference VORP ranking Magic 26th).

Source: https://fansided.com/2019/01/08/nylon-calculus-best-advanced-stat/

Pretty much all the "impact" stuff you list can be sorted as "box-score" as well and we again get to you counting outputs which doesn't really prove anything logically.

What is your point here? The only thing that wouldn’t have any box-score component at all would be something like raw RAPM. As far as I know, we don’t have that for the 2023-2024 season, so if you’re arguing that that’s what we should use instead then it’s just a totally null argument. The closest we have to that at this point is simply raw on-off, where Jokic is miles ahead of Luka. And, in any event, there’s good reason that these impact stats include a box component—which is that raw RAPM (or any similar type of measure) is really noisy in single-season samples, such that a box component is generally understood to make it more accurate. So you’re basically arguing for something that doesn’t exist and isn’t better anyways, instead of the better and readily available stuff that on balance shows Jokic ahead.

Yep, adding box stats to a plus minus metric to make intelligently designed hybrid stats definitely increases the accuracy of the stat.

And agreed, Jokic definitely far exceeds Luka in something "pure" like on/off:
-Jokic: +20.0 (one year), +20.9 (two year), +19.4 (three year)
-Luka: +9.4 (one year), +7.3 (two year), +5.0 (three year)
i.e. Jokic is having all-time regular season on/off, approaching GOAT level, while Luka's is concerningly low for a player of his caliber (and worth diving deeper to see what's happening there -- see, e.g., the recent Thinking Basketball video).

One correction though: I've actually recently discovered this website, thebasketballdatabase.com , which has some RAPM numbers and playoff RAPM for the full plus minus era, including the latest season!

You can find the 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year RAPM data for the latest seasons here: https://thebasketballdatabase.com/2023-24RegularSeasonPlayerRAPMComprehensive.html. As you know, there's some variations in RAPM, based on different uses of priors and lambda (which regresses outlier events, particularly players that have low sample sizes such as bench players with very few minutes, back to the mean). They present their RAPM as a "vanilla" RAPM, with no priors (although they don't compare their lambda vs Engelmann's or Goldsteins). And Jokic has a similar significant advantage vs Luka here too:

(Basketball Database) RAPM ranks:
-Jokic: 2nd (one year), 1st (three years), 5th (five years)
-Luka: 128th (one year), 64th (three years), 49th (five years)
Again, Jokic is miles ahead of Luka, at least in this measure.

Not to say this is the end-all, be-all. Data comes with uncertainty bars, and I'm not sure whether the stats have Jokic beyond the uncertainty range of Luka. There's different ways to evaluate a player, as I'm sure you'd agree. Some people might prefer Luka's box production more, or prefer to do film study over statistics (although usually detailed film-study tends to favor Jokic), or perhaps people have more resilience concerns with Jokic (i.e. is his decrease in playoff on/off actually a signal, e.g. that his lack of perimeter mobility on defense makes him vulnerable to certain matchups). Other people might want to incorporate other contextual factors into MVP... some people actually prefer to have voter fatigue (e.g. to save the 3+ MVP winners for the truly all-time players), which might favor Luka since he hasn't won yet.

Still, I tend to agree with you that the stats pretty clearly favor Jokic (or at least don't favor Luka), whether you're looking at pure impact, or box hybrid, or WOWY.

On another note -- If you're interested, that site I linked also includes playoff RAPM, although it's a little hard to navigate to (Seasons -> *pick a season* -> players -> Postseason -> *pick RAPM*). I'm not sure how useful "vanilla" playoff RAPM is, given the small sample size, and the minimal number of opponents/lineups (e.g. it's hard to tell a player A in the west is vs player B in the east, when the two lost in the first/second round and never faced each other or may not have even had any common opponents).

Personally, my ideal playoff RAPM would use some sort of prior to make up for this (e.g. RS RAPM or box inputs or or whatnot), and might even include the RS play by play data too, as a full-season RAPM. All that to say, if you're going to use the postseason RAPM from that website, I'd heavily encourage taking the number with a healthy grain of salt (i.e. wide uncertainty bars), and really only in the large samples like 5-year PS RAPM. So perhaps not very useful... but it could still be interesting if you're curious!

[Jaqua92]

If have him 3rd on my list, at most — behind Jokic (1) and Shai (2) . I’m not a fan of giving MVP’s to guys 4th seed and down unless there’s some meaningful extenuating circumstance.. and even then he’d have to outdo the guys ahead of him statistically by a good margin, which I don’t think he has.

He almost missed 12 games, whereas by comparison, Jokic missed 3 and Shain missed 7. I think that still matters.

so Jokic gets mvp when he cant even win 50 as a 6th seed but luka cant get it when he wins 50 as a 5th seed?

why not just give it to tatum then.

Because Jokic's team was worse, and Jokic lead the NBA in ALL advanced stats

[Jaivl]

wait people really believe luka doncic this year had the best offensive season ever lol

what is 2024 lukas case over 2019 harden or 2020 harden using advanced stats

Ehh, Luka vs Shai is about as clear as Jokic vs Luka for me. Think Shai is overrated to the moon and is probably more like top 7 than top 3, but hey, it works for me

Nothing wrong with being objective, but you have to be the only OKC fan who I've seen say outright that Shai isn't on Luka's level
What about Shai's season do you find the numbers overrating? Is it the defense? I know his passing isn't stellar but in the context of just what we saw in the RS, it's the something that on average was not readily taken advantage of by opposing teams.

Defense is not a concern at all, much better than expected from a lead guard.

I don't think his driving game is versatile enough in terms of consistently creating high quality looks on a playoff setting, he's neither explosive enough nor a slick enough dribbler, and I see him settling for middies, which are probably more like 45% than 50% when contested. He's around Tatum level for me.

[ShaqAttac]

ome people actually prefer to have voter fatigue (e.g. to save the 3+ MVP winners for the truly all-time players), which might favor Luka since he hasn't won yet.

Still, I tend to agree with you that the stats pretty clearly favor Jokic (or at least don't favor Luka), whether you're looking at pure impact, or box hybrid, or WOWY. s!

doesnt WOWY favor Luka?

[ShaqAttac]

If have him 3rd on my list, at most — behind Jokic (1) and Shai (2) . I’m not a fan of giving MVP’s to guys 4th seed and down unless there’s some meaningful extenuating circumstance.. and even then he’d have to outdo the guys ahead of him statistically by a good margin, which I don’t think he has.

He almost missed 12 games, whereas by comparison, Jokic missed 3 and Shain missed 7. I think that still matters.

so Jokic gets mvp when he cant even win 50 as a 6th seed but luka cant get it when he wins 50 as a 5th seed?

why not just give it to tatum then.

Because Jokic's team was worse, and Jokic lead the NBA in ALL advanced stats

there a bunch of stats luka lead jokic posted on this thread so idk how jokic can lead in all of them

[eminence]

ome people actually prefer to have voter fatigue (e.g. to save the 3+ MVP winners for the truly all-time players), which might favor Luka since he hasn't won yet.

Still, I tend to agree with you that the stats pretty clearly favor Jokic (or at least don't favor Luka), whether you're looking at pure impact, or box hybrid, or WOWY. s!

doesnt WOWY favor Luka?

What sample would you be looking at?

Jokic has no real without sample this season for single season (only missed 3 games). In more mid-term it looks pretty even. Career slightly favors Jokic.

[ShaqAttac]

ome people actually prefer to have voter fatigue (e.g. to save the 3+ MVP winners for the truly all-time players), which might favor Luka since he hasn't won yet.

Still, I tend to agree with you that the stats pretty clearly favor Jokic (or at least don't favor Luka), whether you're looking at pure impact, or box hybrid, or WOWY. s!

doesnt WOWY favor Luka?

What sample would you be looking at?

Jokic has no real without sample this season for single season (only missed 3 games). In more mid-term it looks pretty even. Career slightly favors Jokic.

well based on the kd post 24 vs 23 ig.

idk where u find wowy tho