Snake3 wrote:MMyhre wrote:Special_Puppy wrote:
SGA has the best supporting cast in the NBA
And yet the Thunder offense is -19.8 points worse per 100 possessions when Shai sits. That's higher than Jokic by the way.
It's about time we focus less on the supporting cast narrative, and start realizing that Shai is a generational player that is about to his his peak years.
He is getting better this season and closing in on 40 % from three for the season (averaging 2.9 threes made on 48.9 % in his last 8 games), with a lot of those shots being stepback threes in the clutch. He is also on pace to have the best volume shooting season from 10-16 feet in NBA history, surpassing Durant in 22-23. He is leading the 25-26 clutch stats by a shitton.
He is just a beast and the race is going to be between him and Jokic, again. Luka is third, Wemby & Giannis are likely out as their teams will lose a lot without them, with too bad of a record to compete with the top 2.
Yeah, SGA is a +20.6 offensively. That's better than Jokic is who is currently a +19.4. The fact that SGA even matches up or surpasses Jokic in the offensive category is a testament to not only how good he is, but how much the team relies on him. But Giannis is better than both of them in that regard and is a +21.8. He won't get any nods to mvp because his team won't be nearly as good as the other two, and he is probably the most injury-prone out of the three.
I think all the top 4-5 mvp candidates are great in their regard. It's natural to nitpick. So the supporting cast will always play a role in it. The better the teammates are or the better on court chemistry you have will help the individual on the court and/or help your team win games. Sometimes the lower the +/- stats are the indicator of how good the team is. You always have to use context with it.
With Jokic, for example, he has more guys who could hide and help on defense. And the team has a different defensive coach from last year. So, his defensive impact numbers should be better than last year, even though his rim protection is still net zero or slightly worse.
sure there is sample size issues, i expect jokic to overcome shai as the season goes on on the offensive end. but as of now in this limited sample size shai is in all serious impact metrics a hair above jokic offensively.
and that means a lot since i have jokic as arguably the best offensive player of all time and to thing sga simply exists in that realm, in that wavelenght of offensive performance and impact just blows my mind and make me very happy.
of course the thunder would be a playoff team without shai (with jdub), mostly riding on all time defensive effort (which shai is a strong contributor). what happens is that shai elevates an offense that would have trouble getting close to league average, to a consistent top 5 unit. in fact daigneault has managed a portion of his playing time with g league level players such as barnhizer, dieng, carlson, and an nba lineup with all those guys together shouldn't even survive an nba floor and they do because shai manages to make them competitive on his own.