2022-23 NBA MVP Discussion (Pt.1)

[Prez]

What is disingenuous is saying that the interpretation of MVP awards are restricted only to the years they are awarded. That's why back-to-back and back-to-back-to-back become progressively harder to convince people of awarding. Let's say Jokic wins a third MVP. What is the interpretation that gives? Not only that he was the best player in these years, it suggests he was the best player in this era. That would be a lie. That overrides everything else.

I’m sorry that you’re upset Curry didn’t deserve MVP any of the past 3 seasons, but no, it really isn’t disingenuous to suggest that what happens in a given season is what actually matters when giving awards for that season. Voter fatigue being a problem doesn’t change that.

I'm sorry that your way of coming up with an MVP produces lies and misrepresentations to history. That's why one should take advantage of there being is no set criteria for the award.

Nope, no misrepresentation of history happening. Jokic is one of the most incredible players in the history of the sport and will end his career universally recognized as such, no matter what mental gymnastics you want to do to talk down his greatness. Him winning MVPs aligns with how these players actually performed, it just doesn’t align with what you wanted to happen.

[WarriorGM]

I’m sorry that you’re upset Curry didn’t deserve MVP any of the past 3 seasons, but no, it really isn’t disingenuous to suggest that what happens in a given season is what actually matters when giving awards for that season. Voter fatigue being a problem doesn’t change that.

I'm sorry that your way of coming up with an MVP produces lies and misrepresentations to history. That's why one should take advantage of there being is no set criteria for the award.

Nope, no misrepresentation of history happening. Jokic is one of the most incredible players in the history of the sport and will end his career universally recognized as such, no matter what mental gymnastics you want to do to talk down his greatness. Him winning MVPs aligns with how these players actually performed, it just doesn’t align with what you wanted to happen.

The Warriors finished with a better record than the Nuggets. The Warriors eliminated the Nuggets. Curry has led more winning teams than Jokic. Curry's winning teams weren't just winning teams, they were record winning teams. Curry turned around a team more drastically from last to a championship than anyone in NBA history. Despite all this MVPs you should suggest should be 3 for Jokic and 2 for Curry? As I said, it is silly. It seems though I will be mocking the silliness of this for years to come.

[Prez]

I'm sorry that your way of coming up with an MVP produces lies and misrepresentations to history. That's why one should take advantage of there being is no set criteria for the award.

Nope, no misrepresentation of history happening. Jokic is one of the most incredible players in the history of the sport and will end his career universally recognized as such, no matter what mental gymnastics you want to do to talk down his greatness. Him winning MVPs aligns with how these players actually performed, it just doesn’t align with what you wanted to happen.

The Warriors finished with a better record than the Nuggets. The Warriors eliminated the Nuggets. Curry has led more winning teams than Jokic. Curry's winning teams weren't just winning teams, they were record winning teams. Curry turned around a team more drastically from last to a championship than anyone in NBA history. Despite all this MVPs you should suggest should be 3 for Jokic and 2 for Curry? As I said, it is silly. It seems though I will be mocking the silliness of this for years to come.

Again your arguments for Curry deserving MVP over Jokic in the 21-22 regular season are almost entirely unrelated to what actually happened in the 21-22 regular season. Sorry, not interested in just ignoring what these players actually do in the regular seasons in which we’re handing out the awards just because you think it doesn’t “feel” right.

[Infinite Llamas]

Curry/Klay/Green/Wiggins/Poole

Vs

Jokic/Gordon/Rivers/Barton/Morris

The mere fact that Golden State lost a game to that Denver team should be a stain on Curry’s legacy. It’s easy to puff out your chest when your team is stacked but give Jokic guys like Klay/Green/KD and I guarantee you he wins a championship or two. And Curry ain’t winning squat with any of the supporting casts that Jokic has ever had.

[WarriorGM]

Curry/Klay/Green/Wiggins/Poole

Vs

Jokic/Gordon/Rivers/Barton/Morris

The mere fact that Golden State lost a game to that Denver team should be a stain on Curry’s legacy. It’s easy to puff out your chest when your team is stacked but give Jokic guys like Klay/Green/KD and I guarantee you he wins a championship or two. And Curry ain’t winning squat with any of the supporting casts that Jokic has ever had.

I find it incredibly odd people keep coming up with statements like Curry would never win with a cast like this when Curry won a championship with a team that had the longest odds at the start of the season from as far back as I can tell and just recently brought a team that was dead last to a championship in two years. If there is anyone in NBA history who has actually brought a bad team to a championship Curry should be a prime example.

[Prez]

No they aren’t lol. Jokic last season in addition to having a massive advantage in the box score numbers also had the edge in all of the following impact metrics:

On/off (including just offensive on/off)
RPM
RAPTOR
EPM
Luck adjusted RAPM

And again, Curry had the worst individual regular season of his prime last season and they only won 5 more games than the Nuggets despite having a huge talent advantage and the Nuggets’ 2nd and 3rd best players missing basically the whole season. Curry didn’t deserve MVP over Jokic last year based on what happened in the 21-22 regular season, which is literally the only thing that matters for the 21-22 MVP.

Huge talent advantage? Are we sure? Because Curry played with an all-star and former all-stars? But none of them were all-stars without Curry. With Curry inured they had a worse record than the Jalen Brunson led Mavericks. Two years earlier they were last in the league without Curry. Turning that situation around strikes me as more impressive than what Jokic did.

Turning that situation around

Were there any other key players missing that year? Curry missed damn near a full season with a hand injury, Klay was out, Green was out a full third of the season, Wiggins played 12 games as a Warrior...either you didn't watch that season at all, or you're hoping people forgot...

We saw Curry lead them to missing the playoffs without Klay and the following year winning a ring when Klay was back...almost as if having the 2nd GOAT shooter as a threat opens up a lot...

The Warriors top 12 in minutes in their 15 win season, descending order:

Eric Paschall
Glenn Robinson III
Damion Lee
Alec Burks
Jordan Poole (rookie season and was atrocious)
Draymond (missed 22 games)
Marquese Chriss
D’Angelo Russell
Ky Bowman
Willie Cauley Stein
Omari Spellman
Jacob Evans

7 of those 12 players are literally out of the league right now lol.

Not even remotely the same team that won the title in ‘22, but we’re gonna sit here and pretend it was just all Curry responsible for that turnaround

[slick_watts]

if the season ended today i think jokic would get my vote, again. i don't think there's any realistic way he 3peats for political reasons but once again i think he'll separate himself out of the pack as the best player in the league.

[WarriorGM]

Huge talent advantage? Are we sure? Because Curry played with an all-star and former all-stars? But none of them were all-stars without Curry. With Curry inured they had a worse record than the Jalen Brunson led Mavericks. Two years earlier they were last in the league without Curry. Turning that situation around strikes me as more impressive than what Jokic did.

Turning that situation around

Were there any other key players missing that year? Curry missed damn near a full season with a hand injury, Klay was out, Green was out a full third of the season, Wiggins played 12 games as a Warrior...either you didn't watch that season at all, or you're hoping people forgot...

We saw Curry lead them to missing the playoffs without Klay and the following year winning a ring when Klay was back...almost as if having the 2nd GOAT shooter as a threat opens up a lot...

The Warriors top 12 in minutes in their 15 win season, descending order:

Eric Paschall
Glenn Robinson III
Damion Lee
Alec Burks
Jordan Poole (rookie season and was atrocious)
Draymond (missed 22 games)
Marquese Chriss
D’Angelo Russell
Ky Bowman
Willie Cauley Stein
Omari Spellman
Jacob Evans

7 of those 12 players are literally out of the league right now lol.

Not even remotely the same team that won the title in ‘22, but we’re gonna sit here and pretend it was just all Curry responsible for that turnaround

If all one had to do was dump players and trade them in for new ones maybe we'd have more examples of teams coming from last to a championship—but we don't. Curry has already won championships starting out with bad teams twice in his career. Some greats have never done it even once. Jokic is still in that category.

[yoyoboy]

Jokic’s supporting cast was absolutely terrible compared to Curry’s last year. I don’t know how anyone could seriously compare the two lol.

Joker’s ability to turn a bunch of very limited players into a high functioning offense is so impressive. Curry is great, but he just can’t shoulder the same load. The Warriors haven’t generated a top 10 offense the last 4 seasons. Steph is at his best when he’s the most important piece of an offense full of playmaking, movement, and shooting. But he can’t just take a bunch of rag tag journeymen, allow them to stick to very defined abilities, and be the entire system that makes them look passable. The fact that Jokic has this group sitting at the #3 offense in the league right now is crazy.

[WarriorGM]

Jokic’s supporting cast was absolutely terrible compared to Curry’s last year. I don’t know how anyone could seriously compare the two lol.

Joker’s ability to turn a bunch of very limited players into a high functioning offense is so impressive. Curry is great, but he just can’t shoulder the same load. The Warriors haven’t generated a top 10 offense the last 3 seasons. Steph is at his best when he’s the most important piece of an offense full of playmaking, movement, and shooting. But he can’t just take a bunch of rag tag journeymen, allow them to stick to very defined abilities, and be the entire system that makes them look passable.

The above statement is pretty baseless. I'd take Curry 2021 over Jokic 2022. Curry's 2021 roster of teammates by some measures was even worse than the 2020 one that finished last. It was so bad it benefited from addition by subtraction—and when that was done Curry brought it to a 60-win pace.

[Prez]

Turning that situation around

Were there any other key players missing that year? Curry missed damn near a full season with a hand injury, Klay was out, Green was out a full third of the season, Wiggins played 12 games as a Warrior...either you didn't watch that season at all, or you're hoping people forgot...

We saw Curry lead them to missing the playoffs without Klay and the following year winning a ring when Klay was back...almost as if having the 2nd GOAT shooter as a threat opens up a lot...

The Warriors top 12 in minutes in their 15 win season, descending order:

Eric Paschall
Glenn Robinson III
Damion Lee
Alec Burks
Jordan Poole (rookie season and was atrocious)
Draymond (missed 22 games)
Marquese Chriss
D’Angelo Russell
Ky Bowman
Willie Cauley Stein
Omari Spellman
Jacob Evans

7 of those 12 players are literally out of the league right now lol.

Not even remotely the same team that won the title in ‘22, but we’re gonna sit here and pretend it was just all Curry responsible for that turnaround

If all one had to do was dump players and trade them in for new ones maybe we'd have more examples of teams coming from last to a championship—but we don't. Curry has already won championships starting out with bad teams twice in his career. Some greats have never done it even once. Jokic is still in that category.

You can craft whatever narrative you want out of it. But the Warriors being terrible when they had an absolutely garbage roster with Curry missing almost the entire season one year, and then getting waaaay better 2 years later when the roster gets completely transformed with better players and a healthy Curry…that isn’t some crazy feat at all. It’s exactly what should happen and would be bizarre if it didn’t.

[WarriorGM]

The Warriors top 12 in minutes in their 15 win season, descending order:

Eric Paschall
Glenn Robinson III
Damion Lee
Alec Burks
Jordan Poole (rookie season and was atrocious)
Draymond (missed 22 games)
Marquese Chriss
D’Angelo Russell
Ky Bowman
Willie Cauley Stein
Omari Spellman
Jacob Evans

7 of those 12 players are literally out of the league right now lol.

Not even remotely the same team that won the title in ‘22, but we’re gonna sit here and pretend it was just all Curry responsible for that turnaround

If all one had to do was dump players and trade them in for new ones maybe we'd have more examples of teams coming from last to a championship—but we don't. Curry has already won championships starting out with bad teams twice in his career. Some greats have never done it even once. Jokic is still in that category.

You can craft whatever narrative you want out of it. But the Warriors being terrible when they had an absolutely garbage roster with Curry missing almost the entire season one year, and then getting waaaay better when the roster gets completely transformed with better players and a healthy Curry…that isn’t some crazy feat at all. It’s exactly what should happen and would be bizarre if it didn’t.

Get better sure. Win a championship? You're free to cite other examples in NBA history. At the start of 2020 the likes of Jokic and Doncic had far more favorable outlooks of winning a championship in the coming years but it's Curry who won first.

[Prez]

If all one had to do was dump players and trade them in for new ones maybe we'd have more examples of teams coming from last to a championship—but we don't. Curry has already won championships starting out with bad teams twice in his career. Some greats have never done it even once. Jokic is still in that category.

You can craft whatever narrative you want out of it. But the Warriors being terrible when they had an absolutely garbage roster with Curry missing almost the entire season one year, and then getting waaaay better when the roster gets completely transformed with better players and a healthy Curry…that isn’t some crazy feat at all. It’s exactly what should happen and would be bizarre if it didn’t.

Get better sure. Win a championship? You're free to cite other examples in NBA history.

Curry is the only title winning centerpiece among the last 25 champions to miss basically an entire season in his prime. Dirk, LeBron, Giannis, Duncan, etc didn’t miss an entire season in their primes in the same year their roster got decimated.

It’s a purely a situation of circumstance tied to Curry’s season long absence coinciding with a rebuild year for the Warriors that you have just crafted a favorable narrative around. Unique only in that again, other superstar centerpieces didn’t miss almost a whole season like Curry did.

If anything, all that 19-20 season did with Curry missing the year was prevent him from having another healthy season in his prime where he missed the playoffs.

[WarriorGM]

You can craft whatever narrative you want out of it. But the Warriors being terrible when they had an absolutely garbage roster with Curry missing almost the entire season one year, and then getting waaaay better when the roster gets completely transformed with better players and a healthy Curry…that isn’t some crazy feat at all. It’s exactly what should happen and would be bizarre if it didn’t.

Get better sure. Win a championship? You're free to cite other examples in NBA history.

Curry is the only title winning centerpiece among the last 25 champions to miss an entire season (or close to it) in his prime. Dirk, LeBron, Giannis, Duncan, etc didn’t miss an entire season in their primes in the same year their roster got decimated.

It’s a purely a situation of circumstance tied to Curry’s season long absence coinciding with a rebuild year for the Warriors that you have just crafted a favorable narrative around. Unique only in that again, other superstar centerpieces didn’t miss almost a whole season like Curry did.

If anything, all that 19-20 season did with Curry missing the year was prevent him from having another healthy season in his prime where he missed the playoffs.

Whether he missed it or not it was a very bad roster full of rookies and journeymen. Two years later: championship. While adding what? Klay who was coming off Achilles and ACL injuries halfway through the season when the team already had the best or second best record? If that's the standard we're working with it should be perfectly reasonable to expect Jokic to win a title this year.

[Prez]

Get better sure. Win a championship? You're free to cite other examples in NBA history.

Curry is the only title winning centerpiece among the last 25 champions to miss an entire season (or close to it) in his prime. Dirk, LeBron, Giannis, Duncan, etc didn’t miss an entire season in their primes in the same year their roster got decimated.

It’s a purely a situation of circumstance tied to Curry’s season long absence coinciding with a rebuild year for the Warriors that you have just crafted a favorable narrative around. Unique only in that again, other superstar centerpieces didn’t miss almost a whole season like Curry did.

If anything, all that 19-20 season did with Curry missing the year was prevent him from having another healthy season in his prime where he missed the playoffs.

Whether he missed it or not it was a very bad roster full of rookies and journeymen. Two years later: championship. While adding what? Klay who was coming off Achilles and ACL injuries halfway through the season when the team already had the best or second best record?

Uh, yeah, that’s literally the point. It was a garbage roster loaded with bad players including 7 of the top 12 being out of the league within 2-3 years, and a rookie version of Poole who was also awful.

And then the Warriors in ‘22 had full season Curry, got back Klay, got back Looney fully, got a full season of Wiggins, had a 3rd season Poole breakout, had role guys like GP2, Porter, Bjelica, while having literally none of the G-League level negative players from their ‘20 team in the rotation.

Only 3 guys in the top 12 in minutes of the awful ‘20 team were in the ‘22 Warriors rotation - Draymond, Poole, and Lee.…and again, Poole was horrible his rookie year in ‘20 and him breaking out in ‘22 was a huge part of the turnaround on top of other substantial changes.

It was a completely different team and pretending as though it was basically the same thing or downplaying the changes is pure nonsense just to craft the obvious narrative you’re seeking.

[DutchManDanFan]

Warriors won the championship and Curry was finals MVP. Those 2 are correlated. Winning a championship has nothing to do with winning the REGULAR SEASON MVP.
Why are you complaining man. This is just silly.

[CobraCommander]

Might as well give the MVP to Jokic again if only to expose the silliness of the way the award has been handed out the past few years. If people were actually interested in making the award relevant they would have found a way to give it to Curry.

Lol what? Curry had no case for MVP over Jokic last year at all, the year before that the Warriors missed the playoffs, and the year before that were a 15 win team with Curry missing most of the season.

Are we supposed to just ignore anything that actually happens in the season and just hand the award to Curry anyways?

Curry was the most impressive player in 2021. Among players seriously thought of as worthy of MVP consideration he had the best record in 2022. He presented an argument on either end of that spectrum in those respective years. Jokic's argument was pretty much the same one putting up nice numbers on a mediocre team. If the voters want to be consistently silly they can award Jokic the MVP for the same thing yet again this year.

Or maybe Jokic was the best player on earth last year AND this year...

[LFAHFN22]

The best player on the best team, averaging 30 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists, in only 32 minutes... Doesn't seem like he's receiving enough chatter in this discussion.

[Exp0sed]

The best player on the best team, averaging 30 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists, in only 32 minutes... Doesn't seem like he's receiving enough chatter in this discussion.

Giannis has gotten plenty of chatter

most folks were waiting on his efficiency to start normalizing
The Bucks are also doing ok without him, which goes to show you how strong their squad acually is
but he is probably top 1-3 of 98% who posted here, how is that not enough chatter?

also - that Memphis game was painful

As for Jokic, I think it's premature and tbh I don't think he has been playing as well as his numbers suggest

Love the Joker and I think he's been the best player in basketball these last couple of years but MVP is a different matter
The Nuggets really had an incredibly easy schedule as of late, they'll start racking up losses soon if they don't make a move \ fire Malone etc.

That's not on Jokic in fact I think his cast is still really bad, especially due to the terrible guys they are playing #6/7-10
super thin, especially with MPJ out, watching the corpse of Jeff Green is the stuff of nightmares

but just because they strung together a coule of great offensive performances with Jokic being otherworldly vs. the very worst teams in the league is causing some recency bias here imo

they'll come back to earth soon enough and so will Jokic. this team is pretty bad and Jokic alone moves it from "pretty bad" to "good" but MVP is also about leadership, at least to me

with other viable candidates playing incredibly as well, he is still in the backseat
he's in the conversation obviously but I wouldn't put him 1st just yet

edit: I would add that the Nuggets barely have any wins against Playoff teams \ teams above 0.500
they didn't play many of those games (and Jokic missed a couple) but it's another testament of their relatively easy schedule

Memphis, Portland, Suns, Kings (away), Kings, Heat, Celtics , Minny (away), Clippers, Cavs, Lakers, Phx, Clippers (away)

that's their next 13 games, mostly home games but no gimmies and a couple of strong teams
I'd imagine they'd go something like 7-6 or at best 8-5 in tht stretch

let's talk then about Jokic

[BelgradeNugget]

Jokic's impressive number advantage are mainly box score based. Assists and rebounds get counted while creating openings with gravity, screens, decoy movement, and hockey assists do not. That's arbitrary. In the plus-minus realm Jokic also puts up very nice defensive metrics. But putting much weight on that ignores there aren't any good defensive metrics. The shortcomings of these measures were pretty much shown in the first round last year where Jokic was targeted and the point of attack for the Warriors offense.

Curry was as worthy of the MVP as Jokic in the last two years and his championship last year is going to make that more and more obvious as the years go by especially if Jokic does not get a ring with the Nuggets. So yes give Jokic another one to make it even more painfully clear how mistaken the MVP voters were.

No they aren’t lol. Jokic last season in addition to having a massive advantage in the box score numbers also had the edge in all of the following impact metrics:

On/off (including just offensive on/off)
RPM
RAPTOR
EPM
Luck adjusted RAPM

And again, Curry had the worst individual regular season of his prime last season and they only won 5 more games than the Nuggets despite having a huge talent advantage and the Nuggets’ 2nd and 3rd best players missing basically the whole season. Curry didn’t deserve MVP over Jokic last year based on what happened in the 21-22 regular season, which is literally the only thing that matters for the 21-22 MVP.

I'm not even going to bother looking it up, but I guarantee you that Jokic also ranks among the league leaders in screen assists and secondary assists, and provides his own form of gravity as a dominant, high-efficiency interior scorer who is also one of the best passers in the league. Like his cases for MVP, the challenges that presents are obvious.

I'm not into this MVP discussion (more pissed with Nuggets defense and coaching, than happy for Jokic's season), but to add something. Jokic is also in the top of the league in O-boards, and put-backs.