SA37 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:BigGargamel wrote:The Thunder are going to win so many games it'll be hard to not give it to SGA. It's not a Joel Embiid situation, but it would still be the wrong decision. Jokic is having perhaps the best offensive season of all time. Jokic, a center, is averaging almost twice as many assists as SGA, a point guard. But those 50 point games sure do look pretty on the resume, and the casual media has always been obsessed with points as a barometer.
This guy is going to average a triple double, finish in the top five of pretty much everything. This injured team full of role players is still going to win over 50 games, and he's not going to win MVP. It's gonna look really silly a decade from now. But whatever. 50 point games!
So, reasonable perspective, but it also offers an entry point into the essence of the dilemma:
Jokic is having the best offensive season of all time.
Shai is also having an all-time great level offensive season, and doing so while also being a significant part of the best defense in the league.
The latter isn't necessarily more valuable than the former, but might it be? Yes, it's clearly possible.
Is it actually? Well, that's the question without consensus.
These are some of the dynamics, but also how much is it a question of "who has been the best player this season" v "relevance to team success". How do you weigh those factors?
Both Denver and OKC have lost key players to injury, but Jokic is the guy who isn't playing with a single other all-star. OKC is probably going to finish with ~10 more wins than Denver, but Cleveland has a similar record and no one is talking about any Cavs player for MVP (and rightly so). So to me, this pushes the convo towards giving more weighting to "who has been the best player this year"
And there, it's almost impossible to make a case for SGA over Jokic. Jokic is dominating across almost every statistical category AND is likely to end the season as only the 3rd player in history to average a triple-double for a season (and the 1st non-guard to do it). Jokic already has 4 of the 5 highest apg seasons for a center in NBA history and this year he is going to blow past that 9.8 mark.
I don't want to diminish SGA's season. He's been incredible. But I really get the feeling that there is a hunt for reasons to not give the MVP to Jokic.
Re: best player vs relevance to team success. From my perspective, MVP is about value to team, which seems like a synonym to "relevance to team success" but we might be thinking about it differently.
Re: ~10 more wins than Denver, Cleveland similar and no one's talking about Cavs.
I'll point to the raw +/- again. Leaders for the year:
1. Shai +769
2. Mobley +522
3. Jokic +520
Let's start by just noting that it's a hell of a lot more impressive for Jokic to be where he is than Mobley where he is. Given the Cavs' success, you'd think they'd have at least one player significantly ahead of Jokic, but they don't, which tells us that the difference in the Cavs & Nuggets success has everything to do with what the Cavs can do without Mobley compared to what the Nuggets can do without Jokic.
Then we look up at Shai's number, and his lead is not just big but completely unprecedented in the +/- era. It's not just that Shai has that lead over rivals from other teams, but the fact that none of Shai's teammates are up there with him. Just for comparison:
Top teammates of the 3 above by this metric, and how much of a gap there is between the 3 and their teammates:
Dort +427, 342 points below Shai.
Mitchell +500, 22 points below Mobley
Braun +396, 124 points below Jokic
Not saying this alone clinches the argument, but any notion that Shai's just benefitting from great teammates doesn't hold up.
