NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 5 - The Final-er MVP Countdown!)

[eyeatoma]

Why are ya'll crying, Jokic just won the last two MVPs lol.

[The Moose]

Obviously the games matter more once the team is 96% locked into their current seed, right?

Bro you're in shambles right now.

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I’m a little pissed off that a disingenuous racist narrative is about to lead to the biggest MVP robbery since Dave Cowens beat Kareem in 1973, costing me $4000, yes. You can’t argue with people who don’t care about logic.

did you not at least hedge the bet when Jokic was the heavy odds favourite? I got Jokic at good odds to start the season, but I hedged with Embiid and Giannis just in case

[eyeatoma]

Bro you're in shambles right now.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk

I’m a little pissed off that a disingenuous racist narrative is about to lead to the biggest MVP robbery since Dave Cowens beat Kareem in 1973, costing me $4000, yes. You can’t argue with people who don’t care about logic.

did you not at least hedge the bet when Jokic was the heavy odds favourite? I got Jokic at good odds to start the season, but I hedged with Embiid and Giannis just in case

I'm sitting pretty, Bet Embiid to win at +700 to start the season.

[PennSports]

people talking about their bets now... lol

sports betting has been bad for discourse because people have skin in the game. No one brings that up.

No wonder people take it personally and it will only get worse now with the new CBA allowing players to endorse betting sites.

[eyeatoma]

people talking about their bets now... lol

sports betting has been bad for discourse because people have skin in the game. No one brings that up.

No wonder people take it personally and it will only get worse now with the new CBA allowing players to endorse betting sites.

Eh only bet 100 bucks. I'm not that tied to it, nice if I win though but I only bet what I can afford to lose.

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[_NoMas]

Embiid essentially sealed it… I still don’t see his argument over Giannis, but he has been spectacular there’s no denying that - and deserves an MVP based off his play over the last 3 years

[iggymcfrack]

Read on Twitter

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Definition of a carry job.

So these kind of numbers matter over a 1 game sample, but not over the course of the entire season? Because we've just shown in this very thread tonight that Embiid plays with starters almost exactly as much as Jokic does and yet the Sixers are still ELEVEN points better with Embiid on the bench than the Nuggets are with Jokic on the bench. Yet somehow due to Jokic's incredible, unprecedented impact they have the same record. Do you know how big of a margin ELEVEN points is? That's the difference between the Bucks and the Pistons. The top team in the East and the worst team in the East. That's how much better Embiid's supporting cast is than Jokic's. And we're gonna pretend that Embiid's the "most valuable" player when having Jokic on the floor instead of Embiid not only makes up for that Bucks to Pistons difference, but actually makes his "Pistons" so much BETTER than the "Bucks" that being on the court for 2/3 of the time is enough to make the teams equal overall! It's **** INSANE!!! Jokic has carried this Nuggets team like no team has ever been carried in the history of the NBA and he's going to lose to someone who's shown so little impact that his team has actually played better when he DOESN'T PLAY over a sample size of 14 missed games. I really thought we were past this in 2023. I thought that insanely bad votes like Shaq losing to Iverson and Dwight losing to Rose were things of the past. But no, we're just going to make the worst vote in 50 years happen this season because Kendrick Perkins made a stupid Skip Bayless hot take for attention that made white voters afraid to vote the way the numbers tell them to. It's INSANE that this is actually happening.

[iggymcfrack]

Bro you're in shambles right now.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk

I’m a little pissed off that a disingenuous racist narrative is about to lead to the biggest MVP robbery since Dave Cowens beat Kareem in 1973, costing me $4000, yes. You can’t argue with people who don’t care about logic.

did you not at least hedge the bet when Jokic was the heavy odds favourite? I got Jokic at good odds to start the season, but I hedged with Embiid and Giannis just in case

No, I actually added on when my bookie had a stale line of +185 on Jokic when the true line was -100 when Embiid ducked.

[iggymcfrack]

Why are ya'll crying, Jokic just won the last two MVPs lol.

I mean aside from my bet which is the reason I'm most pissed, this stupid ridiculous MVP debate is completely obscuring what a historic season Jokic is having. Pretending that Giannis and Embiid are on his level and that there's an actual "race" for MVP keeps us from having the conversation we actually should be having based on what an incredible season Jokic is having. We should be asking "is Jokic better than Curry in 2016? Is he better than LeBron in 2009? Is he better than Jordan in 1991?" Is this the best anyone's ever played basketball in the history of the sport? But no, everyone's just making excuses to write off all of Jokic's unprecedented numbers. The pretend debate over whether he's even the best player this season is completely distracting from the much more legitimate debate over whether this is the best regular season of all-time.

[iggymcfrack]

Why are ya'll crying, Jokic just won the last two MVPs lol.

Imagine this eyeatoma. Imagine Jokic didn't exist. Imagine Embiid won the last 2 MVPs. Then imagine that this season, Embiid went to a new level where he was literally twice as good as he is right now. He turned the Sixers from a -1 team when he was on the bench to a +20 team when he was on the floor. He raised his (good) supporting cast enough that they were sitting at 65-13. 2/3 of the way through the season, it was near unanimous that double Embiid would win the MVP with arguably the best season of all-time. Then a straw poll came out with him dominating and the media started being like "well, is it REALLY fair that Embiid wins 3 MVPs in a row when he's never even made the conference finals? It's kind of racist against Americans that all these international players keep winning every year and Embiid and GIannis both have 2 MVPs already. Let's give it to Jayson Tatum instead. You know Tatum's a better passer than Embiid, passing's a big part of the game."

And then, due to this stupid, idiotic narrative, even though Tatum hadn't outplayed Embiid meaningfully at all since Embiid was a huge favorite, all of a sudden Tatum was a 6:1 favorite to win MVP. Would you be pissed? Would that upset you at all that instead of people focusing on double Embiid having the greatest season of all-time they just posted lowlights of his passing and made fun of it and said that Tatum was actually better even though double Embiid crushed him by every meaningful metric? If Embiid was so dominant that not only did the top 6 metrics according to NBA GMs have him in first, but one of them had a bigger difference between Embiid in 1st and Tatum in 2nd than they had between Tatum in 2nd and Okogie in 63rd and people were still like "meh, **** it, let's ignore all the evidence and give it to Tatum". Would that piss you off at all?

[iggymcfrack]

people talking about their bets now... lol

sports betting has been bad for discourse because people have skin in the game. No one brings that up.

No wonder people take it personally and it will only get worse now with the new CBA allowing players to endorse betting sites.

Sports betting's nothing new. I've been betting on sports since my freshman year of college in 2004. My state doesn't allow major sportsbooks in because it wants to get people to do state-run sports betting with double or more the typical online juice so I've never made a single bet with any books that have been legitimized over the last several years. The only difference between sports betting now and sports betting a decade ago is that now the books are allowed to advertise during broadcasts.

[CD_41]

Why are ya'll crying, Jokic just won the last two MVPs lol.

Imagine this eyeatoma. Imagine Jokic didn't exist. Imagine Embiid won the last 2 MVPs. Then imagine that this season, Embiid went to a new level where he was literally twice as good as he is right now. He turned the Sixers from a -1 team when he was on the bench to a +20 team when he was on the floor. He raised his (good) supporting cast enough that they were sitting at 65-13. 2/3 of the way through the season, it was near unanimous that double Embiid would win the MVP with arguably the best season of all-time. Then a straw poll came out with him dominating and the media started being like "well, is it REALLY fair that Embiid wins 3 MVPs in a row when he's never even made the conference finals? It's kind of racist against Americans that all these international players keep winning every year and Embiid and GIannis both have 2 MVPs already. Let's give it to Jayson Tatum instead. You know Tatum's a better passer than Embiid, passing's a big part of the game."

And then, due to this stupid, idiotic narrative, even though Tatum hadn't outplayed Embiid meaningfully at all since Embiid was a huge favorite, all of a sudden Tatum was a 6:1 favorite to win MVP. Would you be pissed? Would that upset you at all that instead of people focusing on double Embiid having the greatest season of all-time they just posted lowlights of his passing and made fun of it and said that Tatum was actually better even though double Embiid crushed him by every meaningful metric? If Embiid was so dominant that not only did the top 6 metrics according to NBA GMs have him in first, but one of them had a bigger difference between Embiid in 1st and Tatum in 2nd than they had between Tatum in 2nd and Okogie in 63rd and people were still like "meh, **** it, let's ignore all the evidence and give it to Tatum". Would that piss you off at all?

Very well written!
The problem with people like eyeatoma is that they are trapped in their confirmation bias. It is basically impossible to be empathetic to other thoughts (even the most reasonable ones). Just to hang on their narrative. Does unfortunately not end with basketball discussions. The bias is so strong, that they don´t even care one bit about their likeability. So so so sad.

[LordCovington33]

Obviously the games matter more once the team is 96% locked into their current seed, right?

Bro you're in shambles right now.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk

I’m a little pissed off that a disingenuous racist narrative is about to lead to the biggest MVP robbery since Dave Cowens beat Kareem in 1973, costing me $4000, yes. You can’t argue with people who don’t care about logic.

Racist narrative? Does Kendrick Perkins have that much clout? You’re reaching. If I were set to lose that much, I’d probably do the same. lol

[_NoMas]

Man there are people on here more offended on Jokics behalf than Jokic himself

[iggymcfrack]

Bro you're in shambles right now.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk

I’m a little pissed off that a disingenuous racist narrative is about to lead to the biggest MVP robbery since Dave Cowens beat Kareem in 1973, costing me $4000, yes. You can’t argue with people who don’t care about logic.

Racist narrative? Does Kendrick Perkins have that much clout? You’re reaching. If I were set to lose that much, I’d probably do the same. lol

Yes, racist narrative. The NBA is the most multi-cultural, liberal, "woke" league in all of professional sports. (I voted for Biden and I'll do it again, I'm not actually saying the left is anywhere near as bad as the right, just pointing out where the NBA fits on the spectrum.) The absolute worst thing that can happen to any of these NBA media types who cover this heavily majority black league is to be accused of being racist. They'll bend over backwards to never dismiss the idea of racism being a factor in any situation because they know that if they say something that's even remotely construed as racist it can end their career.

Perkins made a massively cynical hot take about Jokic winning MVPs because he was white shortly after the straw poll. It was straight out of the Skip Bayless school of saying something stupid for attention, but instead of telling LeBron to "shut up and dribble" while praising Tebow for being a "winner", Perkins was doing the opposite and attacking the white guy and pretending like he was benefiting from privilege in the one sphere where if anything, being white is a disadvantage. The initial reaction to Perkins was negative for stirring up hysteria, but notably the media members didn't want to outright say there couldn't be pro-white racial bias because that goes against the talking points of the furthest fringe of the left wing. All of a sudden, prominent NBA voices like Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe who had been heaping praises on Jokic all year long suddenly went mum. Either they "hadn't decided on the MVP race yet" or it was Embiid. The conversation changed overnight and all of a sudden, 2 good weeks for Embiid were massive and turning the race while a similarly good 2 weeks for Jokic were completely ignored. Pointing out Jokic's virtues just wasn't PC all of a sudden and the more casual voters who just kinda followed the national discourse were swept along in that wake.

Votes are public now and I was actually listening to a podcast the other day where someone was talking about how people were scared to vote against Harden in the MVP race a few years back, because Harden would greatly limit access for interviews and such to people who didn't vote for him. People don't want to get swept up in that **** of doing something that could damage their future career opportunities just for a vote that they don't actually care about. It's easier to just justify "hey, voter fatigue's not so bad, it might actually be a good thing. Let's let Embiid have a turn. Hey he had 50 tonight, that makes it really easy to justify. My eyes in this one game say he's better." I guarantee you that if the MVP race had minimal media coverage and secret ballots, Jokic would still be a lock to win, but Perkins attacking someone for their race just to make people listen to him is actually going to rob possibly the greatest season in the history of the sport from even winning most valuable player for their season.

[eyeatoma]

Read on Twitter

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Definition of a carry job.

So these kind of numbers matter over a 1 game sample, but not over the course of the entire season? Because we've just shown in this very thread tonight that Embiid plays with starters almost exactly as much as Jokic does and yet the Sixers are still ELEVEN points better with Embiid on the bench than the Nuggets are with Jokic on the bench. Yet somehow due to Jokic's incredible, unprecedented impact they have the same record. Do you know how big of a margin ELEVEN points is? That's the difference between the Bucks and the Pistons. The top team in the East and the worst team in the East. That's how much better Embiid's supporting cast is than Jokic's. And we're gonna pretend that Embiid's the "most valuable" player when having Jokic on the floor instead of Embiid not only makes up for that Bucks to Pistons difference, but actually makes his "Pistons" so much BETTER than the "Bucks" that being on the court for 2/3 of the time is enough to make the teams equal overall! It's **** INSANE!!! Jokic has carried this Nuggets team like no team has ever been carried in the history of the NBA and he's going to lose to someone who's shown so little impact that his team has actually played better when he DOESN'T PLAY over a sample size of 14 missed games. I really thought we were past this in 2023. I thought that insanely bad votes like Shaq losing to Iverson and Dwight losing to Rose were things of the past. But no, we're just going to make the worst vote in 50 years happen this season because Kendrick Perkins made a stupid Skip Bayless hot take for attention that made white voters afraid to vote the way the numbers tell them to. It's INSANE that this is actually happening.

He's done this over the entire season. Not to this extent but the Sixers are horrible when he goes to the bench.

Lol if you really think Embiid is winning because of Racism.

Reasons why Embiid should win

1. Number 1 scorer in the league for 2 years in a row.

2. Elite efficiency with scoring. Just as impressive as Jokic when you take volume into consideration.

3. Top 5 Defender in the league

4. Most clutch points in the 4th quarter.

5. More games than Giannis

6. Beat Jokic in matchup

7. Tied with Giannis on matchup.

8. Same record as the Nuggets in a harder conference.
8b. West is significantly worse than the EAST this year.

9. Best or top 3 midrange scorer in the league this year.

10. Jokic has won the last 2, and although he has had an incredible year, and is #1 in the east, at some point, you have to take legacy into consideration as much as y'all want to hate.

11. The Bucks could have 3 players as all nba defenders this year. Which is unprecedented. The Bucks are a playoff team without Giannis, you can't say that about the Sixers or the Nuggets. The SIxers have a decent record with Embiid, but their defense falls off a cliff.

12. Case over Giannis

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[Wolfgang630]

Man there are people on here more offended on Jokics behalf than Jokic himself

Jokic doesn’t care. He meant it when he said it lol. It’s the fans who be making him look worse.

[kuclas]

I think it's the former. I think they will hard double and maybe even triple in the playoffs, and this was an attempt at gamesmanship. Think Brown and Rob Will not playing was another example of that. The Celtics defense the last few minutes was more reminiscent of how they'll probably play Embiid. Force him to pass and have others beat you. We had some rare PJ three pointers which I'm not confident in him hitting. Al

Robert Williams has no chance guarding embiid. Never has. He’s just too small. He’s mobile and with really good wingspan which helps.

The way Celtics have stopped or hindered embiid or even frustrated embiid is with help defensive schemes like you mentioned. Help defenders lurking nearby. But I can see them just blitzing embiid to give up the ball. Just let other players make the shots. The nba is a make or miss league. While sixers don’t attempt as many 3 point shots as Celtics. Sixers lead the league in 3 point shooting percentage.

You can’t leave shooters open with sixers. PJ just made those shots at the end. Celtics will live with that.

The way the Celtics can and will hinder Embiid is running the floor, turning defense into transition offense, protecting the basketball with smart shot creators. Lets not forget that Jaylen Brown didn’t play, he is the guy who always kills the 76ers.

Most of the critical sixers playoff losses to have been decided in the last 60 seconds of those games.

It comes down to execution.

Even in 2018. Sixers lost games 1/3/5 all in the last 60 seconds in 1 possession games they were up or down (sixers lead game 3/5 in last 60 seconds)

2020 in the sweep they lost games 1/3 also in the last 60 seconds

Celtics just execute down the stretch and sixers didn’t.

[Wolfgang630]

I’m concerned Giannis will not be allowed to win another mvp again. I’m not sure how much better he can do in the future as a #1 overall seed. Plus new guys are going to be in play for mvp like a Tatum, Morant, etc

[eyeatoma]

Why are ya'll crying, Jokic just won the last two MVPs lol.

I mean aside from my bet which is the reason I'm most pissed, this stupid ridiculous MVP debate is completely obscuring what a historic season Jokic is having. Pretending that Giannis and Embiid are on his level and that there's an actual "race" for MVP keeps us from having the conversation we actually should be having based on what an incredible season Jokic is having. We should be asking "is Jokic better than Curry in 2016? Is he better than LeBron in 2009? Is he better than Jordan in 1991?" Is this the best anyone's ever played basketball in the history of the sport? But no, everyone's just making excuses to write off all of Jokic's unprecedented numbers. The pretend debate over whether he's even the best player this season is completely distracting from the much more legitimate debate over whether this is the best regular season of all-time.

It's equally obscuring what a historic season Embiid is having. This is unheard of from the center position just as much as Jokic's near trip double at elite efficiency is.

Pot, meet kettle.