2024-25 NBA MVP Discussion Thread (Pt. 3: Son of daughter of MVP thread)

Special_Puppy · Post #341 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:07 am

Castle Black wrote:Career-high 50 burger for SGA but on 35 shots, including 18 FT attempts. He's never beating the "FT merchant" allegations.

Read on Twitter

63% True Shooting is really good for that amount of volume scoring

Rdude22 · Post #342 » by **Rdude22** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:11 am

Some of yall still miserable talkin about "Jokic will get robbed"??

Tatum and Luka out the paint, so now Jokic is all yall got left against "Embiid point guard"??

Lol just enjoy both of them, keep your blood pressures low.

Meanwhile, edit - 48% (17-35) from the field for 54/8/5 vs Utah in a random night in January isn't the be-all-end-all, but it was a fantastic MVP performance in a proverbial trap game for a short-handed team.

Special_Puppy · Post #343 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:18 am

SGA now -600 in some books to win MVP. Would be a pretty big upset for him to lose it at this point

Rdude22 · Post #344 » by **Rdude22** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:20 am

Special_Puppy wrote:
Castle Black wrote:Career-high 50 burger for SGA but on 35 shots, including 18 FT attempts. He's never beating the "FT merchant" allegations.

Read on Twitter

63% True Shooting is really good for that amount of volume scoring

Yup.

Great scorers always deal with free throw allegations.

From Jordan to Shaq to Kobe to DWade to LeBron; all averaged 10+ free throws a game at one or several points during their youthful primes, making opposing fan bases furious.

Shai is at 8fta per game this season. He's actually taking it easy on fan bases this year; a generous guy, that one

Post #345 » by **MoneyTalks41890** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:24 am

SGA now averaging 32 ppg to Jokic’s 30.1 ppg. You could remove all of SGA’s made free throws and let Jokic keep his and SGA would still have 100 total more points this year.

If you think that’s not fair it should be about points per game, even though SGA has played in a good number more games, then you take away free throws from both players and they have the same points per game at 24.

If you’re making free throws comments about the guy who drives most in the nba, you might not be a good faith participant in this conversation.

scrabbarista · Post #346 » by **scrabbarista** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 11:19 am

Jokic's PER is 33.2

That's literally impossible.

scrabbarista · Post #347 » by **scrabbarista** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 11:25 am

Jokic is now on pace for the highest PER in history, the highest BPM in history, and the second highest WS/48, second only to peak Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Nooooooooooooooooo.

How is this possible.

My mind is exploding.

Goodbye, sweet world.

-Luke- · Post #348 » by **-Luke-** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 2:21 pm

scrabbarista wrote:Jokic is now on pace for the highest PER in history, the highest BPM in history, and the second highest WS/48, second only to peak Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Nooooooooooooooooo.

How is this possible.

My mind is exploding.

Goodbye, sweet world.

After every season I think he can't possibly get even better. Then he gets even better.

Doranku · Post #349 » by **Doranku** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 2:54 pm

Free throw merchants are guys like Harden and Embiid who have multiple years with 10-12 FTA/g. SGA had one season of 10.7 FTA/g. Every other season he's been under 9, including this season at 8.3 FTA/g.

Harden only averaged over 10 FGM/g once in his career. SGA will have done it 3 straight years in a few months. 11.3 FGM/g currently. That is not a free throw merchant.

Special_Puppy · Post #350 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:08 pm

Shai's aura is just too much for Jokic to overcome

lobosloboslobos · Post #351 » by **lobosloboslobos** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:54 pm

How do people take

32/5.4/6.1/2.1/1.1 on 53/35/90 shooting

over

30/13.2/9.9/1.9/0.6 on 62/44/83 shooting

?

Post #352 » by **Doctor MJ** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:03 pm

Rdude22 wrote:Some of yall still miserable talkin about "Jokic will get robbed"??

Tatum and Luka out the paint, so now Jokic is all yall got left against "Embiid point guard"??

Lol just enjoy both of them, keep your blood pressures low.

Meanwhile, edit - 48% (17-35) from the field for 54/8/5 vs Utah in a random night in January isn't the be-all-end-all, but it was a fantastic MVP performance in a proverbial trap game for a short-handed team.

With the constant caveat that I have Shai as my MVP:

The characterization of Jokic supporters as being the crazy ones is just silly.

As I mentioned last year: In the '23-24 MVP thread here, if you went by the number of posts by supporters, you'd have thought Luka was going to win the MVP when in reality he had no chance at all to win it. Yet, even then, people were calling people Jokic stans for daring to correctly point out that Luka had no chance at winning.

In terms of the most strident homers of the current generation of players, it's never been the Jokic supporters, it's just that conversation always ends up being Jokic vs whoever the biggest homers are because Jokic has been the dominant player of the 2020s, and so then whoever the biggest homers are try to characterize everyone who disagrees with them as "Jokic stans".

Special_Puppy · Post #353 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:21 pm

lobosloboslobos wrote:How do people take

32/5.4/6.1/2.1/1.1 on 53/35/90 shooting

over

30/13.2/9.9/1.9/0.6 on 62/44/83 shooting

?

These are both top 15 all time slashlines lol

Special_Puppy · Post #354 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:33 pm

While SGA would have a *very* strong case for MVP regardless and I'm overall agnostic on who's the most deserving, I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the fact that team record has become the SGA's trump card over Jokic. Especially since basically everyone acknowledges that the vast majority of the gap (but not necessarily all I'm still undecided) is due to the difference in supporting casts

Post #355 » by **Doctor MJ** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:08 pm

Special_Puppy wrote:While SGA would have a *very* strong case for MVP regardless and I'm overall agnostic on who's the most deserving, I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the fact that team record has become the SGA's trump card over Jokic. Especially since basically everyone acknowledges that the vast majority of the gap (but not necessarily all I'm still undecided) is due to the difference in supporting casts

So just looking at this stuff from first-pass simple stuff, I tend to see a combination of the On numbers and On-Off numbers to be the best proxy for value added, because in the NBA it's about being the champ rather than merely being good, and it's harder and harder to reach those super-elevated states compared to what it takes to just be better than the riff raff.

Shai's got a +18.7 On with a +18.6 On-Off.
Jokic's got a +13.1 On with a +22.2 On-Off.

Knowing nothing else about the players, I'd consider Shai's to be the greater outlier.

Similarly if we look at raw cume +/- of these players relative to their closest teammate:

Shai +557, OKC 2nd (Dort) +325, Difference: +232
Jokic +384, DEN 2nd (Porter) +257, Difference: +127

Shai's a much bigger outlier here - and this is a freaking crazy difference for the #1 guy in the NBA relative to his top teammate this early in the year.

None of this means Jokic doesn't have a case, or even a case based on +/-, but in terms of Shai's ability to separate himself from his teammates, Jokic doesn't have a clear cut lead to me to this point.

Now, if Denver keeps dominating like they've been recently, all that can of course change - and the same holds true if Shai slumps - but right now, Shai's impact indicators are pretty insane.

Post #356 » by **slick_watts** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:12 pm

lobosloboslobos wrote:How do people take

32/5.4/6.1/2.1/1.1 on 53/35/90 shooting

over

30/13.2/9.9/1.9/0.6 on 62/44/83 shooting

?

it's because of defense.

there is no argument for shai over jokic offensively. jokic might even be the GOAT, or having a GOAT season on offense. shai and other wings cannot come close to competing with him (or- healthy embiid for that matter) because of how much he does.

but the thunder right now have one of the best defenses of all time. depending on how much weight you give shai's contributions towards that, you could construct an argument that this closes the gap on their impacts on the game. this is why a metric like EPM still has shai ahead of jokic, because the gap in defense is greater than the gap on offense. i can see an argument either way. but this is the argument for shai over jokic on mvp that isn't just look how many wins the thunder have.

Special_Puppy · Post #357 » by **Special_Puppy** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:22 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
Special_Puppy wrote:While SGA would have a *very* strong case for MVP regardless and I'm overall agnostic on who's the most deserving, I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the fact that team record has become the SGA's trump card over Jokic. Especially since basically everyone acknowledges that the vast majority of the gap (but not necessarily all I'm still undecided) is due to the difference in supporting casts

So just looking at this stuff from first-pass simple stuff, I tend to see a combination of the On numbers and On-Off numbers to be the best proxy for value added, because in the NBA it's about being the champ rather than merely being good, and it's harder and harder to reach those super-elevated states compared to what it takes to just be better than the riff raff.

Shai's got a +18.7 On with a +18.6 On-Off.
Jokic's got a +13.1 On with a +22.2 On-Off.

Knowing nothing else about the players, I'd consider Shai's to be the greater outlier.

Similarly if we look at raw cume +/- of these players relative to their closest teammate:

Shai +557, OKC 2nd (Dort) +325, Difference: +232
Jokic +384, DEN 2nd (Porter) +257, Difference: +127

Shai's a much bigger outlier here - and this is a freaking crazy difference for the #1 guy in the NBA relative to his top teammate this early in the year.

None of this means Jokic doesn't have a case, or even a case based on +/-, but in terms of Shai's ability to separate himself from his teammates, Jokic doesn't have a clear cut lead to me to this point.

Now, if Denver keeps dominating like they've been recently, all that can of course change - and the same holds true if Shai slumps - but right now, Shai's impact indicators are pretty insane.

Oh I agree that there is a great case for SGA over Jokic that doesn't even talk about record. Its just that record is the most commonly brought up thing when discussing why SGA should go over Jokic and is why SGA is -600 to win MVP instead of like -125

Sgt Major · Post #358 » by **Sgt Major** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:28 pm

I just love how every single year there's another fan club to talk how their guy deserves the MVP title over Jokic.

Embiid fans, Luka guys, Giannis stans, LeBron boys, SGA crew, Tatum club...

We all know what's going to happen.

BigGargamel · Post #359 » by **BigGargamel** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:15 pm

lobosloboslobos wrote:How do people take

32/5.4/6.1/2.1/1.1 on 53/35/90 shooting

over

30/13.2/9.9/1.9/0.6 on 62/44/83 shooting

?

Team record, and people wanting someone other than Jokic to win MVP. That's it. Those are the two reasons SGA will probably win MVP. Which is fine, but don't act like it's not that.

People saying SGA is having a comparable statistical season....they're just lying to themselves. Cherry pick whatever nerd stats you want, and bring up defense. It's just not true. :lol:

Post #360 » by **MoneyTalks41890** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:22 pm

BigGargamel wrote:
lobosloboslobos wrote:How do people take

32/5.4/6.1/2.1/1.1 on 53/35/90 shooting

over

30/13.2/9.9/1.9/0.6 on 62/44/83 shooting

?

Team record, and people wanting someone other than Jokic to win MVP. That's it. Those are the two reasons SGA will probably win MVP. Which is fine, but don't act like it's not that.

People saying SGA is having a comparable statistical season....they're just lying to themselves. Cherry pick whatever nerd stats you want, and bring up defense. It's just not true.

SGA is not having a better season defensively than Jokic?

Who is leading the MVP race?