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

[famicommander]

lol @ Chokic being "clearly" better than a dude putting up peak Jordan numbers with great defense and anchoring the most dominant SRS/net rating team IN HISTORY (and without his second best player).

Delusional.

Joker is averaging 30/13/10/2 on 56/48/81 splits.

With a 36 year old Russell Westbrook and a Jamal Murray that this entire forum spent the first two months of the season declaring to be a washed up bum. Aaron Gordon has played like half the season. They are getting regular rotational minutes from DeAndre Jordan in the year 2025.

Exactly 30 out of 30 NBA general managers would take Jokic over SGA.

[Doctor MJ]

The best player is the most valuable player. It’s a distinction without a difference.

You may not see the difference, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The way I see it, the best player is whoever contributes the most to winning, winning being what's valuable in sports.

If you think Shai has contributed more to winning than Joker this season, why not just call him the best player? Or at least the best player through half the season. That's the argument I'd be making if I were a Thunder/SGA fan.

I'll put it this way: If Player A would be more valuable than Player B in most contexts, but in their respective situations Player B is the more irreplaceable guy, it makes sense to call Player A better in general but Player B the more valuable player at that time given the contexts they are in.

To be clear, I personally was not making that argument in Shai vs Jokic here - I try to be very careful about when I talk about "best player" because it's so hard to speak to with objective precision - but it makes sense to me that people would.

I think what Presti & Daigneault have done in OKC to build scheme & fit around Shai is incredible, and without them doing that, we don't see the same night & day impact from Shai.

In Denver by contrast, while they've done some good things with scheme & fit, the shocking thing about Jokic was always the fact that he was instantly super-valuable as a rookie back when literally nothing was built around him.

[Castle Black]

Read on Twitter

[Exp0sed]

Read on Twitter

would be interesting to see how many "Sombor doubles" does Jokic have in his career. also comparing other big TD guys (like WB for example) to see the ratio between career TD and Career Sombor doubles, I suspect Jokic has alot more Sombor doubles in relation to TD than say, WB. because WB chased the TD, if he was one assists or rebound short while Jokic never does

if anyone has access to that data on a database and can parse it - would be intersting to see imo

[Batsy]

.....

[Statlanta]

The conversation is essentially

Traditional best player on the best team

or best player in the world.

Either argument is a good one

[B-easy]

The conversation is essentially

Traditional best player on the best team

or best player in the world.

Either argument is a good one

Best offensive season of all time.

[INKtastic]

The conversation is essentially

Traditional best player on the best team

or best player in the world.

Either argument is a good one

Best offensive season of all time.

exactly

PER 33.57 - prior best was Jokic in 21-22 with 32.85, which itself was the best since Wilt in 61-62 when wilt averaged 50.4 ppg.

BPM 14.61 - prior best was Jokic in 21-22 with 13.72. Jokic has 4 of the top 5 all time, with 08-09 LeBron in the middle of those.

WS/48 .3366, 2nd all time behind Kareem in 71-72 with .3399

This year is the 5th year in a row he's leading the league in value over replacement player and BPM. Only LeBron, Jordan and Kareem have longer streaks. Kareem's streak was aided by Dr J playing in the ABA some of those years.

It's his 5th year in a row leading the league in PER, only LeBron, Jordan and Wilt have longer streaks.

I need to watch more nuggets games.

[GeorgeSears]

What's unique about Jokic is that five years ago he was just a top 2 center in the NBA averaging a cool 20 and 10 and making two all-star games. Fast forward, and five years later he's arguably a top 10 all-time player. That type of career trajectory has never been seen before.

The broader life lesson: You can redefine yourself in 5 years if you work hard.

[Johnny Firpo]

lol @ Chokic being "clearly" better than a dude putting up peak Jordan numbers with great defense and anchoring the most dominant SRS/net rating team IN HISTORY (and without his second best player).

Delusional.

Why are you calling one of the most dominant playoff performers of all-time, who already has a historic championship run (where he beat more all-nba and all-star players than anyone else in the history of the NBA), Chokic? Is this an ironic naming, like when they call a huge guy Tiny?

[Johnny Firpo]

What's unique about Jokic is that five years ago he was just a top 2 center in the NBA averaging a cool 20 and 10 and making two all-star games. Fast forward, and five years later he's arguably a top 10 all-time player. That type of career trajectory has never been seen before.

The broader life lesson: You can redefine yourself in 5 years if you work hard.

If I remember correctly, he was in the top 10 in advanced stats like in his second year. The impact was there from very early, people obviously just needed time to accept him. Some never did, and never will.

[Woodsanity]

lol @ Chokic being "clearly" better than a dude putting up peak Jordan numbers with great defense and anchoring the most dominant SRS/net rating team IN HISTORY (and without his second best player).

Delusional.

Calling Jokic Chokic when SGA hasn't even been in the WCF once is hilarious.

[Woodsanity]

we don't even have to talk about shot creation. just look at the TS stats on that team. the second star, jalen williams is shooting under league average at .56 while another starter in cason wallace is at .535 with the rest of the starters/main rotation being squarely average. there's not a single outstanding/clearly above average shotmaker on that team outside of shai.

Is this a joke? Jalen Williams is still a vastly superior player to whoever the Nuggets have as their 2nd best player.

Jalen Williams is normally efficient. He was a 62 TS% player just last season, regardless he is still a far better player than the current version of Jamal Murray though Murray has been playing a bit better as of late.

Jalen Williams is still scoring more on similar/better efficiency than Murray while being 10x the defender Murray is.

SGA also doesn't setup nearly as many easy buckets as Jokic does for his team.

??????? we aren't evaluating the MVP for this season based on last season. maybe lebron shouldn't ever get one in 12 or 13 if we go by the best version of wade instead of the one that played in those seasons

Do you think Jalen Williams magically became a much worse player in his prime years? Regardless he is way better than current Jamal Murray anyway.

Still a better shot creator than current Murray who barely has any burst and 10x the defender.

[Snake3]

What's unique about Jokic is that five years ago he was just a top 2 center in the NBA averaging a cool 20 and 10 and making two all-star games. Fast forward, and five years later he's arguably a top 10 all-time player. That type of career trajectory has never been seen before.

The broader life lesson: You can redefine yourself in 5 years if you work hard.

If I remember correctly, he was in the top 10 in advanced stats like in his second year. The impact was there from very early, people obviously just needed time to accept him. Some never did, and never will.

He was good, but he wasn't nearly as good as he was in 22 and beyond. From what all his teammates said, you could see he was good early. But he was too unselfish. Other teammates had to encourage him to be more selfish. They knew that if Jokic wanted to, he could score a lot more. MPJ said he thought that Jokic took basketball more seriously later on in his career and came into camp more in shape. He is somewhat a late bloomer in a similar way Curry was. Nobody thought he would GOAT offensive player ever type of good.

But he was definitely better than what ppl realize. Every playoffs he increased his production compared to his RS average. His teammates knew he could score more and maybe the fans. It does make me wonder if he can average 24ppg or more as early as 18-19 season. He still wasn't as good as he is now. He wasn't as strong back then as he is now, so he got by with more of his skills and IQ. Now it's just crazy with the combination of efficiency, goat lvl passing, and versatility of scoring.

[canada_dry]

They just need to change the MVP award to actually mean the best player of the RS award bc I'm tired of the "well X guy is the best player in the world BUT I think player Y is more deserving".

I love Shai, but there is no way you can claim he's better than Jokic, or more valuable for OKC than Jokic is for Denver. Sometimes a great player just happens to be in the same era as a greater player.

Its called the most VALUABLE player award. Not most OUTSTANDING or BEST player award.

This has always been the case. Perhaps its you that needs the adjusting.

inconvenient truth...we're too good! -Phil Blackson

The best player is the most valuable player. It’s a distinction without a difference.

This is historically untrue. Just to keep it simple...If it WERE historically true, lebron would have more mvps. Jordan would have more mvps. Shaq would have more mvps. Etc etc.


inconvenient truth...we're too good! -Phil Blackson

[MoneyTalks41890]

lol @ Chokic being "clearly" better than a dude putting up peak Jordan numbers with great defense and anchoring the most dominant SRS/net rating team IN HISTORY (and without his second best player).

Delusional.

Why are you calling one of the most dominant playoff performers of all-time, who already has a historic championship run (where he beat more all-nba and all-star players than anyone else in the history of the NBA), Chokic? Is this an ironic naming, like when they call a huge guy Tiny?

Not even worth engaging with that kind of stuff to be honest. When I see it I immediately discount the entire post.

[Infinite Llamas]

lol @ Chokic being "clearly" better than a dude putting up peak Jordan numbers with great defense and anchoring the most dominant SRS/net rating team IN HISTORY (and without his second best player).

Delusional.

Why are you calling one of the most dominant playoff performers of all-time, who already has a historic championship run (where he beat more all-nba and all-star players than anyone else in the history of the NBA), Chokic? Is this an ironic naming, like when they call a huge guy Tiny?

Not even worth engaging with that kind of stuff to be honest. When I see it I immediately discount the entire post.

There’s literally an Embiid fan on this forum with the name “chokic”. You truly can’t script any better irony.

[GeorgeSears]

What's unique about Jokic is that five years ago he was just a top 2 center in the NBA averaging a cool 20 and 10 and making two all-star games. Fast forward, and five years later he's arguably a top 10 all-time player. That type of career trajectory has never been seen before.

The broader life lesson: You can redefine yourself in 5 years if you work hard.

If I remember correctly, he was in the top 10 in advanced stats like in his second year. The impact was there from very early, people obviously just needed time to accept him. Some never did, and never will.

I didn't see this coming. I'll be honest, I thought his peak was the 2018-2019 season where he was very solid averaging 20-10-7, and had he maintained that level of play he might've made the hall of fame at some point.

But the last 5 years, starting in 2020-2021, he's been on a completely different level. He's gone from a maybe HOFer to arguably top 10 ALL TIME in a 5 year stretch.

I can't remember the last time a player redefined their career like that. No one saw this coming.

[OkcSinceSGA]

Narrative wise Jokic made up huge ground the last two weeks. His insane play+Denver hot streak combined with the Thunder losing two more times to their blooming rival Mavs. I still think SGA is the slight favorite, but just two weeks ago he was running away with it and Jokic stole the momentum. Goes to show how long the season is, and how quickly things can turn. OKC not having Harteinstein+Chet is really killing their momentum.

[Snake3]

What's unique about Jokic is that five years ago he was just a top 2 center in the NBA averaging a cool 20 and 10 and making two all-star games. Fast forward, and five years later he's arguably a top 10 all-time player. That type of career trajectory has never been seen before.

The broader life lesson: You can redefine yourself in 5 years if you work hard.

If I remember correctly, he was in the top 10 in advanced stats like in his second year. The impact was there from very early, people obviously just needed time to accept him. Some never did, and never will.

I didn't see this coming. I'll be honest, I thought his peak was the 2018-2019 season where he was very solid averaging 20-10-7, and had he maintained that level of play he might've made the hall of fame at some point.

But the last 5 years, starting in 2020-2021, he's been on a completely different level. He's gone from a maybe HOFer to arguably top 10 ALL TIME in a 5 year stretch.

I can't remember the last time a player redefined their career like that. No one saw this coming.

I think Curry was similar. Even when they won the title in 15, nobody really gave Curry props like that. But 15-16 and beyond he turned into a GOAT lvl offensive player and revolutionize the sport. No one thought he had that in his bag. At least to that volume.

But Jokic is more of a blindside to me. I didn't think he would become like this. Even in 21, I thought Jokic peaked. Great season. Although I didn't consider him to be the best in the league in that time, but great. But he kept getting better. That's crazy thinking back on how he kept improving.