Peregrine01 wrote:MyUniBroDavis wrote:it feels some people think that Jokic criticisms necessarily come form a place of hate and trolling without being able to address the actual points because statements like "they were up 20 by someone else and then he started scoring" or "The offense fundamentally failed" or "looking at averages for a series isnt accurate at times if individual games have extreme values" are "cherry picked"
It's not really hate. Anchoring is an innate human psychological defect. Some on here are so dug in to their positions about Jokic that they can't recognize (or admit) how the #2 in a duo playing as badly as he did - historically bad even - greatly derailed his team's finals chances. And instead of pointing to more obvious reasons like that or how MPJ lost his jumper or how AG's lack of shooting made Minny's defense particularly potent against Denver, they spotlight the blame on some contrived deficiency of Jokic.
I think there’s an idea that people want to have that he’s faultless for this series and was just let down by his cast and that really just isn’t the case
When evaluating a guy in a series and if the cast let him down or not, one way to look at it is wha specific games did they lose for him and wasted his high level of play? And under that context there really wasn’t a single one.
I think people want to act like this was an all time blunder by the supporting ast or something and what really happened was the cast as a whole had 2 historically bad performances in a 7 game series, 4 great ones, and 1 where it’s either awful or great depending on if Murray is part of the cast.
G1: 24/50, 11/22, 8/12 60.6TS
G2: 25/70, 9/29, 7/12 43.84TS
G3: 33/62, 13/26, 14/16 67.35TS
G4: 30/53, 12/24, 8/9 70.22TS
G5: 29/58, 7/16, 7/9 58.1TS
G6: 17/67, 7/32, 7/10 33.6TS
G7: 21/55, 6/23, 8/9 47.5TS (Murray caveat)
Obviously Jokic’s individual game 2 was bad, game 6 was just nothing really noteworthy at all, so I wouldn’t say they let him down as much as none of them (as in the entire team) were poor those games.
Murray himself was the best player in game 3 considering he built the lead and Jokic had struggled mightily that first half, and in game 7 he was having a ridiculous first half and pre comeback before cooling off a bit.
Especially seeing Murray’s shot making was actually positive in g1/4/5 (elite in g4 actually) there’s a bit of a conundrum where on one hand it’s like, you are pointing out a valid point where it’s like yeah Murray could be criticized for his inability to create easy offense for himself and tough shotmaking isn’t neccessarily good if he’s forcing poor opportunities that don’t exist otherwise, on the other hand you have people who look at his point totals and think he just played like Dlo despite that being a pretty hilariously off base comparison considering the role they have in their offense when you think about the context of the discussion around him
I agree that it is a weakness that if his shot making isn’t on roids like last playoffs, then his inability to create his own shot at a super elite level is a bit of an issue. At the same time him having relatively solid effeciency on tough shots on reasonable volume (considering he’s the guy on those opportunities for the team this and last playoffs), and especially watching the film, makes it clear that it’s not really him overstepping
It’s a mixture of
1. Some off the court Jokic minutes where yeah there really isn’t much to create since Murray’s pick and roll playmaking is more off aggressive coverages finding the short roll + pocket passes vs like being on point with lobs and stuff esp with AG popping for some reason sometimes lmao
2. At times Jokic possessions did lead to late resets a lot, and while sometimes they repost they also sometimes went to Murray, especially when it was like post up hard high double and bump pass around everywhere and it’s an 8 second reset on the other side of the floor they often would have to emergency high pick and roll but it would be late so teams could go under or whatever since they had to set it too high with some good ball denial and pressure
The general low volume and just watching through it wasn’t really him forcing things as much as taking those shots when he had to, and in those specific games it’s one thing if he’s like 3/10 or something but being average effeciency on the tough shots isn’t really bad at all imo. There are a few where it’s just schematic too, like counting high help with a wing cut but the wolves had Gobert down baseline or whatever with the high help where it’s not really Murray’s fault (or Jokic’s either) but just good defense outsmarting an team wide offensive read
On AG: The help on Jokic post ups shifted to more high side anyways iirc when it was more effective before going to middle or high hard doubles, 5 out clogs the passes he’d want to make more and make things even easier to recover too.
Had to rush the rest of this lol:
Minnesotta shifted a bit from high help to soft baseline help to high hard doubles + bump to mixing high and baseline gelp a lot, I wouldn’t say AG was an issue here a big part of countering post help is setting pin in screens for the WS corner and he did a good job
Generally Jokic wasn’t getting deep enough so a lot of his pass outs let to situations where role players had to do a ton to create an advantage still, or easy ish closeouts. 100% they missed some good looks, but a lot of resets and passing everywhere and stuff and just generally the advantages weren’t super straightforward
Minnesotta Lowkey didn’t execute THAT well on their post help the helping guy on Jokic got caught on no man’s land a few times after the pass out when they would have recovered perfectly if he sprinted out to the corner, but again the advantages created means everyone didn’t have to rotate quite as much as let’s say a guard getting to the rack
IIRC off synergy somewhere Jokic statistically is like a 99% percentile 1 on 1 post player and that drops drastically to like 50-60% with help defense and double teams, for the last 3-4 years. His TO rate is about average for high volume post players in those situations, and numbers drop in that regard all around in the playoffs as teams are smarter on their help (like not sending soft digs if he’s deep in smh Lonnie walker)
I think the supporting cast was fine, they had two unbelievably bad performances but as a whole were pretty solid otherwise especially as a good defensive cast… game 7 is a bit of a weird one since their numbers weren’t all too good but Murray’s individual first half brilliance + that lead, I do think it’s on him to bring them home and he was pretty passive/ineffective during that wolves run
I generally agree that his defense wasn’t completely awful the whole series (like the lakers series lol) but game 1 and the second half of game 7 were horrendous looking back
Especially with how few TOs the team had in g1 I think his TOs were a big deal there, it’s one thing if he’s destroying the D and they’re sending everyone at him and a few turnovers here and there because he’s doing everything but iirc I think at least 5-6 of the 7 were single coverage or just violations (charges, 3 seconds). Couple that with his efficiency being a bit middling that game.
As a side note I feel people think he was taking the toughest shots ever because of defensive attention, Jokic just passes when he’s doubled lol it’s more if he can beat them one way if they come the other way or lurking help that he might shoot through multiple guys, although it definately makes him think since I mean we saw how Gobert does trying to guard him one on one lmfao it’s hilarious
I would say game 1 because of his defense especially was a pretty bad game.
Game 7 wasn’t horrible but despite the big ox score numbers, 12/27 aside from the concession basket, his shot being off from three kind of killed a ton of the nuggets offense since that dreaded two man game and DHO stuff gets neutralized if you can just sag off him enough to allow the BH to get back in front, some missed shots by his teammates but again a lot of times they’re having to do a lot
I think it’s more like, offensicely he wasn’t bad or anything of course but I don’t think he was nearly as good as the box score numbers look, but more importantly I thought at the end of the day like, for an offensive engine whose hyped up for the consistency and unstoppableness of his offense the fact that the on court offense with him has. Not really done wel at all against any of the best defenses he’s faced his entire prime results wise, but more than that like the other reason they came back outside of the crazy stagnation on offense at literally the worst possible time where he kind of was passive/ineffective was him just getting brutalized defensively, it was genuinely crazy watching back how much the nuggets had to help on drives vs him, think it led to a few threes along with just guys scoring at the rim with ease or situations where. Wing has to rotate defensively from the weakside corner for a corner drive rather than him in position closer at the weakside elbow
I disagree with the notion that the supporting cast was horrible because I think on a game to game basis they were fantastic in games 1, 3,4, very good in game 5, and awful in games 2 and 6.
Game 7 is a weird one, as a whole there were struggles but good defense in the first half + Murray going god mode for a bit had them up 20 and at that point and I’m gonna be honest at that point regardless of what the others do you HAVE to be able to take them home, at home. Like not only did the offense fail and he was passive untill the wolves completely came back, but they also largely scored outside of some wild step backs by just eviscerating him on defense that half and taking advantage of them not having a real anchor rim protector versus rotators because he’s their center… and man some of those post up doubles and resets where they’d swing it around with no advantage just killed their offense, I mean most of his best assists when the cutter/lob isn’t open, for his weakside passes off hard or soft help he REALLY needs to get defenders to bite on head fakes for those skip passes when he’s not getting deep position and he’s not really as good as a guy like bron or luka is at making those skip passes with good velocity, otoh he’s the best at finding cutters ever probably but again you take the high side and the cut and open up the weakside and do scram rotations (or bait the high side double but have guys super ready to rotate hard) and it changes things, like openness is a tad different when it’s like, he helped off me and I’m open vs the entire gameplan being to have the next defender zone up rotate hella hard because they’re funneling a pass to you and forcing a sped up shot or a bunch of passes around the perimeter
I respect the fact you actually have a real conversation about it versus guys not able to address actual points though
I think people misunderstand what I said when I said I don’t think Jokic is the best player in the league and named the other 3 guys.
I obviously don’t think Jokic is a distant 4th, I think those players next year are all around the same tier and Jokic is in the best situation of the 4 of them (well maybe shai) in the context of having high impact data on a team that helps enhance his strengths while falling apart without him while still being very strong once they shorten their rotation, but that somehow gets misconstrued to me saying his impact is completely fake which isn’t what I’m saying at all.
I think an optimized Giannis is the BITW but there are the most realistic barriers to that and it’s the least likely to happen in the near future, Shai is probably the most consistent, Luka is likely a guy that will have some ridiculous offensice impact numbers one of these seasons and people will make stupid narratives about how he learned to play team basketball when all that happened was less stagnation around him + team dealing with blitzes better which are naturally the easiest Type of hard double to deal with because they’re far out, and Jokic has the best and worst matchups with the highest range of performance but his actual box score numbers will always be consistent and is in the best situations to mitigate the bad defensive matchups because he’s in a well coached defensive team good at rotating so he’s able to play in aggressive coverages which he’s actually quite good at against most guys with his hands and Iq (although I’m sure many people here don’t realize that and just assume cuz he’s fat he should be far back or whatever).
But I think people want to act as if the criticisms are completely invalid and he actually had a great series and I just don’t see it, and so far the only person whose made any sort of valid points is peregrine because he’s a guy that actually watches the games lol
