All-Season Player of the Year Discussion thread

[Doctor MJ]

@ Doc MJ

The Clippers losing to the Rockets will look bad because they are a much better team, but I don't know how Blake Griffin can be penalized heavily for it. The real truth it, if CP3 had been healthy during this series, they could have even swept the Rockets - Blake Griffin has been a constant force and even won game 1 (almost game 2) without CP3 against a playoff caliber team. He seems to be a much more effective player than James Harden in the post season.

Griffin's issue is that he was nowhere near the top 5 in the regular season. If he's going to leap into the top 5 then, it's not going to be based on a 2-round playoff run where the team loses to a team they have no business losing to.

I'm pretty open to basically ignoring the regular season in my POY judgment when we talk about a guy driving his team all the way, but a few great games in the midst of an unexpectedly quick playoff run is another matter altogether.

[therealbig3]

I'm actually really embarrassed that I forgot to mention Griffin. I think I would still take the other 6 players I mentioned over him, but Griffin has been great this year. Definitely one of the game's elites, and imo, clearly the #2 PF in the game behind Davis, and that's a potentially good debate. I think Griffin is definitely the best offensive PF in the game, easily.

EDIT: Easily is probably overstating it, Davis is a very good offensive player too. But I trust Griffin more, he's better at creating his own shot imo, and he's a better passer.

[therealbig3]

I also tend to disagree with the talk of how CP3 missing 2 games made a difference in this series. They went 1-1 and stole home court without him. That's what the lower seed is trying to do anyway, and they accomplished that without him. Since he came back, they've been 2-2 against the Rockets. They blew a 3-1 lead WITH CP3 playing, and playing well at that.

CP3's missed games has made ZERO impact on this series imo. They did what they would have wanted to do if they had him anyway. And they've had two chances to eliminate the Rockets with CP3 on the court. They're getting a third chance tmw night. Blaming the two missed games for this being a 7 game series (and potentially the biggest choke job of all time by the Clippers) is weak imo.

[GSP]

Cp3s style of play deserves criticism at this point. Its just frustrating how careful he plays, his pace he favors, where he needs to break from the offensive gameplan and volume score but doesnt manage well. Hes capable of it and Houston cant consistently stop him specially when he has the best midrange shot in the league this season. Clips were up 2-1 with Cp3 playing 22 TOTAL minutes in those 3 games.........

I still dont think Harden is top 5 but ive underrated him. His defense is still a big problem. When youre noticeably the worst defensive player on ur team and are the reason for most of the defensive lapses breakdowns like when Houston got blown out badly thats a problem.

[MO12msu]

I'm not gonna blame CP3 for the fact that his teammates shot like crap in the last few games. I'll dock him a little bit for the fact that the team he led completely collapsed, but at the end of the day, he's the only one who played his butt of for his team. The rest of the supporting cast was basically non-existant.

[therealbig3]

I'm not gonna blame CP3 for the fact that his teammates shot like crap in the last few games. I'll dock him a little bit for the fact that the team he led completely collapsed, but at the end of the day, he's the only one who played his butt of for his team. The rest of the supporting cast was basically non-existant.

LOL Blake Griffin was arguably their best player in this series.

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake. Just how much more help does Paul need when he already has Blake? Not to mention that Redick and Jordan are excellent role players that any team would love to have.

Paul deserves MORE criticism than LeBron when he wasn't able to win with Wade...unlike Wade, Blake doesn't provide redundancy with Paul...and unlike Wade, Blake isn't constantly injured and on the decline. He's in the prime of his career.

[PaulieWal]

Paul deserves MORE criticism than LeBron when he wasn't able to win with Wade...unlike Wade, Blake doesn't provide redundancy with Paul...and unlike Wade, Blake isn't constantly injured and on the decline. He's in the prime of his career.

Wait, what? Most don't blame LeBron for the 14 loss and he was #1 in voting last year. He got blamed in 2011 and rightfully so when Wade certainly wasn't "constantly injured and on the decline".

[E-Balla]

Chris Paul loses points because Blake and the rest of the team put the Clippers in a position where they could've swept Houston and CP3's injury ended the chances for that. They were up 3-1 with their one loss being a 6 point loss in game 2 without Chris Paul. How can he not lose points when his injury affected their season so much.

[ceiling raiser]

Playoff availability is a big deal for me. I'm not sure how much I'm going to dock CP3 for missing time early this round, but I was considering him at the 1 spot after the Spurs series. Being out for multiple games likely eliminates him from consideration for that position on my ballot, I'd think.

[GSP]

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake.

Also Blake had a GREAT postseason but i think his boxscore numbers might be overrated his impact compared to someone like Dwight. How much better is Blake than a healthy Dwight honestly?

He put up 27/11/6 today but he wasnt having a big impact to me. His defense was god awful, especially on Josh Smith. In transition his D was lazy, his switches on the high screens he didnt know how far to sag and was bad at closing out. Blake can switch to this turbo mixed Donkey Kong mode where hes dominant on both ends, but hes choked up in the 4th and he gasses. Hes still easily a top 10 player when healthy but the biggest problem in this series for the Clips was their depth and crap role players. Doc choosing to stay with Barnes instead of going for Ariza, Hawes over Pierce etc. Again I think Cp3 absolutely deserves blame but just some things to consider...

Also calling Redick an excellent role player is a stretch too. Hes very good, one of the best shooters, much better than Jamal Crawford (but thats not saying much) but his defense is inconsistent (played good man D on Harden overall but lost shooters at the 3pt line a lot not as much as Crawford obviously but yeah) and his shot just disappeared. He most so many open looks in this series.

[E-Balla]

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake.

Also Blake had a GREAT postseason but i think his boxscore numbers might be overrated his impact compared to someone like Dwight. How much better is Blake than a healthy Dwight honestly?

He put up 27/11/6 today but he wasnt having a big impact to me. His defense was god awful, especially on Josh Smith. In transition his D was lazy, his switches on the high screens he didnt know how far to sag and was bad at closing out. Blake can switch to this turbo mixed Donkey Kong mode where hes dominant on both ends, but hes choked up in the 4th and he gasses. Hes still easily a top 10 player when healthy but the biggest problem in this series for the Clips was their depth and crap role players. Doc choosing to stay with Barnes instead of going for Ariza, Hawes over Pierce etc. Again I think Cp3 absolutely deserves blame but just some things to consider...

Also calling Redick an excellent role player is a stretch too. Hes very good, one of the best shooters, much better than Jamal Crawford (but thats not saying much) but his defense is inconsistent (played good man D on Harden overall but lost shooters at the 3pt line a lot not as much as Crawford obviously but yeah) and his shot just disappeared. He most so many open looks in this series.

To be fair he said plays with and both Westbrook and KD haven't done much playing together in a while. Redick is an excellent role player and as a role player he gave LA 4 very good games to start the series and overall his defense wasn't that bad and he played Harden pretty well. A guy giving you 17/1/2 on 63TS isn't bad at all. Crawford was trash though.

[Doctor MJ]

So, I have no idea what to make of that series.

Up through the 3rd quarter of Game 6, I was prepared to summarize the series as follows: "The Clips toyed with the Rockets. They weren't on the same planet. They broke serve immediately and by a large margin despite missing their best player, and then blew the Rockets out at home every time. The Rockets need to go back to the drawing board."

And then it all fell apart. I'll be looking forward to the analyses I see from various smart people over the next couple days. I'll need time to ruminate on all of this.

Obvious takeaways though:

-Griffin won't be in my Top 5.

-Harden almost certainly will be in my Top 5, and will likely be ahead of Paul.

-For the Rockets, this makes the year a clear cut success in terms of what they can trumpet, but unless they give the Warriors a good fight, my main thoughts are going to be about the Clippers.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not gonna blame CP3 for the fact that his teammates shot like crap in the last few games. I'll dock him a little bit for the fact that the team he led completely collapsed, but at the end of the day, he's the only one who played his butt of for his team. The rest of the supporting cast was basically non-existant.

LOL Blake Griffin was arguably their best player in this series.

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake. Just how much more help does Paul need when he already has Blake? Not to mention that Redick and Jordan are excellent role players that any team would love to have.

Paul deserves MORE criticism than LeBron when he wasn't able to win with Wade...unlike Wade, Blake doesn't provide redundancy with Paul...and unlike Wade, Blake isn't constantly injured and on the decline. He's in the prime of his career.

My primary stance on Paul and the playoffs remains: Anyone calling him a choker, or a regular season only player, is silly. What he did against the Spurs is not something that can reasonably be ignored.

But in terms of secondary things:

1. An emotional component to this loss, a "choke" as it were, is hard to really argue with. Some will take this too far, but clearly this wasn't an ideal emotional response from the Clippers.

2. I'll be very interested in analyses of the tactics used and the adjustments made. As I said, to me it felt like the Clippers utterly toyed with the Rockets, until everything changed. Those changes came with some responses McHale made. How big were those moves in all of this?

3. While I consider Paul an unequivocal all-time-great, something I've always said about him is that his particularly temperament mixed with his ball dominance has some negative attributes. When he came to the Clippers people expected a Suns-esque interplay between Paul & Griffin. Instead what they got was slow play with Griffin's numbers going down. The results were still very good, but you had to wonder if Griffin was being ideally used. As Griffin has continued to grow and is now a great playmaker in his own right, it's very hard to even argue now that there aren't some aspects of the pair's synergy that are sub-optimal, and while some of that is unavoidable, it does make one wonder if it really should be better than all this.

[RSCD3_]

I'm not gonna blame CP3 for the fact that his teammates shot like crap in the last few games. I'll dock him a little bit for the fact that the team he led completely collapsed, but at the end of the day, he's the only one who played his butt of for his team. The rest of the supporting cast was basically non-existant.

LOL Blake Griffin was arguably their best player in this series.

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake. Just how much more help does Paul need when he already has Blake? Not to mention that Redick and Jordan are excellent role players that any team would love to have.

Paul deserves MORE criticism than LeBron when he wasn't able to win with Wade...unlike Wade, Blake doesn't provide redundancy with Paul...and unlike Wade, Blake isn't constantly injured and on the decline. He's in the prime of his career.

My primary stance on Paul and the playoffs remains: Anyone calling him a choker, or a regular season only player, is silly. What he did against the Spurs is not something that can reasonably be ignored.

But in terms of secondary things:

1. An emotional component to this loss, a "choke" as it were, is hard to really argue with. Some will take this too far, but clearly this wasn't an ideal emotional response from the Clippers.

2. I'll be very interested in analyses of the tactics used and the adjustments made. As I said, to me it felt like the Clippers utterly toyed with the Rockets, until everything changed. Those changes came with some responses McHale made. How big were those moves in all of this?

3. While I consider Paul an unequivocal all-time-great, something I've always said about him is that his particularly temperament mixed with his ball dominance has some negative attributes. When he came to the Clippers people expected a Suns-esque interplay between Paul & Griffin. Instead what they got was slow play with Griffin's numbers going down. The results were still very good, but you had to wonder if Griffin was being ideally used. As Griffin has continued to grow and is now a great playmaker in his own right, it's very hard to even argue now that there aren't some aspects of the pair's synergy that are sub-optimal, and while some of that is unavoidable, it does make one wonder if it really should be better than all this.

Id venture to argue that the positives of pushing the pace up a lot are worth the extra turnovers Chris would get if he was making more plays.

It'd help their offense a lot IMO ( especially with regards to Griffin ) unfortunately doc is unlikely to do that.

It's just that Paul doesn't have a problem scoring but he's not really a volume scoring threat lately ( unless his jumper is hot and he goes to it, although that seems to be the thing defenses have keyed in on when he comes out aggressive ) and that causes him to try to set people up when people are playing him for the pass, thus it's harder to find open shots for others yet there's more of an opportunity for him to drive/score but he seems kind of unwilling.

[Gregoire]

Right now:

Curry
Harden
Paul
Lebron
Griffin
davis
Westbrook
Cousins

[MO12msu]

LOL Blake Griffin was arguably their best player in this series.

I really don't understand this kind of logic for Chris Paul anymore...no other superstar in the league plays with someone as good as Blake. Just how much more help does Paul need when he already has Blake? Not to mention that Redick and Jordan are excellent role players that any team would love to have.

Paul deserves MORE criticism than LeBron when he wasn't able to win with Wade...unlike Wade, Blake doesn't provide redundancy with Paul...and unlike Wade, Blake isn't constantly injured and on the decline. He's in the prime of his career.

I was referring to this series only. If you watched how many WIDE open shots that Matt Barnes, JJ Redick, and Jamal Crawford missed, you would see that his teammates were just off. I don't even think that is debatable if you actually watched games 6 and 7 at least.

Yes Paul has Blake. But at the end of the day, that was a two man team when it comes to consistent performance that you can count on in the playoffs. Sure DeAndre and JJ are great role players, but how about we analyze their actual play in the series that they lost instead of acting like they played as well as they did in the regular season?

DeAndre was fine for the most part(the usual ok defense, lob threats, rebounding, and crappy free throw shooting). JJ Redick was having a fine series himself, but in game 6 he shot 30.8% from the field and in game 7 he shot 33.3% from the field with 6 turnovers! Are we gonna pretend like some of those turnovers weren't crucial? Or that if one of the best shooters in the NBA hits his normal percentage(on WIDE open shots created by both Paul & Griffin) in game 6 that we're not even worried about game 7? At the end of the day, the problem with the Clipper's offense was that they didn't make open shots. Not JJ Redick, not Matt Barnes, and not Jamal Crawford. I think I'll blame GM Doc Rivers for that, more than anything, considering that none of those players provide much value on the defensive end to make up for it. The flaw with the Clippers is that if one of Paul, Griffin, Jordan, or Redick, is off their games, it takes a herculean effort from the others, because the rest of the team is really really really bad.

This board likes to claim that they don't worry too much about team results when evaluating player performance, but I think it can be as reactionary as everyone else.

Case in point, why in the world are we back to talking about the flaws of CP3 holding the ball? As if it's really a detriment to team offense? I've already posted before how the Clipper's were running GOAT level offense when CP3 and Griffin were both in the lineup this year. The synergy with Paul and Griffin is fine, CP3 led the league in secondary(hockey) assists in both the playoffs and regular season. I guarantee you that most of those were the result of an initial pick and roll/pop to Griffin who then used his excellent vision to find Redick for a three or DeAndre for a lob. I find the whole, "he holds the ball too long and prevents easy opportunities to avoid turnovers" criticism to be so off base. Just watch the Clippers and it should be obvious that if Redick or Griffin is down the court, Paul will throw it ahead to them. If Redick or Griffin grabs the rebound, about half the time those guys are taking the ball up and initiating the offense.

At the end of the day the Clippers choked, they blew it. If you're gonna blame CP3, as the leader of the team, for letting that happen, I'm cool with it. If you're gonna blame him or missing a couple games in the playoffs, I think that's a fair criticism too. But I'm not gonna bring up these so-called "flaws" that no one was really blaming when they beat the defending champion Spurs in 7 games in round 1, or when they were up 18 points in the 3rd quarter of a closeout game in round 2. That's essentially saying that Paul has flaws as a player that prevent him from going to the wcf. Um...if you can beat the Spurs and are a quarter away from going to the wcf, why in the world are we going to say that you are too flawed as you are to make a deep playoff run? Let's not overanalyze. The Clippers blew it. They should be playing the Warriors right now. It was a missed opportunity, unlucky, and a choke.

My updated rankings:
1. Curry
2. Harden
3. Davis
4. Paul
5. Lebron

[Quotatious]

Right now:

Curry
Harden
Paul
Lebron
Griffin
davis
Westbrook
Cousins

Why Griffin over Davis?

[mischievous]

As it stands now:

Curry
Davis
Harden
Lebron
CP3

Some may question Lebron over Cp3 but, Lebron just led his team to 3 straight wins over the Bulls with a hobbled Kyrie. He wasn't good scoring wise in 2/3 of those wins but was excellent with his playmaking, rebounding and made an impact defensively. He found a way to lead his team to victroy, CP3 did not despite being up 3-1. That has to matter, i mean it's hard to reward losing.

[mischievous]

I'm not sure how much I'm going to dock CP3 for missing time early this round, but I was considering him at the 1 spot after the Spurs series.

It's debatable whether or not Paul was even the best player on his team in the Spurs series. Griffin put up 24/13/7.4 assts. I find it a little weird that one series where he wasn't really better than the other top 4-5 candidates would have vaulted him to the one spot anyways.

[ceiling raiser]

I'm not sure how much I'm going to dock CP3 for missing time early this round, but I was considering him at the 1 spot after the Spurs series.

It's debatable whether or not Paul was even the best player on his team in the Spurs series. Griffin put up 24/13/7.4 assts. I find it a little weird that one series where he wasn't really better than the other top 4-5 candidates would have vaulted him to the one spot anyways.

It didn't vault him per se, I was considering slotting him there after the season as well. Curry was and is my favorite for the spot though.