2021-22 RealGM All-Season Awards - Discussion Thread

[Doctor MJ]

It would be more helpful if you explained in detail how he was better, why the team defense was so much worse than in earlier years, and why it went back to elite come playoff time.

Re: these days. I've been using +/- since before you were on RealGM.

The team outside of the top guys was lowkey crappy this past season. The primary reasons for this were a lack of playmaking and rim protection. A third reason was that we had decent role players not giving the value they should have because they were forced to play out of position. If you want to ding anyone for not taking the regular season seriously enough that's on the front office/owners who didn't want to spend money or assets on improving either thing during the season trusting in veterans getting healthy and shorter rotations in the playoffs solving the issue.

It shouldn't surprise that the defense was worse than in previous seasons given that for almost the entire season we had Giannis as the sole rim defender with Bobby Portis as the only other big guy. After those two guys Pat Connaughton was the main third big at 6'5 followed by a series of young guys, washouts and team mascot Thanasis. On a team where the defensive philosophy is to defend the rim as first, second and third priority it's clearly not an ideal bunch. As a result of the above we had to have everyone crowd the paint and we simply gave up defending any threes outside of the corner. We were a terrible three point defense team. Rebounding was obviously a challenge too.

The other major deficiency in the team was the lack of point guards, I won't get into how that effected the offense because it's not the focus here but not having competent point of attack defense was a huge sink on the team D. Jrue obviously is an excellent defender but he played 56% of team minutes, Hill is close to washed up but had a massive positive impact when healthy but sadly he wasn't playing for most of the season.

Tying into the lack of guards on the team is how Giannis is used by the coach to hold lineups together. We play two types of non-starter linueps, the non-Giannis lineup typically features the 4 other starters and the 6th man/backup big. The other lineup is Giannis and bench guys. This season we had to ration playmaking minutes so Giannis typically had to do without a PG in non-starter minutes because the other lineup needs a setup guy, this means that not only did we not have a big playing with Giannis, we also didn't have anyone to defend the point of attack.

Re defense being better in the playoffs, we knocked off a ton of terrible small ball minutes, played our 4 best defenders Giannis, Jrue, Wes and Lopez a ton more and banished awful defenders like Nwora altogether The team minutes are entirely different:

Regular season
Giannis 56%
Jrue 56%
Khris 54%
Bobby 51%
Grayson 46%
Pat 43%
Hill 32%
Nwora 30%
Wes 25%
(various scrubs omitted)
Lopez 8%

Playoffs
Jrue 80%
Giannis 78%
Wes 60%
Brook 58%
Pat 55%
Grayson 53%
Carter 22%
Hill 13%
Khris 12%

In short the team was thin on minutes to competent players, guys played out of position and we were both small and slow in the regular season. Probably would have won 5 more games if the team didn't cheap out and cut Cousins even.

First off, thank you for your reply, and know that me having Giannis as low as I do in my awards (at least at this moment, maybe something will convince me to change) is the #1 thing that bothers me when I look at them. As such, I expect I'll be continuing to chew on this after these ballots need to be tabulated.

Second, I'm glad you posted the minutes, but that's part of what I mean when I take issue of the regular season. Case in a nutshell:

Do we really think Giannis sits in the last game of the year with seeding in play (seeding relative to the team that would eventually eliminate them in Game 7 on their home court), if he and the Bucks were as focused on maxing the regular season as they were in the playoffs?

I really doubt it, and this all goes in to what I'm talking about. Possibly my choice of words up to this point has made it seem like stuff like wasn't in the category of what I'm talking about, but I certainly intend it to be.

Re: "Giannis as the sole rim defender", I'm aware of this, and it makes sense as a response to why the Bucks didn't have a more elite defense, but we would expect the on/off based metrics to find more impressive if this is the case, and if the metrics actually said that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. The open question is how (apparently, based on the data) Giannis managed not to prove able to differentiate himself from his defensive teammates all that well given the fact that he was the only rim defender among them.

Re: Giannis was played strategically without point of attack defender. This is also something where I'd expect it to show up in the RAPM, but I'll acknowledge we might be getting into the territory where collinearity really messes with us.

Regardless of anything I've said that is a riposte Aussie, I want you to know I appreciate your team-specific insight, and also want you to know that I don't mean to claim I know the Bucks better than you. In the end though, I can't outsource my assessment to someone else, even if I think there's an excellent chance they are right and I am wrong simply based on their knowledge in the domain.

[Doctor MJ]

And then there's the defense where I just can't emphasize enough that in the modern NBA, there is no hiding a bad defender. If your playoff opponent decides to attack Player X, then there's a direct linkage between that player's effectiveness and your DRtg. If they aren't able to kill you with that approach, then that defender is fundamentally a solid defender. And that's how Curry held up the entire time despite teams over-attacking him to tire him out so that his offense might not kill them (Ha!).

great writeup all around, i enjoyed reading it. one thing i wanted to inquire on was the assessment of gobert, specifically due to this quote. which i think is a super reasonable take and perspective of defense.

but my impression was that such a perspective would be more positive towards gobert due to ... well, the bad defenders in the jazz rotation who opposing offenses have a rather easy time attacking.

or would the argument be more on the lines of not blaming gobert for the team's shortcomings but instead giving him less credit because it's a system that works at hiding the bad defenders in the regular season but can't in the postseason?

Thank you and this is a great point.

I must take issue with perspective where me not elevating Gobert to the very top of all defensive player in accomplishment in an NBA season is the same thing as "blaming" him. To me the word "blame" is a statement to be used within the context of a team to speak to what specifically is going wrong.

On an NBA-wide scale, out of hundreds of players who are themselves something like one in a million relative to the average human, me ranking any player in the Top 5 to me should feel like I'm giving them props. It doesn't of course, it feels to people like I'm blaming Gobert, but I don't really have any kind of problem in saying that less fortunate team context can take a guy who might have had the #1 highest achieving defensive season and caused him to drop a few slot compared to other amazing defensive players.

Re: just can't hide the bad defensive teammates in a postseason series. A couple things here:

1. If we can agree that this is at the root of the problem, then let's just recognize that this means that Gobert's defenses over the last 3 years when it really counted were below average in their effectiveness. If we think about the MVP, it's pretty rare for a guy on a below average team to win the MVP, right? While logically we can argue that a player on such a team may actually be the most valuable player in some year, I doubt any of us ever have during any season we've analyzed live.

It's just worth noting that a vote for Gobert, when recognizing this about the playoffs, is effectively doing for DPOY what one has probably never done for MVP. Doesn't mean one is wrong to do so, but it's kind of a big deal.

2. I think it's important to note the way that opposing playoff offenses have increasingly seemed to "know what to do" to mitigate Gobert's defensive effectiveness. And while these opponents are absolutely using the weakness of Gobert's teammates against him, this isn't a situation where we're regularly seeing the playoff Jazz defense look way better with Gobert than without - in 2 out of the last 3 post-seasons, the Jazz have had a worse DRtg with him on the court than with him off, and the other year ('20-21) saw the team lose that Game 6 with Gobert having by far the worst +/- of anyone on his team.

I think part of what's likely going on here is that teams tend to do better when they have clarity over how to attack their opponent. This is why there's so much value in just being able to switch your defensive strategy on the next possession - the offense then has to figure out how to attack the new alignment, and even if the offense is really smart, there will be some lag before they reach a new optimization...at which point you can switch it up again.

With the Jazz, the offenses just seem to know what to do to mitigate Gobert's defense at this point, and it's hard for me to swallow the idea this shouldn't have an impact on how we see his achievement.

I brought up Artis Gilmore before. Gilmore to me is a guy who was likely the most valuable defensive player in the world early in his career, but while he remained a valuable player for a long time, he spent most of his year having an impact that really doesn't feel like it belongs in the DPOY class. Why? I think because the rest of the league figured out what they needed to do to chip away his impact here and there.

And let's note as I say this: Looming so large in the league that the rest of the league does this is an accomplishment, and the adaptations in approach made due to the presence of this looming figure come at a cost to the adapting team which is part of the value the player contributes.

The question isn't whether there's impact associated with the looming figure, but whether what we see is sufficient to say that the achievement achieved surpasses all others in the league.

Finally, to be clear, this is not me making a hard stand saying Gobert is no longer able to lead elite playoff defenses. I look forward to seeing Gobert in a new context (whether on another team, or with significant changes to his Jazz) and seeing how that looks. What I learn in the future will certainly continue to shape my assessment of Gobert then and now.

[dontcalltimeout]

Ah, I misread. My apologies. I agree with that point.

I take back my apology after I saw you give Andrew Wiggins an honorable mention

Jeez, why do you feel so strongly about it?

People don't think Wiggins deserves a mention?

This was a guy who teams should want to feature if they're going for a lottery pick, and he turned himself into the second-most dependable player on the 2022 champions. Now, there's no team in the world that wouldn't want the opportunity to play Wiggins 35-45 minutes in the most high leverage of games.

[jalengreen]

I take back my apology after I saw you give Andrew Wiggins an honorable mention

Jeez, why do you feel so strongly about it?

People don't think Wiggins deserves a mention?

This was a guy who teams should want to feature if they're going for a lottery pick, and he turned himself into the second-most dependable player on the 2022 champions. Now, there's no team in the world that wouldn't want the opportunity to play Wiggins 35-45 minutes in the most high leverage of games.

i think you can rate wiggins highly (i.e. a player any team would love to have) without viewing him as a top 10 POY guy (which may not be exactly what honorable mention means in that context).

[Doctor MJ]

Jeez, why do you feel so strongly about it?

People don't think Wiggins deserves a mention?

This was a guy who teams should want to feature if they're going for a lottery pick, and he turned himself into the second-most dependable player on the 2022 champions. Now, there's no team in the world that wouldn't want the opportunity to play Wiggins 35-45 minutes in the most high leverage of games.

i think you can rate wiggins highly (i.e. a player any team would love to have) without viewing him as a top 10 POY guy (which may not be exactly what honorable mention means in that context).

Yup, yup, and this pertains to why I made clear in my vote that I don't feel chained to making a Top 10 list for POY when I add my 5 HM's to my Top 5.

Do I think Wiggins is a better player than LeBron or KD? No.

Do I feel compelled to give either LeBron or KD "Honorable" mention this year in overall POY? Also no. LeBron deserves to take a hit for ruining his team with the Westbrook trade, Durant deserves to take a hit for not taking team defense seriously.

Wiggins had an unambiguously positive year worth celebrating, so I celebrate it.

(Incidentally, had I been focused on Wiggins as an MIP candidate it's possible I wouldn't have talked about him in the POY discussion, and I should be clear that while I didn't talk about Wiggins as an MIP candidate, I think you could make the argument that he improved in his impact more so than teammate Jordan Poole. But I do think Wiggins' impact improvement is more about change of context, whereas Poole it was literally learning how to be an effective NBA player, and moving from G-leaguers to 3rd Splash Brother is a hell of a thing.)

[AussieBuck]

It would be more helpful if you explained in detail how he was better, why the team defense was so much worse than in earlier years, and why it went back to elite come playoff time.

Re: these days. I've been using +/- since before you were on RealGM.

The team outside of the top guys was lowkey crappy this past season. The primary reasons for this were a lack of playmaking and rim protection. A third reason was that we had decent role players not giving the value they should have because they were forced to play out of position. If you want to ding anyone for not taking the regular season seriously enough that's on the front office/owners who didn't want to spend money or assets on improving either thing during the season trusting in veterans getting healthy and shorter rotations in the playoffs solving the issue.

It shouldn't surprise that the defense was worse than in previous seasons given that for almost the entire season we had Giannis as the sole rim defender with Bobby Portis as the only other big guy. After those two guys Pat Connaughton was the main third big at 6'5 followed by a series of young guys, washouts and team mascot Thanasis. On a team where the defensive philosophy is to defend the rim as first, second and third priority it's clearly not an ideal bunch. As a result of the above we had to have everyone crowd the paint and we simply gave up defending any threes outside of the corner. We were a terrible three point defense team. Rebounding was obviously a challenge too.

The other major deficiency in the team was the lack of point guards, I won't get into how that effected the offense because it's not the focus here but not having competent point of attack defense was a huge sink on the team D. Jrue obviously is an excellent defender but he played 56% of team minutes, Hill is close to washed up but had a massive positive impact when healthy but sadly he wasn't playing for most of the season.

Tying into the lack of guards on the team is how Giannis is used by the coach to hold lineups together. We play two types of non-starter linueps, the non-Giannis lineup typically features the 4 other starters and the 6th man/backup big. The other lineup is Giannis and bench guys. This season we had to ration playmaking minutes so Giannis typically had to do without a PG in non-starter minutes because the other lineup needs a setup guy, this means that not only did we not have a big playing with Giannis, we also didn't have anyone to defend the point of attack.

Re defense being better in the playoffs, we knocked off a ton of terrible small ball minutes, played our 4 best defenders Giannis, Jrue, Wes and Lopez a ton more and banished awful defenders like Nwora altogether The team minutes are entirely different:

Regular season
Giannis 56%
Jrue 56%
Khris 54%
Bobby 51%
Grayson 46%
Pat 43%
Hill 32%
Nwora 30%
Wes 25%
(various scrubs omitted)
Lopez 8%

Playoffs
Jrue 80%
Giannis 78%
Wes 60%
Brook 58%
Pat 55%
Grayson 53%
Carter 22%
Hill 13%
Khris 12%

In short the team was thin on minutes to competent players, guys played out of position and we were both small and slow in the regular season. Probably would have won 5 more games if the team didn't cheap out and cut Cousins even.

First off, thank you for your reply, and know that me having Giannis as low as I do in my awards (at least at this moment, maybe something will convince me to change) is the #1 thing that bothers me when I look at them. As such, I expect I'll be continuing to chew on this after these ballots need to be tabulated.

Second, I'm glad you posted the minutes, but that's part of what I mean when I take issue of the regular season. Case in a nutshell:

Do we really think Giannis sits in the last game of the year with seeding in play (seeding relative to the team that would eventually eliminate them in Game 7 on their home court), if he and the Bucks were as focused on maxing the regular season as they were in the playoffs?

I really doubt it, and this all goes in to what I'm talking about. Possibly my choice of words up to this point has made it seem like stuff like wasn't in the category of what I'm talking about, but I certainly intend it to be.

Re: "Giannis as the sole rim defender", I'm aware of this, and it makes sense as a response to why the Bucks didn't have a more elite defense, but we would expect the on/off based metrics to find more impressive if this is the case, and if the metrics actually said that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. The open question is how (apparently, based on the data) Giannis managed not to prove able to differentiate himself from his defensive teammates all that well given the fact that he was the only rim defender among them.

Re: Giannis was played strategically without point of attack defender. This is also something where I'd expect it to show up in the RAPM, but I'll acknowledge we might be getting into the territory where collinearity really messes with us.

Regardless of anything I've said that is a riposte Aussie, I want you to know I appreciate your team-specific insight, and also want you to know that I don't mean to claim I know the Bucks better than you. In the end though, I can't outsource my assessment to someone else, even if I think there's an excellent chance they are right and I am wrong simply based on their knowledge in the domain.

The Bucks have sat all the starters for the last game of every season in the Bud era. It's amazing how well that narrative spread this season, I guess it was a good story to say we dodged the Nets. (this is not a shot at you)

I think the part where we're at cross purposes is that you seem to be basing stuff on the Bucks not taking the regular season as serious this season when I'd say it's been a constant factor over pretty much the last 3 seasons and much more of a coach thing than a player one. Yeah Giannis finds another gear in the playoffs because he has to but that was true in 21 and 20 too. The Bucks had a bad season for roster management sprinkled in with injury luck and it cost them seeding and maybe a chance at Khris getting healthy in time to win another ring. Waiting out the Lopez injury in combination with the disastrous attempt at replacing Tucker with minimum guys compounded badly.

Re the difference in defensive splits, yeah he's the only rim protector but he's playing in much worse non-starter lineups. The Bucks had the most lineups in the league this season and used 29 players. There's just a massive drop off in defensive effectiveness when you're carrying the 'hold it together lineups without a point of attack defender, Pat at PF and probably some guy who joined the team this week in the lineup. Jrue/Wes/Khris are lot better defensively than Wiggington/Nwora/Smart etc.

Anyway I won't keep banging this drum as I'm not even a part of this project, I just felt I had to chime in as it seems like there's a strong narrative (obviously not just you) that the Bucks had a strong team and that Giannis underperformed in the regular season and it really isn't the case. The team was nowhere near as good as the 2020 regular season team for example even if that team was never going to win anything.

[HeartBreakKid]

I take back my apology after I saw you give Andrew Wiggins an honorable mention

Jeez, why do you feel so strongly about it?

People don't think Wiggins deserves a mention?

This was a guy who teams should want to feature if they're going for a lottery pick, and he turned himself into the second-most dependable player on the 2022 champions. Now, there's no team in the world that wouldn't want the opportunity to play Wiggins 35-45 minutes in the most high leverage of games.

Because he's not the player of the year or close to it, and he certainly isn't the second best player on a championship team (I feel like you used the word dependable to say he is that in an alternative way because in basketball dependability is basically what determines your goodness as its a game of averages).


Andrew Wiggns plays well...sometimes. He's really not that great. You could make the argument he is the 4th best player on his team (and probably will be 5th if Klay Thompson comes back to snuff).

That makes him a useful player because the Warriors are good - is it possible to say that without going full throttle and mentioning him in the POY? Is he the only player that "every team in the league" would want him to play major minutes? I mean if a team could add any player at will to make their team better then you could have tens of honorable mentions.


What does him being a lotto team feaster have to do with POY? Isn't that MIP? If someone argued or HM Andrew Wiggins as MIP that doesn't sound wild at all to me. But POY? Come on now. I go on this board to get away from that ESPN stuff.

[Texas Chuck]

I continue to be baffled that any other player whose team didn't meet "expectations" is being used to diminish that player. To point out fatal flaws in them. To show that even when they were really good, well we have to re-think if they ever were because they didn't win it all this year.

Yet last year Stephen Curry played better individually than he did this year. His gravity didn't disappear. Teams still focused their defenses on stopping him. But he had no Klay. His role playing teammates mostly weren't very good. And so that great off-ball impact, that great gravity, well it has limits too. His team even with he and Draymond both having better years than this year wasn't even in the playoffs.

But I'm supposed to dismiss Gobert and too bad if his teammates were terrible. That's a sign that his impact isn't real? Or Giannis?

Sorry this inconsistency sucks. The guy we love gets a pass, the guys we don't, well don't.

[falcolombardi]

I continue to be baffled that any other player whose team didn't meet "expectations" is being used to diminish that player. To point out fatal flaws in them. To show that even when they were really good, well we have to re-think if they ever were because they didn't win it all this year.

Yet last year Stephen Curry played better individually than he did this year. His gravity didn't disappear. Teams still focused their defenses on stopping him. But he had no Klay. His role playing teammates mostly weren't very good. And so that great off-ball impact, that great gravity, well it has limits too. His team even with he and Draymond both having better years than this year wasn't even in the playoffs.

But I'm supposed to dismiss Gobert and too bad if his teammates were terrible. That's a sign that his impact isn't real? Or Giannis?

Sorry this inconsistency sucks. The guy we love gets a pass, the guys we don't, well don't.

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

[Texas Chuck]

I know but imagine an argument that says 20-21 Curry is a candidate for a top 3 NBA season of all-time but Kelly Oubre was apparently so bad as to be able to derail that season for the Warriors.

Yet we can't even mention that Spida and Conley and Mitchell and Bojan were defensive sieves. Or at least its then told to us that despite the numbers telling us Gobert is great because he can't win with terrible teammates he's not that great.

But Curry had to play with Kelly Oubre so he gets a pass? It's like the old KG days where we were supposed to pretend every single year he played with Ricky Davis when that was but a blip on KG's radar.

[HeartBreakKid]

bleh wiggins is making me turn to the dark side.

ill just say this because its too late to redact my other post - wiggins as MIP? oh i see that.

wiggins as POY?...no. Just no.

[falcolombardi]

I know but imagine an argument that says 20-21 Curry is a candidate for a top 3 NBA season of all-time but Kelly Oubre was apparently so bad as to be able to derail that season for the Warriors.

Yet we can't even mention that Spida and Conley and Mitchell and Bojan were defensive sieves. Or at least its then told to us that despite the numbers telling us Gobert is great because he can't win with terrible teammates he's not that great.

But Curry had to play with Kelly Oubre so he gets a pass? It's like the old KG days where we were supposed to pretend every single year he played with Ricky Davis when that was but a blip on KG's radar.

Kelly oubre is not even an awful player lol why would he be a "excuse" for a bad season?

I remember asking people if the fact that warriors system does need skilled passers across most positions to work doesnt go against the idea of kerr/curry ball perfect portability the same way "helioball" (which usuallt just means a on ball star with shooters around) needs quakity shooting around to be effective

I think the answer i was given was that oubre is so bad that is his fault for not working in the system not the system fault

[HeartBreakKid]

I continue to be baffled that any other player whose team didn't meet "expectations" is being used to diminish that player. To point out fatal flaws in them. To show that even when they were really good, well we have to re-think if they ever were because they didn't win it all this year.

Yet last year Stephen Curry played better individually than he did this year. His gravity didn't disappear. Teams still focused their defenses on stopping him. But he had no Klay. His role playing teammates mostly weren't very good. And so that great off-ball impact, that great gravity, well it has limits too. His team even with he and Draymond both having better years than this year wasn't even in the playoffs.

But I'm supposed to dismiss Gobert and too bad if his teammates were terrible. That's a sign that his impact isn't real? Or Giannis?

Sorry this inconsistency sucks. The guy we love gets a pass, the guys we don't, well don't.

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

[falcolombardi]

I continue to be baffled that any other player whose team didn't meet "expectations" is being used to diminish that player. To point out fatal flaws in them. To show that even when they were really good, well we have to re-think if they ever were because they didn't win it all this year.

Yet last year Stephen Curry played better individually than he did this year. His gravity didn't disappear. Teams still focused their defenses on stopping him. But he had no Klay. His role playing teammates mostly weren't very good. And so that great off-ball impact, that great gravity, well it has limits too. His team even with he and Draymond both having better years than this year wasn't even in the playoffs.

But I'm supposed to dismiss Gobert and too bad if his teammates were terrible. That's a sign that his impact isn't real? Or Giannis?

Sorry this inconsistency sucks. The guy we love gets a pass, the guys we don't, well don't.

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Lebron won 2010 poy with a underwhelming playoffs jokic prolly will win this with a single round loss

Is not too out there for the guy with the best regular season (most likely) to get 3rd

Although i can agree that he got given a "pass" in 2021 less liked players may not get (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

[HeartBreakKid]

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Although i can agree that he got given a pass most players dont in 2021 (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

I agree, but I'm just saying - Lebron James is like THE guy who gets the most benefit of the doubt, but he even can't make the POY without a notable post season (probably in part because his expectations are so high). And heck, in 21 he even "beat" Steph Curry in the play-ins.

[falcolombardi]

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Although i can agree that he got given a pass most players dont in 2021 (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

I agree, but I'm just saying - Lebron James is like THE guy who gets the most benefit of the doubt, but he even can't make the POY without a notable post season (probably in part because his expectations are so high). And heck, in 21 he even "beat" Steph Curry in the play-ins.

I think lebron is the opposite of a player who gets given the benefit of the doubt

No one else could get some of the best offense results of all time once he plays with strong offensive talent and still be called a offense ceiling limiter for example

I cannot think of anyone who is criticized so much for aesthetics over results either except maybe peak westbrook

[HeartBreakKid]

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Lebron won 2010 poy with a underwhelming playoffs jokic prolly will win this with a single round loss

Is not too out there for the guy with the best regular season (most likely) to get 3rd

Although i can agree that he got given a "pass" in 2021 less liked players may not get (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

Yes, and it took a very long time for someone with a 1st round loss to get POY. It's the first time it has happened.

Lebron in 2010...was well 12 years ago which predates nearly everyones join date here and thus the community was totally different. But in addition to that - it was done during the RPOY project where people were doing research and (trying) to think more objectively.

If the 2010 season happened today, I am not positive Lebron would get POY or it would be a close one. 2010 was a different era, we have been much more absorbed in "win or go home" media for much longer than in 2010 when people were starting to go "hey, this kevin garnett guy wasn't so bad back in the day, look at these fancy +/- stats".


Regardless, Lebron James, who is arguably the goat, still went in 2 rounds deeper - that isn't that comparable to Steph Curry, who is very much not the goat, not making the playoffs and basically being a top 3 contender. That would heavily suggest that if Curry had made the playoffs he would have probably leaped over Jokic at the very least.


I think Steph Curry just gets it too easy. His likability helps him a lot compared to more....controversial all-nba players (basically most of them have a huge pack of haters to go along with their fandom).

Luka had an incredible season and even made new strides in the playoffs for his career - and he's getting dogged on because...he's fat? He had to play into shape at the start of the season? I mean those things are really ridiculous criticisms, mean while Steph Curry is an MVP candidate because "he's just on a bad shooting streak"....for like 3 months. I never heard of that before this season.

[HeartBreakKid]

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Although i can agree that he got given a pass most players dont in 2021 (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

I agree, but I'm just saying - Lebron James is like THE guy who gets the most benefit of the doubt, but he even can't make the POY without a notable post season (probably in part because his expectations are so high). And heck, in 21 he even "beat" Steph Curry in the play-ins.

I think lebron is the opposite of a player who gets given the benefit of the doubt

No one else could get some of the best offense results of all time once he plays with strong offensive talent and still be called a offense ceiling limiter for example

I cannot think of anyone who is criticized so much for aesthetics over results either except maybe peak westbrook

I see what you're saying. Yeah, in that sense he gets criticized for his style of play even though it's the most effective which is kind of the point. But this isn't about Lebron haha

Westbrook may as well be a bench player the way some people see him. Humans have a hard time not seeing middle ground when judging players, either you're the best or you're ****. 2nd may as well be last in the eyes of many, which is dumb.

[falcolombardi]

I agree, but I'm just saying - Lebron James is like THE guy who gets the most benefit of the doubt, but he even can't make the POY without a notable post season (probably in part because his expectations are so high). And heck, in 21 he even "beat" Steph Curry in the play-ins.

I think lebron is the opposite of a player who gets given the benefit of the doubt

No one else could get some of the best offense results of all time once he plays with strong offensive talent and still be called a offense ceiling limiter for example

I cannot think of anyone who is criticized so much for aesthetics over results either except maybe peak westbrook

I see what you're saying. Yeah, in that sense he gets criticized for his style of play even though it's the most effective which is kind of the point. But this isn't about Lebron haha

Westbrook may as well be a bench player the way some people see him. Humans have a hard time not seeing middle ground when judging players, either you're the best or you're ****. 2nd may as well be last in the eyes of many, which is dumb.

Current westbrook probably should be a bench pkayer or sixth man for a contender level team with his decline and i say this as a fan

Peak westbrook being anythingh but one of the league most impactful players who was proven to work for all time great-lite offenses is a different matter

[jalengreen]

In fairness curry disnt win poy last year, giannis did

So at least the 'winning bias' is mostly consistent

if it wasn't for me giving Joel Embiid a #1 vote (which was an outlier to say the least) Curry would have gotten 3rd place in POY and that's without making the playoffs. That is really high for someone with no post season considering the post season absolutely crashes most players POY campaigns.

Curry really does get a pass. He has it much easier and is given way more benefit of the doubt than most of the other star players. Even Lebron has never made a POY top 5 w/o playoffs and I think outside of me giving him a vote in 2019 I dont think he even got a single POY vote in any of the years he missed the post season or got bumped in r1.

Curry had a stronger + more durable regular season un 2021 than lebron in 19, 21 or 22 tho. Not exactly apples to apples

Lebron won 2010 poy with a underwhelming playoffs jokic prolly will win this with a single round loss

Is not too out there for the guy with the best regular season (most likely) to get 3rd

Although i can agree that he got given a "pass" in 2021 less liked players may not get (the use of oubre as a singular scapegoat as if he was some high school level player on thr court is particularly odd)

i feel like jokic certainly had the best regular season if we're talking about 2021