So, I appreciate seeing where NBA official voters are with this graphic. Some thoughts right now with this in mind:
POY (~ MVP): Giannis/Embiid/Jokic
Giannis, Embiid & Jokic are MVP-level players so I'm fine with the love they are giving, but I'm going to mention Jayson Tatum & Steph Curry.
The recurring theme here is that it matters to me a great deal that I see signs that you are carrying your team in the +/- if I'm going to elevate you above guys with better records.
Over in the East, all those pointers point to Tatum over Giannis & Embiid. Am I saying that I currently consider Tatum a better player than Giannis or Embiid? No I'm skeptical too. But this was not a year where an MVP candidate with a good supporting cast - which Giannis clearly has, and Embiid had once Harden got acquired - should be struggling to get to 50 wins. Giannis & Embiid have in the past been much clear cut +/- impactors than this year, and while I think they are both better all around players than they used to be, I think their MVP candidacy got too much slack cut.
And I go to Curry because in the end, he played about as much as Giannis & Embiid did, but with more clear cut signs of his impact.
Looking forward, and now with Denver getting killed in the first 2 games against GS, it'll be interested to see where I end up with Jokic. Last year he was my MVP but he was a soft MVP for me. He ended up 2nd on my POY, but honestly he could have easily fallen further if I saw the right candidate.
This year Jokic has been just incredible, and I will not move him down lightly...but I have to acknowledge I've never voted for a guy getting beat down soundly in the 1st round. We'll see how it plays out.
I think Coby Altman in Cleveland deserves love for a variety of smart things, though I'll say that the Mobley pick was the biggest thing, and he was the obvious choice.
By contrast Masai Ujiri's pick of Scottie Barnes once again makes him look a step ahead of everyone else.
Tempted to give some love to Memphis (Zachary Kleiman), but haven't thought through what's appropriate for a '21-22 award.
Also, how about Brad Stevens in Boston? He was right even about firing himself as coach and hiring his replacement to better connect with his players.
DPOY: Bridges/Gobert/Smart
I really have no problem with any of these inclusions, though I was surprised that Bam Adeabyo didn't make the 3 finalists as I had been thinking he had the best chance of beating Smart for DPOY.
Perhaps more than any other award, this is the one that I'm finding my opinion tends to change dramatically come playoff time. We seem to be seeing a clear trend where some great RS defenses feel like balloons ready to be popped in the PS, with the Utah Jazz being the face of this.
My opinion about what this says about Gobert as a candidate is still evolving. On the one hand, I do get that when the Jazz defense gets trounced it's not about attacking Gobert, but about attacking the perimeter players they've chosen to surround Gobert with, built with a philosophy that Gobert's so good at defense that offense is the priority on the other guys.
On the other hand, the entire league seems to have a clear sense for how to attack the Jazz defense now, and when they do in the playoffs, it's not a situation where the defense still looks a lot better with Gobert out there compared to when he isn't. And this is where my achievement-oriented perspective looms large.
Let's consider a future where the Jazz let Gobert go, and he goes to a new team where he becomes the best defender on an elite playoff defense. (Some may call that impossible, but I'm not so sure.) Were this to occur many would call it validation for Gobert and his DPOYs, and in one sense I'd agree. But from a perspective of what you actually achieved in the year in question, that would be about that year, not about previous years. It would end up helping Gobert's ranking on my GOAT list, but to win my DPOY, I'm probably going to have to be impressed by Utah's Playoff D.
I have no problem with Smart winning DPOY given the weak competition, but I kinda doubt he'll be my All-Season DPOY. In the end, probably I'm going to find some *taller* man to be the more valuable defender on the biggest stage. Aside from Giannis or Embiid, Bam comes to mind here. If the Heat make a deep run on his back, he'll be a strong candidate for me.
I'm happy to see Bridges get love, but I also find it to be a bit funny. Because Paul & Booker are the team's offensive stars, it's natural to say that the guy who plays more MPG, plays more games, and has a better +/-, must be the defensive star...but while Booker is certainly a good defender, I think the reality is that he's having really solid impact on both sides of the ball rather than being a guy racking up his impact predominantly on defense.
To mention one more guy: Draymond Green. I still think he's the best defender in the world when healthy, and I think what he's doing to Jokic right now is just one more amazing accomplishment. If the Warriors make a deep run with Draymond being Draymond, he may end up topping my list.
ROY: Barnes/Cunningham/Mobley
Well, I'm a bit bummed right now because I was hoping we'd get to see Barnes & Mobley do their thing in the 1st Round. As it stands, it's looking like the results here are basically set.
With that said, I still haven't made up my mind. I think Barnes & Mobley both have good arguments.
MIP: Darius/Ja/Dejounte
If we're going just by the regular season, to me this is clearly Darius Garland. Incredible leap forward from the previous year.
Ja Morant is the most incredible NBA body to watch in a very long time. Seriously, he's like Iverson meets Jordan. If Ja ends up becoming the best player in the world, it's going to be very, very good for basketball popularity. Look forward to seeing what he can do in the playoffs, if he's going to win this award, it's going to be on the back of a Ja-dropping post-season performance.
Dejounte Murray? Meh. So Pop decided to let one guy do all the things and thereby squeezed one more all-star out of his career even as the team stayed on the treadmill. Great. To me Murray is a guy who might be an MIP candidate next year.
The other guy really on my mind at the moment is Jordan Poole. For him to win, he'd have to keep something like this up in a deep playoff run, but my goodness to the Warriors look scary right now.
Oh also: Anthony Edwards. If he ends up, say, leading the Wolves past the Grizz, he's going to be a major candidate here I think.
6MOY: Herro/Johnson/Love
Honestly, this is an award that's also shaped heavily by the post-season for me, and I tend not to pay too much attention until then. Herro seems like the choice so far, Johnson also makes sense.
I kinda doubt Love ends up on my ballot when all is said and done given that his team is already out and I tend to ask "If he's so good, shouldn't he start?" about 6th Men on middling teams, but I'm really happy for him. I was a big fan of Love from the UCLA days, constantly talked him up in the Minny days, and defended him in the LeBron years even as I was disappointed. I still believe that the Cavs could have been better post-LeBron if they'd just built everything around Love instead of giving the ball to Sexton, but his behavior during this time made it hard to want to defend him any more. Seeing him embrace the 6th Man role this year said really good things about where he is now and going forward.
If there was an award for the former star who is not embracing a reasonable post-prime role, Love would be high on that list. (While his former Bruin teammate Westbrook would be the anti-thesis of it.)
COY: Jenkins/Spoelstra/Williams
Yup, that's the trio right now. All 3 COY worthy through the regular season.
I expect Monty Williams to win the actual COY because those fools gave it to Thibs last year and now they need to make up for it...but as someone who voted Monty last year, he's also in the lead for COY right now. But as coach of the team with by far the best record in the league, good chance he won't take the #1 spot if his team doesn't win it all.
For Jenkins, all depends on how the Grizz take to the playoffs now. If they were to lose to Minny, he'd totally fall off my ballot...but in the name of Ja, I hope that doesn't happen.
Spoelstra is a made man and will be a strong candidate as long as the Heat look good in the playoffs.
The list of other guys who can crash the part is essentially the list of coaches with teams still playing, but I'll shout out 2 guys:
Ime Udoka. Obvious choice I think. If Boston continues to look like the best team in the world through the post-season like they did once they gained traction in the RS, the award is his.
Steve Kerr. All it would take is the Warriors looking like the Warriors again through the playoffs. Probably means at least a Conference Finals appearance to get him in the Top 3, but that is a very real possibility.
On the other two All-Season awards that either aren't given by the NBA (OPOY) or aren't included in their list of finalists (EOY):
OPOY: Jokic/Young/Curry
To me Nikola Jokic has been the clear cut best offensive player of the regular season, and I think that surprises no one.
I think Trae Young is the only other guy who I see as having a case against Jokic so far this year. The man really is a genius out there.
Hard to know where to place Curry for a number of reasons, but while I do think Curry deserves some praise for the contribution to the Warrior D, I do still think that some of that apparent defensive impact is coming from his offensive threat. When Curry is at his best, I still think he's the most impactful offensive player in the world, and so the root to him being my OPOY when all is said and done is clear.
I'm going to leave my list just those 3 names as frankly they are the ones that stick out to me the most. Playoffs will be a big deal obviously, but I wanted to specifically talk about the Utah Jazz.
They had the best offense in the league, with Donovan Mitchell being the clear OPOY candidate of the bunch. So, why don't I feel like like Mitchell is a serious candidate here? I'm not going to answer that question, but just leave it for folks to chew on.
EOY: is hard, I'm just going to talk it through.
Let me first shout out Arturas Karnisovas of the Chicago Bulls. So long as the Bulls had a good enough season, he's the guy who I'd written in in pencil as my choice here because I loved the addition of the Lakers' defensive backcourt, and DeMar DeRozan looked better than ever after I turned my nose up at that acquisition. Arturas was right about something I was wrong about, and in general, I tend to feel a need to give EOY (and COY) love to guys making moves that showed they knew better than me.
But as low as I was on the DeRozan signing, it's not that I said "The Bulls are going to suck." I was in the "They can make the playoffs, but they'll be 1st Round fodder with money focused on aging players. No thanks." And in the end, I wasn't wrong about that. Yeah they had injuries, but their SRS even before the injuries implied they weren't a tier above my prediction.
So we'll see what happens, maybe he'll still be on my ballot, maybe not.
Looking at the NBA GM survey from the start of the season, they focused on Kyle Lowry (MIA), Russell Westbrook (LAL), Spencer Dinwiddie (WAS), Valanciunas (NOH).
The Lowry signing was good, and another feather in the cap of Pat Riley.
The Westbrook move was ungodly stupid, but we know that at the time. The fact that the NBA execs didn't realize this shows that they still haven't caught up to us in some analytical ways, which is rather amusing.
Dinwiddie ended up not even working out for Washington whose best move was getting rid of Westbrook...but I'm not big on giving EOY love to a franchise for simply undoing their previous mistake.
