One_and_Done wrote:lessthanjake wrote:One_and_Done wrote:On the MVP 'cannibalisation' point though:
- Kemp didn't 'cannibalise' Payton's vote (Payton as high as 3rd in MVP, while ranking in the top 10 with Kemp multiple times)
- Shaq didn't 'cannibalise' Penny's vote (3rd in MVP while Shaq was top 10, and top 10 while Shaq was 2nd)
- Reed didn't 'cannibalise' Frazier's vote (Frazier was 4th the year Reed won,
- Curry didn't 'cannibalise' KD's vote (both were top 10 in MVP vote their 2 years together, despite missing games each year)
- Kareem didn't 'cannibalise' Oscar's vote (old man Oscar still was 5th in MVP the year Kareem won in 1970)
- Baylor didn't 'cannibalise' West's vote (multiple years where both finished top 5)
- Kareem didn't 'cannibalise' Magic's vote (multiple years where both were top MVP candidates)
There are many other examples. Pippen was 5th the year Jordan won in 96, Kobe and Shaq both finished in the top 5, etc. If you're together for as long as Stockton & Malone were, we should have seen the MVP vote reflect Stockton's supposed MVP role at least a few times.
Stockton got as high as 7th in MVP voting, so the vast majority of those examples did not involve anyone doing any better than Stockton did. In the entire time period in which Stockton got MVP votes (i.e. 1988-2001), the only instance of any duo both finishing higher than Stockton’s best MVP finish was Pippen getting 5th in 1996…when the Bulls won 72 games. That was obviously a special case, with the GOAT team breaking the wins record.
Those guys all got higher than 7th in years their team mates were also in the top 10. Stockton's 7th place was also an anomaly, where he got 28 votes out of 850, but because the votes all clustered in the top 6 he bobbled up to 7th. He was not a genuine MVP candidate that year, and voters quickly realised they'd gotten a little high on his supply and never voted him that high again.
“Those guys all got higher than 7th in years their team mates were also in the top 10”? That’s a non-sequitur. Malone and Stockton had several years where Malone was higher than 7th and Stockton was also in the top 10. Two players on the same team achieving that level of MVP voting is not all that uncommon, but it is also something that Stockton did multiple times. Your criticism must, of course, be about something Stockton didn’t do. And, since Karl Malone was almost always higher than 7th in MVP voting, that largely amounts to a criticism that Stockton didn’t make it so that the Jazz had two players finishing higher than 7th. And several of your examples don’t include that at all. Kemp and Payton never both finished higher than 7th. Shaq and Penny never both finished higher than 7th. Steph and Durant never both finished higher than 7th.
You do identify some years where it has happened. Of course, your examples mostly come from an era with far fewer teams in the NBA—meaning fewer realistically possible MVP candidates, and therefore a much higher chance of one team having two guys ranked highly. So those examples are pretty obviously not comparable. Several of them are also in years where the ABA existed—which made it easier to finish higher in MVP voting, since some of the players who might finish above you weren’t in the NBA. The only example you provide that none of that applies to much is Kareem and Magic (still fewer teams, but not a tiny league at least)—but of course those guys are amongst the few greatest players ever, so they really *should* do things Stockton and Malone didn’t. Of course, I’ve pointed out that they didn’t really do it in the most comparable year—which was a year where the Lakers were good but not great and had not made a deep playoff run the year before. In that year, neither of them were even in the top 7. But, in general, saying “Stockton is overrated, because he didn’t do something Magic Johnson did” is obviously a bad argument.
That said, to be fair, you didn’t identify all the examples. There are others in history. Shaq and Kobe did it a few times. But they only did it after they’d won two titles together—and previously winning titles helps MVP voting a lot, even though it shouldn’t. Bird and McHale did it once, after having won three titles together, in the year after their most dominant run. Moses and Dr. J did it once, when the Sixers had one of the best years ever. As mentioned before, Jordan and Pippen did it in the 72-win season. I believe Durant/Westbrook and LeBron/AD did it in 2016 and 2020. So there are some examples. But it’s a pretty rare thing, particularly in the era where there’s actually a lot of NBA teams. And it’s even rarer if we just limit it to duos that haven’t won titles together and/or aren’t top-tier all-time greats at a level that no one claims Malone/Stockton are.
The fact is that cannibalizing votes is obviously a thing that is harmful to someone’s MVP votes. Denying that is just denying obvious reality that anyone who ever pays attention to MVP discussion on a year-by-year basis would know. It can be overcome, but it puts real downwards pressure on how someone is voted. And that makes rigid assessment of Stockton’s place in the league based on his MVP placement pretty problematic.
And then we get to the fact that the “cannibalizing” votes aspect of this is only one of the factors I’ve mentioned that affected MVP voting for Stockton. You keep focusing on that one thing, because you have a talk-track ready to go on that, but it’s not the only factor I’ve talked about. As I’ve said, we can come up with examples where someone did well in MVP voting (or even won MVP) despite one of those factors. But the issue for Stockton was that there was a confluence of factors. There was not just cannibalizing of votes by being on a team with another superstar, but also that that other superstar scored a lot more (and therefore was seen as the focal point), that the Jazz had an awful supporting cast so they generally had good team results but not great ones, and they did not win a title so they didn’t have the post-title glow that helps in MVP voting. You’re not going to find an example of someone doing better than Stockton did while having all these factors going against them. In theory, if Stockton were a genuine GOAT candidate or something, he might’ve been able to, but no one’s claiming that about him. He doesn’t actually have had to do unprecedented things in order to be underrated.
Your attempt to narrow it down to the 88-01 period is odd. Why are we limiting it to only that period? It's rare that 2 MVP candidates are paired together, so obviously it won't happen much. It's also disingenuous because it suggests both candidates have to be top 6 in the same year. Payton and Kemp were not both top 6 players very often if at all, so they shouldn't get voted that high. What their vote shows is that being on the same team didn't prevent them both being properly rated. Similarly with Penny at 3rd... like, Shaq missed 26 games, so of course he fell out of the top 6, but him being fairly voted into the top 10 didn't hurt Penny's vote. The many other examples I cited above suggest that if Shaq and Penny had stuck together (and been healthy) the voters would have been happy to rate both in the top 3-5, just as the media would go on to vote Kobe & Shaq in the top 5 in the same year.
It’s actually not *that* rare for MVP candidates to be paired together. In recent years, when paired together, LeBron/Wade and Curry/Durant never both finished higher than Stockton’s highest MVP placement, in the years they played together. Jordan/Pippen only did it in the year they won 72 games (and if you object that Pippen was not an “MVP candidate” then you’re just jumping the shark here, because Pippen is exactly the type of player that Stockton would be leapfrogging if we think he’s underrated—not guys like Magic & Kareem and Shaq & Kobe).
I don’t know why you mention Payton and Kemp, because they never both finished higher than 7th in the same year. Same with Shaq and Penny. You mention Penny finishing 3rd in a year Shaq missed a lot of games, but that actually goes to the point about cannibalizing votes. Penny had by far his best year in MVP voting in the one year he had with Shaq where Shaq missed so many games that he basically took himself out of the running for MVP. If people wanted to vote for someone on the Magic, Penny was actually the clear answer that year. If Shaq had played more, it is very likely Penny would’ve gotten fewer votes, as many people who wanted to give credit to a Magic player would’ve given it to Shaq instead.
In any event, again, you focus on just cannibalizing of votes, while missing the bigger picture. If we took away one of the other factors going against Stockton, then he probably would’ve finished notably higher in MVP voting, even despite vote cannibalization with Malone. For instance, if the Jazz supporting cast wasn’t abysmal during Stockton’s best years, then the Jazz would’ve won significantly more games, and Stockton would certainly have been higher in MVP voting (as would Malone too, I imagine). Similarly, if the Jazz had won a title (or even just had their Finals appearances happen earlier on) then Stockton likely finishes higher in MVP voting, as prior playoff success feeds into MVP voting.
People have done well in MVP voting despite having another superstar on their team. They’ve done well despite not being their team’s highest scorer. Players have done well despite their team not winning tons of games. And they’ve done well despite their team not having previously had major playoff success. But all of those things put downwards pressure on a player’s MVP voting, and when you combine all those together, it’s obviously a huge problem that we’d expect to lead to the player being underrated in MVP voting.
To argue otherwise here honestly just requires someone to either have not paid attention to any MVP discussions before, or to be so married to the conclusion they want to argue for that they’re acting dumb about things they know to be important to those discussions.
