Figured I'd speak to some of the other wrinkles in these awards:
1. The big one is how to factor in the regular season compared to the playoffs. On one end of the spectrum you could treat all games as having equal importance, on the other you could ignore the regular season entirely.
The approach I've been using for some time is to begin my process in earnest with an end-of-RS ranking, and then adjust in a positive direction based on playoff work. So, no matter how bad a player looks in the playoffs, I typically won't drop him below a player he was previously ahead of. That other player may rise ahead of the bad-playoff performer based on his own play, but unless the bad-playoff performer does something so bad it makes me re-interpret the regular season.
Probably the best example here for me is Rudy Gobert in '20-21. While I ended up just barely putting Nikola Jokic ahead of Gobert for MVP, I thought Gobert had a great case for being the most valuable player of the season, and so, for example, I had Gobert ahead of Steph Curry in MVP and ahead of Draymond Green for RS DPOY.
Gobert than had a playoffs he'd rather forget and it certainly made me feel like Curry & Green were actually better players that season...but they didn't make the playoffs, so they couldn't truly rise above Gobert.
Had Gobert's playoff performance made me conclude that he wasn't actually that valuable in the regular season that would have been different...but since the problem was (at that time) really only a playoff thing, he remained above them in my vote.
As stated, there are plenty of other ways to do this, but this is my way of continuing to honor regular season even as I give playoff work primacy.
2. What about injuries? People do this in many different ways. Some look to penalize all comparable missed time evenly. Some look to specifically penalize the playoffs harshly.
My approach is to consider ignoring missed time that ends up having no historically significant consequence.
Example: Last year, when Draymond missed half the regular season it certainly hurt him in the RS DPOY race...but for me picking him as my All-Season DPOY was pretty straight forward. I thought that when he played he was the best defender in the league, particularly in the playoffs, and this allowed the Warriors to win the championship, so the missed time didn't really matter in the end.
People will point out the lack of consilience with the counter factual where Green plays for another team that missed the playoffs due to his missed time, and they are right to do so. But I've not encountered an approach that feels more right to me than the one I've described, so I continue to use it.
3. OPOY & DPOY are tricky specifically because while they may represent two opposite sides of the ball, in reality, it's not clear cut how to draw the line between the two. Folks probably know that I like +/- data, which through regression can give distinct offensive vs defensive impact estimations...but sometimes a guy's defensive play helps his team's offense and vice versa.
I generally try not to give a guy credit on offense for defensive play and vice versa, which means I'm always making my best assessment of how much of a guy's total impact should be allocated to each side. So while I look at the offensive vs defensive regressions in my baseline, sometimes I think it can be misleading.
4a. We've had a number of interesting conversations about MIP over the years, as have the mainstream people. For me, '09-10 was a formative year for me on the subject, because the NBA voters gave the nod to Aaron Brooks while Kevin Durant's turning-of-the-corner was far more profound.
While I understand the argument of MIP being beneath someone like Durant, if the alternative is choosing a player who really isn't significant even after the improvement, and thus will only be remembered with furrowed brows in the future, I'd rather pick the star.
What I try to keep as my north star here is the idea that the MIP needs to be someone worth drawing the attention of casual fans to (I use this similarly for ROY, in both cases, there's a real cost to bringing attention to players that will never move the proverbial needle). A player who goes from a fringe bench guy to a real rotation piece might literally be improving more than anyone else, but really, is that really calling the entire basketball world to attention to notice him? I don't think so.
This then makes me take issue with the idea that that the MIP should not be an All-Star. I'll consider non-All-Stars, but if I have two guys who started off on the same level, and then this season both improved but only one reached All-Star level, I'm going to put the All-Star ahead of the non-All-Star.
What I then tend to say is that I don't look at guys who were All-Stars (or All-NBA) in a previous season. If you were an All-Star before this year, MIP isn't really going to add to your stature this year. If you weren't an All-Star before, then the better you become this year, the stronger your MIP case and winning MIP along with other accolades just cements your bullet-like rise.
4b. Regarding 2nd & 3rd year players in the MIP:
There are a number of people who won't consider 2nd year players, and some of them are reluctant even for 3rd years, on the grounds that young players like that are merely "doing what they are supposed to", and for those doing that hear: That's just fine.
I've said in the past that I can go with the flow here - the critique makes some sense to me - but if others are considering Luka Doncic as a 2nd year, I'd feel silly refusing to consider him. So pragmatically, I don't eliminate these players from consideration. The only guys I eliminate for not enough experience are the rookies, because rookies get the ROY.
I will say though, I might still lean toward guys who have been around longer because when you get a guy who makes an unexpected leap later in his career, it's a hell of a thing. And I can't think of a better example than Lauri Markkanen this year.
I don't know if Markkanen will be my vote - if I end up seeing a more stark difference in, say, SGA Imma vote SGA - but his year certainly pops.
4c. Regarding the question of "Actually Improved or just Given Opportunity?":
It's a great question and I certainly respect those who emphasize the "Actually Improved" side of things, but I often find it hard to draw a clear line of distinction, and of course the same is true for the NBA's voters and casual fans. Hence, this isn't something I worry too much about. In either case, if the guy rose in stature this year due to on-court play, he's worthy in my book.
5a. Regarding 6MOY, first let me lay something out that actually is a rule here - we can talk about changing it, but its an award that really needs a rule.
The NBA's RS 6MOY is about coming off the bench more games than you start.
For ours, we add a clarification:
The NBA's RS 6MOY is about coming off the bench more games than you start
either in the Regular Season or overall across RS & PS.If you weren't eligible after the RS, but play enough games off the bench in the playoffs to sway the difference, you're eligible for our award.
If you were eligible after the RS, but start enough games in the playoffs to sway the difference, you're still eligible.
You cannot become eligible simply because you came off the bench in the playoffs though.
5b. One bit of advice I would give is that I think the 6MOY's purpose is to highlight guys who are starter-worthy and are coming off the bench as a sacrifice for the good of the team's fit. If you're really just not a Top 150 player in the league (5 starter x 30 teams), we do not need to give you an award imho.
So for me at least, it makes no sense at all to give the award to a guy who is on a legit bad team, even if he really is that good, because your franchise is clearly doing something very wrong - possibly tanking, but no matter what, this is not a franchise within the norms that 6MOY was built on.
Something else to consider is whether the guy is in his team's closing lineup. I'll consider guys who aren't, but being in the closing lineups screams "starter level player", which is what we're aiming for.
5c. One note of caution: I would urge people to take care not to give a guy 6MOY simply because of he played when he started. I'm not aware of any case that anything drastic here occurred, but to give a logical possibility:
For 42 games, a guy is discouraged when on the bench, doesn't fit with the guys he's with, and doesn't play well.
An injury to a teammate puts him into the starting lineup for the remaining 40 games where he fits like a glove, has a spring in his step, and he plays amazing.
Overall, he plays better than any other eligible 6th men, but when he actually played 6th man, he wasn't the best at it.
I give the example simply in the regular season because it could in theory happen there, but I actually think it's a more likely scenario when you add playoffs into the mix, and people can consider for themselves whether a year like Goran Dragic in '19-20 really was in the spirit of the award. (I personally think he does, but reasonable people could disagree.)
5d. Let me elaborate upon what happened with me and Gary Payton II in this award last year because it's not often I flip at the last minute like this.
I have misgiving putting a 7th man over a 6th man - meaning, putting a guy who played less minutes over a teammate who played more and is also eligible. In the case of Payton, that eligible 6th man was Otto Porter - who is quite clearly a starter level player and certainly worthy of the 6MOY.
Here's what I posted in my final vote:
Alright you bastards, you got me. I was not expecting to have Payton even on my ballot, but now with all said and done, after good arguments brought up on his behalf, I'm joining the bandwagon.
In the end, one of the objective things that sold me here are his WS/48 numbers, which led the NBA Champion Warriors in both the regular and post-season. Those numbers on their own would have made Payton a candidate here, but I can't deny that Payton popped on the screen for me like very few others and his presence in the NBA Finals felt like something more than just "a bench player". His year felt special - more special than the other guys mentioned - and I'll give it to him.
Let me be clear that I don't hold Win Shares as any kind of sacred thing, it was just an example, and what I was really looking for is anything objective where he stood out to go along with the salience of his presence that I too marveled at.
Incidentally, looking back, I'm kinda surprised I didn't at least give Porter a spot on my ballot because he feels to me right now that he deserved at least that much, but it makes me think that when I was swayed for Payton I effectively swapped on Warrior for another even though that's not any kind of rule ("only one player allowed per team") I'd want to stand behind.
6. On the "this season only" aspect of COY and especially EOY:
This is tough, and a good reason to consider making something like half-decade awards to better capture the longer-team value added.
But so long as we are doing COY & EOY, I think we need to try to use the year in question as the foundation of a candidate's candidacy. I say "try", because I think it's impossible not to let the previous years color your perception of this year in many cases. All I would say is that you shouldn't be explicitly listing off accomplishments from previous years while arguing for this season's award.