Defensive Player of the Year
1. Hakeem Olajuwon
2. Mark Eaton
3. Patrick EwingHakeem has his best defensive season thus far. Voters fail to recognise it because the Rockets play at a fast pace and accordingly are below average in opposing points per game. Eaton again anchors the league’s best defence (although the Warriors overwhelm the Jazz with their shooting). And Ewing has a strong defensive season of his own; results will be better under Riley, but 1988-90 is Ewing’s shot-blocking peak, and scheme and personnel do not make him individually worse than bigs with elite supporting personnel and/or smarter defensive schemes.
Speaking of shot-blocking, these three players are three of the top four in total blocks. The fourth is Manute Bol, who leads the league despite only playing 22 minutes per game. As stated earlier, I think it reflects negatively on a defender if they are only on court half the time — especially with my three ballot choices all setting career highs in minutes played. However, the defensive turnaround the Warriors had compared to what they were in 1988 without Manute, coupled with the defensive fall we see with the Bullets compared to 1988 with Manute, is a strong enough signal to be worth recognising as an honourable mention. He might have been the league’s most valuable defender per possession, but not by so much that it overcomes a substantial disparity in possessions played.
Offensive Player of the Year
1. Magic Johnson
2. Kevin Johnson
3. Michael JordanMagic is in literal MVP form and pretty much as good as he was in 1987. This year he starts to incorporate threes into his offensive repertoire; returns are promising enough.
KJ is my pick for second-best point guard this year. He is one of the league’s three most voluminous passers, and although his scoring rate is closer to Stockton’s than it is to Magic’s, there is a clear willingness to take shots which I like to see. Among the best slashers in the history of the position: top ten in free throw per game in the regular season (and the shortest player in the top fifteen by several inches), and then top five in the postseason. The Suns are a +5 regular season offence (second only to the Lakers) and maintain that level of play en route to the conference finals. A lot of factors played into that — the addition of Tom Chambers, the addition of Dan Majerle, general improvement from a young team, etc. — but KJ was the primary driver (as LA Bird highlighted) and should be credited accordingly.
This is Jordan’s peak offensive value season — although I think he would probably be “better” in 1990 and 1991 if given the same role. The “point Jordan” stretch, as with all parts of his career, has been grossly exaggerated — but it is a nice signal all the same that Jordan could fill that role reasonably well when called upon to do so.
SideshowBob wrote:The Bulls saw their offense jump from +1.5 in 57 games to +2.8 in 24 games. We see a slight decline in eFG%, a 1.5% rise in ORB% (Jordan's ORB% remained constant at 5.5% before and after), a 1.7% decline in TOV%, likely a byproduct of Jordan's increased playmaking (15% increase in AST%), and a major upward shift in free throw rate, which can also be explained by Jordan's increased playmaking. We know he was a strong interior passer, and creating high percentage shots at the basket leads to less creation responsibility for the finisher (low TO%) and a stronger probability of drawing the foul. Further, Jordan himself saw his FTA/FGA rate jump up from .431 to .470.
Roster consistency is present amongst starters/key players. Pre-Archangel, of a possible 57 games, we've got Pippen in 49, Grant in 56, and Paxson in 46. Under the Archangel offense, of a possible 24 games, we get 23 from Pippen, 22 from Grant, 23 from Cartwright, and 21 from Paxson. There's clearly weak spacing though outside of Paxson, and the introduction of Craig Hodges obviously makes an impact here. In 20 games Pre-Archangel without Hodges, we see a +0.8 offense, but in 36 games Pre-Archangel WITH him, Chicago's rocking a +2.0 offense, with a slight upward shift in eFG%, but while almost sustaining the same ORB level.
In 13 games under the Jordan Archangel Offense, without Hodges, Chicago is able to sustain a +2.1 offense (33.9% ORB%). With one major floor spacer, and strong emphasis on crashing the offensive glass, ball-dominant Jordan is able to run a pretty decent offense. Throw Hodges into the mix for 11 games, and Chicago's offense jumps to +3.7 (almost elite). There is a huge jump in eFG% (47.0 ->51.5), and the torrid offensive rebounding pace dulls down (28.8%)
Jordan is on this ballot primarily for his scoring though, which is his career zenith in both regular season efficiency and postseason efficiency. Just does not quite translate to team-wide efficiency in the same way.
Player of the Year
1. Magic Johnson
2. Michael Jordan
3. Hakeem Olajuwon
4. Kevin Johnson
5. Isiah ThomasIsiah is an automatic inclusion; Dumars is a fine choice for Finals MVP, but Isiah was the team’s leader and best player, and he is the one who represents the relatively dominant champions. Yes, he is more like a top ten to fifteen player than a “real” top five player, but after the top three I assess pretty much everyone on an all-NBA level, which is not enough to just pretend that it does not matter who actually did what every player ostensibly sets out to do.
The Suns are similarly a top four team in both the regular season and postseason, and they are similarly led by KJ. I think KJ is the third-best guard in the league, and this year especially offers more than what Isiah is able to provide. I probably assess KJ as the league’s ~seventh “best” player this year, and he accomplished more than enough to jump into the top five on my ballot.
Hakeem is one of the three MVP talents in the league. Unfortunately, his overall season is a footnote. Not going to entertain him any lower when I think he is
so much better than every other player, but also cannot entertain him any higher when Magic and Jordan are similarly excellent while leading contenders. Still, put him on the Knicks in place of Ewing, and I would expect a conference finals run at worst. (Might be different next year…)
Real contention comes down to Magic versus Jordan, and where I land on that is that both are better than they were in 1988, and Magic again had the overall more accomplished season (with Jordan’s top accomplishment, upsetting the Cavaliers, to me being on par with Magic sweeping the Suns). I am not going to penalise a player for being injured at a later date than anyone else. Yeah, Magic’s injury probably cost the Lakers a potential threepeat (with how Isiah was playing). But why would I penalise a Finals injury in favour of a player who did not even make the Finals? Because Jordan would somehow be immune to fluke injuries if he had advanced a round further? If Jordan had been injured after Game 3 against the Pistons, people would be swearing he was about to win the title; even now, the narrative is, “he got closer against the Pistons than anyone else did.” Well, after three games, the Pistons shut him down again. In three consecutive single-digit losses in Games 4-6, Jordan averaged 24.3/3.7/8.7 with 4.3 turnovers on 54.8% efficiency. Season over.
Magic meanwhile won MVP with a better regular season than in 1988 (it in turn seems relatively uncontroversial to say Jordan’s regular season was a step
down from what it was in 1988) and swept his way to the Finals. The Lakers looked as dominant as they ever had been. Magic won more games than any non-Piston. 11-1 record in games he finished; make it 11-2 if you want to count Game 2, where the Pistons needed a furious fourth quarter comeback to erase the lead Magic had built for the Lakers. And then we throw that out because of a hypothetical where a different player might not have suffered a Finals injury had they made it that far? We are putting
multiple first round exits over the guy who brought his team to the Finals? Come on now.
The most ridiculous aspect of this is in the last project, Magic was voted
higher in 1990. Multiple people saw Magic losing to the Suns in the second round and said to themselves, you know what, that is worth more than sweeping the Suns in the conference finals — because at least this time you did not miss any postseason games with injury! His 1989 player share was closer to what it was in 1986 — 1-4 conference finals exit — than to what it was in 1990. What are these standards?
Magic was the top regular season player. Through the third quarter of Game 2 of the Finals, he was the top postseason player as well. To me, that makes him the Player of the Year. And if your stance is
ever that a player would have been better off losing early, I think your stance is so completely divorced from the game that there is no possible reconciliation.
