NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!)

Moderators: Clav, Domejandro, ken6199, bisme37, Dirk, KingDavid, cupcakesnake, bwgood77, zimpy27, infinite11285

2 questions- 1) Who WILL win MVP -- 2) Who SHOULD win MVP (vote for 2)

Jokic will win MVP
129
25%
Giannis will win MVP
47
9%
Embiid will win MVP
95
18%
Tatum will win MVP
3
1%
Luka will win MVP
3
1%
Jokic should win MVP
102
20%
Giannis should win MVP
75
14%
Embiid should win MVP
55
11%
Tatum should win MVP
5
1%
Luka should win MVP
4
1%
 
Total votes: 518

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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#21 » by bebopdeluxe » Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:17 pm

iggymcfrack wrote:
GSWFan1994 wrote:This is obviously Jokic's award to lose.

He will only lose it if Giannis goes on a legendary run from now on.

All the other candidates either don't have the mythical stats (Jokic has), or the team record isn't good enough.

Folks, we've got to realize Jokic is in the middle of one of the best stretches in NBA history, like Bird 84/86, Jordan 90/92, LeBron 12/14 and so on... he NEEDS the team success to validate his greatness, though.

I'd also like to say that you suck, Bisme. Have a good afternoon. Cheers.


Giannis hasn’t even been playing lately. He’s slipped to 3rd. Basically, it’s:

90%- Jokic wins
7%- Jokic suffers a lengthy injury late in the season
3%- Embiid goes on a tear at the end of the season and the Sixers pass the Bucks and/or the Nuggets in overall record allowing the narrative to get people to vote for the “hot” guy.


Last year, Embiid was leading a lot of straw polls until the All-Star break. But a combination of some down play, a high-profile loss to the Nuggets in March, and Jokic's solid play down the stretch allowed him to pass Embiid.

Right now, the player with a "bullet" is Embiid. High profile wins (national TV wins against the Nuggets and Bucks), great individual efforts (like the dagger last night) and a Sixers team that is handling a schedule of a lot of road games against a lot of good teams pretty well.

I think a lot will ride on the Nuggets/Sixers game on March 27th in Denver. For Embiid to have a shot, he will need to have a massive game that night. We will see what happens.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#22 » by AleksandarN » Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:25 pm

bebopdeluxe wrote:
iggymcfrack wrote:
GSWFan1994 wrote:This is obviously Jokic's award to lose.

He will only lose it if Giannis goes on a legendary run from now on.

All the other candidates either don't have the mythical stats (Jokic has), or the team record isn't good enough.

Folks, we've got to realize Jokic is in the middle of one of the best stretches in NBA history, like Bird 84/86, Jordan 90/92, LeBron 12/14 and so on... he NEEDS the team success to validate his greatness, though.

I'd also like to say that you suck, Bisme. Have a good afternoon. Cheers.


Giannis hasn’t even been playing lately. He’s slipped to 3rd. Basically, it’s:

90%- Jokic wins
7%- Jokic suffers a lengthy injury late in the season
3%- Embiid goes on a tear at the end of the season and the Sixers pass the Bucks and/or the Nuggets in overall record allowing the narrative to get people to vote for the “hot” guy.


Last year, Embiid was leading a lot of straw polls until the All-Star break. But a combination of some down play, a high-profile loss to the Nuggets in March, and Jokic's solid play down the stretch allowed him to pass Embiid.

Right now, the player with a "bullet" is Embiid. High profile wins (national TV wins against the Nuggets and Bucks), great individual efforts (like the dagger last night) and a Sixers team that is handling a schedule of a lot of road games against a lot of good teams pretty well.

I think a lot will ride on the Nuggets/Sixers game on March 27th in Denver. For Embiid to have a shot, he will need to have a massive game that night. We will see what happens.


That will be a great game. Same for jokic. Denver still has the Bucks and 76ers down the stretch. If Jokic outperforms both during national broadcast games then he will win mvp. Providing he plays like he has been throughout the season minus this mini slump.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#23 » by Cubbies2120 » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:02 pm

An anonymous Nuggets fan asked me to post this

https://streamable.com/5788a1

Turns out you can make compilations of specific plays to fit your narrative...
Jokic 5x MVP train
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#24 » by Cubbies2120 » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:05 pm

bebopdeluxe wrote:
Right now, the player with a "bullet" is Embiid. High profile wins (national TV wins against the Nuggets and Bucks), great individual efforts (like the dagger last night) and a Sixers team that is handling a schedule of a lot of road games against a lot of good teams pretty well.

I think a lot will ride on the Nuggets/Sixers game on March 27th in Denver. For Embiid to have a shot, he will need to have a massive game that night. We will see what happens.


And he cannot miss another game. Period. Even right now he's missed more than any MVP in the last 45 years and we've got another 20 games to go.

Jokic has Bucks and Sixers on March 25 / 27, those games may decide the MVP. If he loses both on national TV, it may be enough to sway the voters.
Jokic 5x MVP train
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#25 » by eyeatoma » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:27 pm

From a Philly journalist, but absolutely breaks down the issues with this seasons MVP.

#1 - Voter fatigue has been used as a way to shine a light on other incredible players of the league. It gets stale and boring when it's the same player.

My point is essentially that I’d like it to be the way that it’s always been – that the old way is superior for telling the story of that NBA season/decade/era. The rush to do away with it is, in my opinion, the result of a combination of Jokic favoritism as well as the rush to make everything (including the purposefully vague Most Valuable Player award) purely empirical; no media member wants to be yelled at on Twitter for succumbing to a silly bias such as voter fatigue. NBA media has become, perhaps more so than any other sport, a battle for intellectual superiority, and holding onto voter fatigue is seen as anti-intellectual.

As great as Jokic was last season, he was simply irrelevant to the story of that NBA season. There was never a single moment where anyone considered the Nuggets to be a title contender. It wasn’t like he had a fascinating storyline behind him, or a bunch of iconic moments of late-game heroics, both of which helped to bolster Russell Westbrook’s case in 2017 (flawed as it was). Jokic was just mowing down the competition away from the spotlight, carrying an underwhelming roster to the sixth seed in the West and a first round exit. The season just didn’t feel like it was about him – and with him having just won, it would have felt appropriate to highlight someone else for that particular season.


#2 There isn't racism, but there are inherant biases and goal post moving that seems to happen amongst the media. Given that most media are basketball nerds they love Jokic, and use their biases to rationalize why he is winning MVPs, at times moving goal posts that were placed for other players in the previous years, which are then seemingly ignored for Jokic.

To put it simply: Jokic is most media members’ favorite player, and so, you move goalposts and make certain arguments that you wouldn’t make for other players, because that’s what you do for your favorite player. It’s an incredibly human thing.

I absolutely despise all-in-one advanced stats (more on that in a bit), which have obviously helped to bolster Jokic’s MVP case over the past few years. I have always brushed aside players who are doughy and slow, compared to those who are more traditionally athletic – I was too low on Luka Doncic coming out of the draft, I always found the Joe Ingles hype annoying, and clumsy ass Brook Lopez is my least favorite player in the NBA. And, most importantly, I watch Joel Embiid play basketball every night, and it’s hard for me to fathom that there’s another center who is significantly better than him; saying Jokic is better than Embiid goes against my basketball world view, and that’s where my anger comes from on this subject.

The problem isn’t the existence of biases – on either side. The problem is that the biases have overloaded in one direction; if there were a more even balance of biases – if the MVP voting demographic were more evenly split between basketball nerds and scoring/bag fanatics (often these are former players) – we’d see a more closely contested vote to represent what should have been two closely contested races, and you wouldn’t see the rewriting of unwritten MVP voting rules that have been around for decades, like voter fatigue.


#3 Overvaluing advanced stats. Basically, states that some of these stats have huge outliers where 15-20% of players are ranked very high, and they're basically scrubs. So these stats ranks scrubs high, but then Jokic is at the top. Instead of taking these stats with a grain of salt, it becomes the end all and be all way to determine the best players.

Also, VORP and DPM highly value rebounds and assists are given more value for big men, it's the main reason why Jokic is always at the top. Some of these stats will always have Jokic leading because it's the style of basketball he plays.


Let’s start on the surface, before digging into how they’re made. If I were to put out my own personal, subjective rankings of the top 50 NBA players, and they mirrored the rankings of FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR, I would be laughed at and called the single dumbest pundit on NBA Twitter. In the top 50 alone – which should be far and away the easiest group to rank – there are many comically out of place players.

Alex Caruso is 12th. Delon Wright is 18th. Josh Okogie and Derrick White are tied for 20th. Isaiah Joe is 32nd. Alec Burks is 41st. Austin Reaves and John Konchar are tied for 48th. I’m sure many people will call this cherry picking, but if 15-20% of the rankings that your metric spits out are obvious bull (spoiler: it’s more than 15-20%), then dare I say, your metric is not very good and should not receive widespread credence from NBA media members.

The first litmus test for these stats should always be common sense. If they directly conflict with common sense, it’s fine to disregard them.

Where these metrics are particularly bad is on the defensive end. RAPTOR, for example, has Jokic rated as the 3rd best defensive player in the NBA. That’s right – this guy is the 3rd best defensive basketball player alive.

RAPTOR very obviously overvalues rebounding (which, by the way, one could argue is a separate phase of the game from defense – you can be a great defender and bad rebounder, and vice versa). It also isn’t an ironclad argument to say that a center defending a high volume of shot attempts is a good thing; there are obviously a considerable number of shots that guards may be willing to attempt at the rim versus Jokic, that they wouldn’t against, say Embiid or Rudy Gobert.

Box plus/minus (and VORP, which is based on BPM) provides another such example. BPM places different valuations of stats based on what position you play. For centers, an assist is worth nearly twice as much as it is to a guard. Defensive rebounding is also far more valued for centers, and missed shot attempts are penalized more for centers than it is for guards. In other words: BPM massively overvalues everything Jokic is good at. It inflates the value of his assists and rebounds, and rewards him for being hyper-efficient and not attempting a super high volume of shots.

The idea that centers are getting twice the credit for assists as guards do is backwards; I would argue that, generally, assists from centers are less valuable, because a considerable volume of them comes from dribble hand-offs, where the center simply dumps the ball to a guard, who then creates the shot. Regardless, the point, once again, is that all of these evaluations are debatable, and all we are really observing is someone’s evaluation.

Jokic also ranks first (FIRST!) in the league in defensive box plus/minus, because it’s based on box score stats, which means it heavily weights, you guessed it, rebounding and steals. Jokic also ranks seventh in the league in individual defensive rating, and ninth in defensive win shares.

Individual defensive rating, contrary to what some people assume, is not simply your team’s defensive rating when you are on the court. It is an estimate of how many points that particular player allowed per 100 possessions while on the court. Here is an excerpt from Basketball-Reference’s website on how it is calculated:

“The core of the Defensive Rating calculation is the concept of the individual Defensive Stop. Stops take into account the instances of a player ending an opposing possession that are tracked in the boxscore (blocks, steals, and defensive rebounds).”

Noticing a pattern here? All of these stats are heavily based upon steals and defensive rebounding. Defensive win shares is based heavily upon individual defensive rating. You can find the formula for its calculation here.

A common rebuttal I get from people who use these kinds of stats is something to the following effect: “if they’re all saying the same thing, that has to mean something.”

Yes, it does mean something – that all of these stats are heavily based upon one another and clearly overvalue the same ****. They are essentially Collateralized Debt Obligations. That’s how you get a player who is very, very obviously a barely above average defender being considered one of the best defensive players in the entire league, because he gets a high amount of steals and is an excellent rebounder.




Great article!

https://www.rightstorickysanchez.com/the-good-oconnor-mike/031123
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#26 » by Wolfgang630 » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:42 pm

Giannis is missing another game. I had wrote him off already due to games missed. I hope most people will right him off at this point. It’s not fair to the other candidates who haven’t missed as much as he did.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#27 » by Floody100 » Sat Mar 11, 2023 11:15 pm

Cubbies2120 wrote:An anonymous Nuggets fan asked me to post this

https://streamable.com/5788a1

Turns out you can make compilations of specific plays to fit your narrative...


This is the kind of stuff we need out of the game. Give him MVP & you only further encourage players in the future to foul bait every time their near the basket.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#28 » by HotRocks34 » Sat Mar 11, 2023 11:34 pm

Giannis out tonight. Games missed so far (includes tonight and Giannis):


Jokic...............08
Embiid.............13
Giannis............15 (includes tonight)
Jokic 31/21/22
Luka & Oscar = 5 x 27/8/8
The Brodie = All-out energy
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#29 » by kuclas » Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:09 am

AleksandarN wrote:
kuclas wrote:
AleksandarN wrote:Better than embiid if we are talking defense. Giannis is the better defender between the three candidates


Giannis is the better help defender. That’s clarify that. He’s not the better one on one defender.

Even bucks fans will admit that.

Defense is a lot. Embiid can and will go one on one defense with anyone including Giannis. That tells you the defender embiid is. Giannis has to provide help defense for Lopez when they play embiid.

Does embiid take plays off on defense. Of course he does these days. But u can tell when he actually tries to play defense. I don’t have the immediate link. But someone posted embiid blocks in the last 3 minutes of games these seasons. Sixers have been in a lot of close games. Embiid coasts and finally decided to provide great defense at end of games a lot of times this season.

Help defense vs one on one defense are completely different types of defenses.

Except guard Jokic in the second half of their game. Jokic guarded embiid the whole game even after getting /cooked throughout the second half of the game. It was a good call by doc though turned the game around in the second half. Because the first half the 76ers were the one getting cooked. Can’t wait for the rematch in 2 weeks. Will Embiid guard Jokic one on one? Since you think embiid is a great one on one defender he should lock down jokic. Regardless of what happens this will be a great game. Playoff atmosphere


That’s because Doc recognizes Jokic will pull embiid away from the paint. And with Jokic vision passing. He’s gonna to find open cutters towards the wide open paint layups or wide the open shooters.

Pj tucker is 6 foot 5. Jokic can pound him in the low post all day. But Jokic recognizes the futility in that with embiid lurking close by as the help defender.

Jokic isn’t gonna to post embiid often in the paint. It’s wasting his energy as well to pound offensively inside with embiid.

Bigs centers are like lions in the wild. They can only expand so much energy at one time. Jokic isn’t gonna to waste his time if he has to pound pj tucker for 10 seconds with embiid near by. Waste of energy and the shot clock
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#30 » by eyeatoma » Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:11 am

https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#31 » by ReddoverKobe » Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:47 am

eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk


Yep, so many of the unwritten rules about the MVP just don't apply to Jokic for some reason.

As for the MVP I think Giannis has missed too many games at this point and its down to Embiid and Jokic.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#32 » by AleksandarN » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:11 am

ReddoverKobe wrote:
eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk


Yep, so many of the unwritten rules about the MVP just don't apply to Jokic for some reason.

As for the MVP I think Giannis has missed too many games at this point and its down to Embiid and Jokic.

Giannis missed like two more than Embiid. So are you saying if Embiid misses two more than he is out of the race too?
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#33 » by AleksandarN » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:18 am

kuclas wrote:
AleksandarN wrote:
kuclas wrote:
Giannis is the better help defender. That’s clarify that. He’s not the better one on one defender.

Even bucks fans will admit that.

Defense is a lot. Embiid can and will go one on one defense with anyone including Giannis. That tells you the defender embiid is. Giannis has to provide help defense for Lopez when they play embiid.

Does embiid take plays off on defense. Of course he does these days. But u can tell when he actually tries to play defense. I don’t have the immediate link. But someone posted embiid blocks in the last 3 minutes of games these seasons. Sixers have been in a lot of close games. Embiid coasts and finally decided to provide great defense at end of games a lot of times this season.

Help defense vs one on one defense are completely different types of defenses.

Except guard Jokic in the second half of their game. Jokic guarded embiid the whole game even after getting /cooked throughout the second half of the game. It was a good call by doc though turned the game around in the second half. Because the first half the 76ers were the one getting cooked. Can’t wait for the rematch in 2 weeks. Will Embiid guard Jokic one on one? Since you think embiid is a great one on one defender he should lock down jokic. Regardless of what happens this will be a great game. Playoff atmosphere


That’s because Doc recognizes Jokic will pull embiid away from the paint. And with Jokic vision passing. He’s gonna to find open cutters towards the wide open paint layups or wide the open shooters.

Pj tucker is 6 foot 5. Jokic can pound him in the low post all day. But Jokic recognizes the futility in that with embiid lurking close by as the help defender.

Jokic isn’t gonna to post embiid often in the paint. It’s wasting his energy as well to pound offensively inside with embiid.

Bigs centers are like lions in the wild. They can only expand so much energy at one time. Jokic isn’t gonna to waste his time if he has to pound pj tucker for 10 seconds with embiid near by. Waste of energy and the shot clock


Might have worked for one half but it won’t going forward. That’s the thing with greats with high bbiq they find a way. If Embiid has to guard jokic it will be hard.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#34 » by losmi » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:19 am

eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk


Who said that defense isn't important? It's one of the factors. In the quote you linked, he says "But the gap on offense, is not big enough to trump the gap on defense".
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#35 » by losmi » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:23 am

ReddoverKobe wrote:
eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk


Yep, so many of the unwritten rules about the MVP just don't apply to Jokic for some reason.

As for the MVP I think Giannis has missed too many games at this point and its down to Embiid and Jokic.


Which unwritten rules don't apply to Jokic, and who should win (or should have won if you're referring to past seasons) the MVP if the rules would apply?
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#36 » by iggymcfrack » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:42 am

People love to bring up Jokic’s numbers in advanced defensive stats like they’re discrediting for the metrics and make silly assumptions (D-Raptor must be based heavily on rebounds) and ignore that those stats just show that Denver’s defense is much better with Jokic on the floor. His raw defensive on/off is in the 95th percentile. Like instead of saying “well if the defense is so much better with Jokic and we’ve already decided he sucks at D, then why should we care if the offense is so much better with him too”, people should be reevaluating his defense a little and thinking maybe it’s not as bad as they think.
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#37 » by eyeatoma » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:59 am

losmi wrote:
eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk


Who said that defense isn't important? It's one of the factors. In the quote you linked, he says "But the gap on offense, is not big enough to trump the gap on defense".
Yeah and in this case it isn't better. If you look at the article I linked before you can see how much advanced stats have been misinterpreted.

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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#38 » by eyeatoma » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:01 am

iggymcfrack wrote:People love to bring up Jokic’s numbers in advanced defensive stats like they’re discrediting for the metrics and make silly assumptions (D-Raptor must be based heavily on rebounds) and ignore that those stats just show that Denver’s defense is much better with Jokic on the floor. His raw defensive on/off is in the 95th percentile. Like instead of saying “well if the defense is so much better with Jokic and we’ve already decided he sucks at D, then why should we care if the offense is so much better with him too”, people should be reevaluating his defense a little and thinking maybe it’s not as bad as they think.
Lol ok buddy.

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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#39 » by ReddoverKobe » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:39 am

losmi wrote:
eyeatoma wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/sixers/comments/11owmwe/zach_lowe_in_2019_on_why_he_voted_for_giannis_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Perfect example of Zach Lowe moving the goal posts.

When voting for Giannis over Harden defense is important but not now for Embiid or Giannis or Jokic. This is what we're talking about.

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Who said that defense isn't important? It's one of the factors. In the quote you linked, he says "But the gap on offense, is not big enough to trump the gap on defense".


What Jokic supporter has not said that lol
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Re: NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2022-23 (part 4 - The Final MVP Countdown!) 

Post#40 » by Rapcity_11 » Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:03 am

eyeatoma wrote:From a Philly journalist, but absolutely breaks down the issues with this seasons MVP.

#1 - Voter fatigue has been used as a way to shine a light on other incredible players of the league. It gets stale and boring when it's the same player.

My point is essentially that I’d like it to be the way that it’s always been – that the old way is superior for telling the story of that NBA season/decade/era. The rush to do away with it is, in my opinion, the result of a combination of Jokic favoritism as well as the rush to make everything (including the purposefully vague Most Valuable Player award) purely empirical; no media member wants to be yelled at on Twitter for succumbing to a silly bias such as voter fatigue. NBA media has become, perhaps more so than any other sport, a battle for intellectual superiority, and holding onto voter fatigue is seen as anti-intellectual.

As great as Jokic was last season, he was simply irrelevant to the story of that NBA season. There was never a single moment where anyone considered the Nuggets to be a title contender. It wasn’t like he had a fascinating storyline behind him, or a bunch of iconic moments of late-game heroics, both of which helped to bolster Russell Westbrook’s case in 2017 (flawed as it was). Jokic was just mowing down the competition away from the spotlight, carrying an underwhelming roster to the sixth seed in the West and a first round exit. The season just didn’t feel like it was about him – and with him having just won, it would have felt appropriate to highlight someone else for that particular season.


#2 There isn't racism, but there are inherant biases and goal post moving that seems to happen amongst the media. Given that most media are basketball nerds they love Jokic, and use their biases to rationalize why he is winning MVPs, at times moving goal posts that were placed for other players in the previous years, which are then seemingly ignored for Jokic.

To put it simply: Jokic is most media members’ favorite player, and so, you move goalposts and make certain arguments that you wouldn’t make for other players, because that’s what you do for your favorite player. It’s an incredibly human thing.

I absolutely despise all-in-one advanced stats (more on that in a bit), which have obviously helped to bolster Jokic’s MVP case over the past few years. I have always brushed aside players who are doughy and slow, compared to those who are more traditionally athletic – I was too low on Luka Doncic coming out of the draft, I always found the Joe Ingles hype annoying, and clumsy ass Brook Lopez is my least favorite player in the NBA. And, most importantly, I watch Joel Embiid play basketball every night, and it’s hard for me to fathom that there’s another center who is significantly better than him; saying Jokic is better than Embiid goes against my basketball world view, and that’s where my anger comes from on this subject.

The problem isn’t the existence of biases – on either side. The problem is that the biases have overloaded in one direction; if there were a more even balance of biases – if the MVP voting demographic were more evenly split between basketball nerds and scoring/bag fanatics (often these are former players) – we’d see a more closely contested vote to represent what should have been two closely contested races, and you wouldn’t see the rewriting of unwritten MVP voting rules that have been around for decades, like voter fatigue.


#3 Overvaluing advanced stats. Basically, states that some of these stats have huge outliers where 15-20% of players are ranked very high, and they're basically scrubs. So these stats ranks scrubs high, but then Jokic is at the top. Instead of taking these stats with a grain of salt, it becomes the end all and be all way to determine the best players.

Also, VORP and DPM highly value rebounds and assists are given more value for big men, it's the main reason why Jokic is always at the top. Some of these stats will always have Jokic leading because it's the style of basketball he plays.


Let’s start on the surface, before digging into how they’re made. If I were to put out my own personal, subjective rankings of the top 50 NBA players, and they mirrored the rankings of FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR, I would be laughed at and called the single dumbest pundit on NBA Twitter. In the top 50 alone – which should be far and away the easiest group to rank – there are many comically out of place players.

Alex Caruso is 12th. Delon Wright is 18th. Josh Okogie and Derrick White are tied for 20th. Isaiah Joe is 32nd. Alec Burks is 41st. Austin Reaves and John Konchar are tied for 48th. I’m sure many people will call this cherry picking, but if 15-20% of the rankings that your metric spits out are obvious bull (spoiler: it’s more than 15-20%), then dare I say, your metric is not very good and should not receive widespread credence from NBA media members.

The first litmus test for these stats should always be common sense. If they directly conflict with common sense, it’s fine to disregard them.

Where these metrics are particularly bad is on the defensive end. RAPTOR, for example, has Jokic rated as the 3rd best defensive player in the NBA. That’s right – this guy is the 3rd best defensive basketball player alive.

RAPTOR very obviously overvalues rebounding (which, by the way, one could argue is a separate phase of the game from defense – you can be a great defender and bad rebounder, and vice versa). It also isn’t an ironclad argument to say that a center defending a high volume of shot attempts is a good thing; there are obviously a considerable number of shots that guards may be willing to attempt at the rim versus Jokic, that they wouldn’t against, say Embiid or Rudy Gobert.

Box plus/minus (and VORP, which is based on BPM) provides another such example. BPM places different valuations of stats based on what position you play. For centers, an assist is worth nearly twice as much as it is to a guard. Defensive rebounding is also far more valued for centers, and missed shot attempts are penalized more for centers than it is for guards. In other words: BPM massively overvalues everything Jokic is good at. It inflates the value of his assists and rebounds, and rewards him for being hyper-efficient and not attempting a super high volume of shots.

The idea that centers are getting twice the credit for assists as guards do is backwards; I would argue that, generally, assists from centers are less valuable, because a considerable volume of them comes from dribble hand-offs, where the center simply dumps the ball to a guard, who then creates the shot. Regardless, the point, once again, is that all of these evaluations are debatable, and all we are really observing is someone’s evaluation.

Jokic also ranks first (FIRST!) in the league in defensive box plus/minus, because it’s based on box score stats, which means it heavily weights, you guessed it, rebounding and steals. Jokic also ranks seventh in the league in individual defensive rating, and ninth in defensive win shares.

Individual defensive rating, contrary to what some people assume, is not simply your team’s defensive rating when you are on the court. It is an estimate of how many points that particular player allowed per 100 possessions while on the court. Here is an excerpt from Basketball-Reference’s website on how it is calculated:

“The core of the Defensive Rating calculation is the concept of the individual Defensive Stop. Stops take into account the instances of a player ending an opposing possession that are tracked in the boxscore (blocks, steals, and defensive rebounds).”

Noticing a pattern here? All of these stats are heavily based upon steals and defensive rebounding. Defensive win shares is based heavily upon individual defensive rating. You can find the formula for its calculation here.

A common rebuttal I get from people who use these kinds of stats is something to the following effect: “if they’re all saying the same thing, that has to mean something.”

Yes, it does mean something – that all of these stats are heavily based upon one another and clearly overvalue the same ****. They are essentially Collateralized Debt Obligations. That’s how you get a player who is very, very obviously a barely above average defender being considered one of the best defensive players in the entire league, because he gets a high amount of steals and is an excellent rebounder.




Great article!

https://www.rightstorickysanchez.com/the-good-oconnor-mike/031123


Not a great article. It's basically just whining that boils down to 3 things:

- Voting fatigue is dumb but it should continue because it favours my guy now (also admits that Jokic has the stronger case this year)
- Too many nerds are voting and we need more scoring enthusiast/bag voters (lol)
- Certain advanced stats are dumb, because I said so

Please.

Also, that author really needs to understand that something can be close but still definitive. A close MVP race isn't going to mean 50/50 votes.

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