What makes Joker better than Giannis?

[Heej]

I'm quite surprised how bad the Bucks' defense has gotten. I think this whole forum should re-evaluate the "big man defense is a lot more important than guard defense" idea. We've seen the Bucks defense fall from 4th to 20th when the only major roster change is going from Jrue to Dame. Perhaps we've been underestimating just how important point-of-attack defense is.

NGL mate I've been on this train for a few years now and it makes sense because most actions in the NBA are pick and roll or off-ball screens at heart so with how homogenized the game gets as the years go on due to positionless basketball it only makes sense that POA defenders increase in value with modern offenses.

I don't think the skew is that great though when you consider how much more important and difficult defensive rebounding has become due to bigs being stretched out of the paint more and forwards getting bigger and more mobile.

Love how everyone sidestepped this not being remotely reflected in the example used as evidence:



Are we going to acknowledge the Bucks suggest the exact opposite of what is being argued or...

No offense but I really don't care about what the Bucks' stats say seeing as how that's just one team and there's more to basketball than 1v1 matchups of this player vs this player. I care more about the fact that the actual metagame of basketball itself has changed to be highly spec'd towards spread PnR variants or off-screen concepts now vs earlier eras so that likely necessitates a rethinking of the value of perimeter defense.

Actually I specifically remember almost a decade back making a thread on the importance of perimeter defense after watching Kawhi clamp up JJ Reddick running off screens in the 2015 series while miraculously also being an effective help defender in the paint which in essence made him as valuable as 2 average defensive players that can only handle 1 assignment each. Then right after that my read was proven right with Kawhi winning 2 DPOYs (1 undeserved over Draymond imo).

The tilt isn't as high as saying something as stupid as perimeter defense matters more than interior defense now but the gap has closed significantly in terms of value just from what I see in the modern NBA now.

[lessthanjake]

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute.

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/. I think you know all this already and are just being obtuse, so this is for others who may be reading. Of course, the box components of different metrics still weigh things differently, and that will lead to some measures being more favorable to a player than other measures—which is why I listed a bunch of different measures, in order to not be overly reliant on any one formulation. And Jokic was better in all of them and also better in the ones I listed that don’t have a box component. This obviously isn’t a question of relying on a specific box component weighting. It’s an issue of Jokic just being clearly ahead.

Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

Lol, LEBRON was one of the measures I listed in my post, buddy. Jokic has been ahead of Giannis in LEBRON for four straight years—and usually by a pretty good margin. (Edit: Note that, as I’ve already pointed out regarding this and other measures, even if we include Giannis’s LEBRON from 2019 and 2020 into the mix for him, his average is still lower than Jokic’s from the last four years).

You can say “infinite stats with a similar approach can be made,” and that’s theoretically true, but there aren’t even close to infinite stats, and the finite number of stats we do have show Jokic being clearly ahead of Giannis ever since Jokic reached his true prime. It’s not a debatable premise. If you want to say that as a general matter we can’t totally trust the relatively small number of impact measures we have since they might all be biased in the same direction, then I wouldn’t disagree with you in general, but that’s an argument for acknowledging that impact data is imperfect overall and therefore should not be the only thing we look at (something I often have to caution you about), not really an argument that Jokic doesn’t look better than Giannis in impact data. At best you might be able to say impact data is so imperfect and prone to error that Giannis is within an uncertainty band of Jokic and we therefore can’t say for sure that Jokic is clearly ahead. But given how far ahead Jokic is in this data you’d have to be positing a very wide uncertainty band on impact data in general in order to get to that conclusion. Which actually might be a valid way to look at impact data (after all, it is flawed!), but I am quite certain from past discussion with you on other topics that that is not a view you would be willing to consistently subscribe to.

That said, if we decide not to exclude Gianni's two MVP years from this regular-season discussion with stats you utilized, RPM potrays the two as peers:

Spoiler:

Jokic/Giannis:

23: 7.39 / 5.95
22: 11.78 / 8.18
21: 5.08 / 5.09
20: 6.01 / 10.30
19: 3.58 / 6.12
18: 3.60 / 3.38
17: 4.78 / 3.13
16: 4.45 / -0.57
Average: 5.83 / 5.20

That still has Jokic ahead by a 12% margin on average, so it’s telling regarding the weakness of your argument that that’s what you chose to highlight.

In any event, I also see this thread as asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis more recently. Giannis was better than Jokic in 2020 and 2019. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise. The OP isn’t asking about that. The OP is asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis during the period in which Jokic has actually been generally considered better than Giannis. The data I provided goes to that question by focusing on those years where people actually have thought that.

Over actual games WOWY puts Giannis near for 1-year and 7-year and higher for 2-years on much better teams, and Cryptbeam rapm prefers Giannis with JE's previous set putting them similar for their career despite giannis playing more(not to mention, as highlighted earlier, jokic getting very high rapm in low minutes in his early years).

WOWY for Jokic is like 24 games over the last 4 years (and 26 games over the last 6 years). The Nuggets went 9-15 in those games (note: The Bucks have gone 27-26 without Giannis in the last 4 years). And, more importantly, what happened in those games is inherently part of the impact data I provided anyways. The impact data I provided just also includes more “off” data than just missed games, is more granular about what gets counted in the games these players played (i.e. you don’t get helped if your team does great in the minutes you sat in a game you played), and adjusts for lineup differences. You’re just raising a way less sophisticated and inherently lower-sample-size measure that gets at something that the other measures are already accounting for.

In any event, Jokic grades out clearly ahead in WOWY anyways. In terms of SRS with vs. SRS without, Jokic has a +8.09 SRS WOWY impact (+4.38 SRS with; -3.71 SRS without) in the last four seasons. Giannis has a much lower +4.99 SRS WOWY impact in those seasons (+4.57 SRS with; -0.42 SRS without). And Giannis is still solidly below if we added 2019 and 2020 to the mix for him too (which gets him to +6.80 SRS WOWY impact). Meanwhile, Giannis’s playoff numbers for this are lower than his regular season numbers in both timeframes, so adding that wouldn’t help him (Giannis has a +0.90 SRS WOWY playoff impact from 2021 onwards, and +4.14 SRS WOWY playoff impact if we add the 2019 & 2020 playoffs to the mix). So this is just another impact measure where Jokic is clearly ahead! Meanwhile, you are stuck talking about Giannis being ahead in “2-year” WOWY, because a higher sample size than that leaves him below Jokic. Overall, WOWY is actively unhelpful to your argument, so it’s amusing you raised it.

I don’t know why you’re raising Cryptbeam RAPM, which as far as I can tell does not exist past 2019.

And then if we look at the postseason:

Spoiler:

Keeping in mind Giannis has made 8 post-seasons to Jokic's 5

Giannis and the Bucks in the playoffs
2015: lose to the bulls as a role-player

2017: Giannis becomes a fringe superstar, team sees +3 srs improvement and plays a razor-close series(<1 ppg, 6 games) vs the +3.65 srs opponent(Giannis puts up strong offensive production)

2018: Giannis is a fringe MVP candidate, team mantains in the rs, and then playes an even closer series vs +3.2 srs Boston who nearly make the finals after beating the near +4.5 srs Sixers

2019: Giannis gets a not bad coach for the first time in his career and breaks out as a historically strong MVP winner as the Bucks jump by 8 points to post a historically remarkable +8 srs team(almost never happens in non-expansion periods) despite a cast that plays at .500 without him form 19-20(and marginally above from 21-23. That team improves to +13.75 in the playoffs on the back of a big defensive improvement. They are merely +7 in that oh so bad 6-game(1 ppg) loss to a coasting Toronto side which saw a cast capable of 60-win basketball add Kawhi Leonard, aka, clutch Durant, aka "resiliency king". In the conference finals Giannis's offensive production falters against one of the best defenses ever but he also puts up one of the best defensive performances ever to push a toronto side about as good as anyone Jokic has ever faced and far better than any team Jokic has ever beat to the brink(double-overtime and giannis fouling out prevented a 3-0 defecit).

2020: Giannis has one of the very best regular seasons ever(arguably better than any regular season from certain players who have already been voted in) and the Bucks post a +9.41 SRS(basically unheard of in non-expansion periods) with a team that plays average basketball without Antetokounmpo. Team collapses defensively in the bubble and are upset by the eventual finalists despite Giannis's offensive production improving from last year as their defense is torched by Miami. There is injury context with Giannis eventually missing a game and 3 quarters.

2021: Giannis coasts as merely a top 3 regular season player in the regular season and the Bucks post a +5.6 SRS(4th in the league) with a team that is a bit above .500 without him. The Bucks again get significantly better in the playoffs on the back of their defense and Giannis is good to great on both ends throughout as Giannis becomes one of the few players to win a championship...
-> without a 2nd superstar
-> without perennial all-star
-> without "help" that is significantly > .500 without him
-> without a strong playoff coach

The competition is fairly weak, but so was the support, and ultimately it's topped off with Giannis posting one of the greatest performances ever against a very good team on both ends of the floor

2022: Giannis is again, merely a top 3 regular season player, and the Bucks regress to +3(7th best) with the big-three missing a significant number of games. Bucks are(opponent-adjusted) more than +12 against the Bulls with Middleton and take a near-champion to 7 without a middleton in a not that close series(+8 point differential). Overall Bucks improve dramatically. again, on the back of their defense.

2023: Every contender is coasting and Giannis is again merely a top 3 regular season player as the Bucks post a 3rd best +3.61 SRS despite Middleton missing a bunch of games. Against Miami, Giannis misses almost half the series and is injured throughout. Consequently, the Bucks defense collapses as they lose to the eventual finalists(again)

8 postseasons total, 7 as a superstar, and the Bucks underperform twice and overperform 5 times despite a deeply flawed postseason coach, a cast who generally falls off in the playoffs(shooting especially). Both underperformances have injury context and when they lose, they are mostly losing to champions or finalists,

Now let's do Jokic:

Jokic and the Nuggets in the playoffs

2019 Jokic is a fringe MVP candidate and Nuggets see a 2.5 SRS improvement to post a strong +4.13(7th best). They win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Spurs(7 games, 1 ppg) and then lose a razor-close series(7 games, actually outscore by 1 ppg) against the +4.4 SRS Nuggets who proceed to get destroyed in a sweep against a losing-finalist. You may recall the champion that year was that Raptors side that just about survived Giannis.

2020 Jokic is again a fringe MVP candidate and the Nuggets regress to +2.5 thanks to injuries to Jokic's best teammates. In the playoffs they get lucky against the +2.5 Jazz winning in 7 despite getting outscored by 3-points a game. They then upset the +6.6 Clippers in a close series(7 games, <1ppg) before getting thumped by the eventual champs(5 games, 4 ppg). You may recall the Heat, without their leading scorer and with their defensive anchor hobbled, were the only team all playoffs to take the Lakers to a 6th game.

2021 MVP Jokic leads a +4.8 Nuggets side(6th best) despite a team that is outright bad without him. They proceed to win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Trailblazers(6 games, actually outscored) and are then obliterated in a sweep against the +5.5 eventual finalist Suns(15! ppg). Those suns would lose to...checks notes...Giannis's Bucks. Nuggets are bad without Jokic

2022 B2B MVP Jokic leads a +2.15 Nuggets team(injuries play a big-factor) and then is thumped in 5 by the +5.15 eventual champs(8 ppg).

2023 Should have been B2B2B MVP Jokic, with a team that is still bad without him in 13 games, leads the Nuggets to a +3 srs(6th best in the league). Against a relatively weak field(though everyone coasting undersells the competition) they are dominant in the postseason going 16-6 with a m.o.v of +8. This is an all-time dominant run, but it also coincides with dramatic cast elevation and unusually favorable injury context(like Milwaukee's 2021 Run). Nonetheless as a singular note it has a decent case against anything Giannis has done considering
-> team is bad without him(in the regular-season anyway)
-> unusually dominant
-> One-superstar(Murray is close)

5 postseasons total, I think it's fair to say the Nuggets overperformed in 2 and underperformed in 2. A weaker trackrecord than Giannis's Bucks despite
-> a better playoff coach
-> teammates generally elevating(Murray arguably outplayed Jokic in 2020)

The Nuggets are also flatly a far worse regular-season and postseason team getting destroyed when they face eventual finalists and champions which Milwaukee only really do if Giannis gets hurt. When the Nuggets faced a 2019 Raptors-calibre opponent, they were crushed despite Murray playing like a superstar. The Bucks have never suffered a defeat like the Nuggets did against the suns despite running into an eventual or defending finalist each of the last 5 playoffs.

Giannis's Bucks have also posted 2 regular-seasons where their srs nearly doubled any of the suns and one of those regular-seasons was followed by post-season improvement and a tough fight against the type of team the nuggets tend to get dominated by.

All considered, saying Giannis has "Playoff issues" and Jokic doesn't seems like you're applying a gigantic double-standard because Jokic id a one-way player while Giannis is a two-way one. Just like when we act like Jordan was "perfect" any-run he posts sub-2009 Lebron box-aggregates or when we act like Shaq is more "unstoppable" than two-way bigs because defense doesn't matter.

Excepting their championship years, Giannis has led far better regular season and playoff teams, and has also has a significant longetivity advantage, while elevating more often. And while Jokic's regular-season impact looks great(like Giannis)...

I’m virtually certain I’ve addressed this same screed in detail before. For purposes of this discussion, this is basically just a bunch of narrative arguments, not an argument about impact measures. It does not have any place in a discussion that is specifically about your claim that Jokic does not outdo Giannis in impact data. If you want to concede the impact-data point and move on to this, then I’m happy to do so.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Nope:



No stat is something you conjured up. You also picked a time-frame.

Let's be clear.

There are sourced rapms which favor giannis and Embid. 2-year WOWY sees Giannis peak higher in the regular season. And while Giannis trails jokic in regular season on/off (over more years and minutes), he doubles him in playoff on/off (over more years and minutes).

You can say he's easier to stop, but you have to be specific about what playoff filters you want to apply because in raw performance the Bucks improve.

Giannis also is currently the player whose team has seen more regular season and playoff success, and also the player who has been competitive in the postseason when their best teammates have missed time.

In short Jokic being in a "different tier" is little more than baseless speculation based on an arbitrary weighing of their skillsets. You can like offense bettwe. The idea that Jokic is on a different tier is...much like the idea of him being a goat-level player, is not what the data suggests

You literally wrote "Not without specifc box-score inputs..." in your response.

What without specific inputs? Why are you throwing a dependent clause and then ignoring what it was in reply to? (The question is rhetorical, you did it to distract from the fact you lied about what someone said)

So yes you did. I'm not getting into a semantics argument with you

You are uninterested in semantics because you do not care about meaning. You are intentionally or unintentionally(history suggests the former) misrepresenting what someone means.

Lol, this is a crazy comment to make to me. There’s basically no one on this forum that more consistently cautions about sample sizes—whether doing so supports or weakens the particular point being made—than I do.

I assume you meant to say no one is more consistently cautioned

Yes he does.

Let’s look at a survey of various impact measures and note who is ahead in each (focusing on these past four years, since no one would say Jokic was better than Giannis before that

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute. Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

That said, if we decide not to exclude Gianni's two MVP years from this regular-season discussion with stats you utilized, RPM potrays the two as peers:

Spoiler:

Jokic/Giannis:

23: 7.39 / 5.95
22: 11.78 / 8.18
21: 5.08 / 5.09
20: 6.01 / 10.30
19: 3.58 / 6.12
18: 3.60 / 3.38
17: 4.78 / 3.13
16: 4.45 / -0.57
Average: 5.83 / 5.20

Over actual games WOWY puts Giannis near for 1-year and 7-year and higher for 2-years on much better teams, and Cryptbeam rapm prefers Giannis with JE's previous set putting them similar for their career despite giannis playing more(not to mention, as highlighted earlier, jokic getting very high rapm in low minutes in his early years).

Spot minutes favors Jokic, +12 vs +7 since 2018, +10 vs +6 since 2016(pbp)

And then if we look at the postseason:

Spoiler:

Keeping in mind Giannis has made 8 post-seasons to Jokic's 5

Giannis and the Bucks in the playoffs
2015: lose to the bulls as a role-player

2017: Giannis becomes a fringe superstar, team sees +3 srs improvement and plays a razor-close series(<1 ppg, 6 games) vs the +3.65 srs opponent(Giannis puts up strong offensive production)

2018: Giannis is a fringe MVP candidate, team mantains in the rs, and then playes an even closer series vs +3.2 srs Boston who nearly make the finals after beating the near +4.5 srs Sixers

2019: Giannis gets a not bad coach for the first time in his career and breaks out as a historically strong MVP winner as the Bucks jump by 8 points to post a historically remarkable +8 srs team(almost never happens in non-expansion periods) despite a cast that plays at .500 without him form 19-20(and marginally above from 21-23. That team improves to +13.75 in the playoffs on the back of a big defensive improvement. They are merely +7 in that oh so bad 6-game(1 ppg) loss to a coasting Toronto side which saw a cast capable of 60-win basketball add Kawhi Leonard, aka, clutch Durant, aka "resiliency king". In the conference finals Giannis's offensive production falters against one of the best defenses ever but he also puts up one of the best defensive performances ever to push a toronto side about as good as anyone Jokic has ever faced and far better than any team Jokic has ever beat to the brink(double-overtime and giannis fouling out prevented a 3-0 defecit).

2020: Giannis has one of the very best regular seasons ever(arguably better than any regular season from certain players who have already been voted in) and the Bucks post a +9.41 SRS(basically unheard of in non-expansion periods) with a team that plays average basketball without Antetokounmpo. Team collapses defensively in the bubble and are upset by the eventual finalists despite Giannis's offensive production improving from last year as their defense is torched by Miami. There is injury context with Giannis eventually missing a game and 3 quarters.

2021: Giannis coasts as merely a top 3 regular season player in the regular season and the Bucks post a +5.6 SRS(4th in the league) with a team that is a bit above .500 without him. The Bucks again get significantly better in the playoffs on the back of their defense and Giannis is good to great on both ends throughout as Giannis becomes one of the few players to win a championship...
-> without a 2nd superstar
-> without perennial all-star
-> without "help" that is significantly > .500 without him
-> without a strong playoff coach

The competition is fairly weak, but so was the support, and ultimately it's topped off with Giannis posting one of the greatest performances ever against a very good team on both ends of the floor

2022: Giannis is again, merely a top 3 regular season player, and the Bucks regress to +3(7th best) with the big-three missing a significant number of games. Bucks are(opponent-adjusted) more than +12 against the Bulls with Middleton and take a near-champion to 7 without a middleton in a not that close series(+8 point differential). Overall Bucks improve dramatically. again, on the back of their defense.

2023: Every contender is coasting and Giannis is again merely a top 3 regular season player as the Bucks post a 3rd best +3.61 SRS despite Middleton missing a bunch of games. Against Miami, Giannis misses almost half the series and is injured throughout. Consequently, the Bucks defense collapses as they lose to the eventual finalists(again)

8 postseasons total, 7 as a superstar, and the Bucks underperform twice and overperform 5 times despite a deeply flawed postseason coach, a cast who generally falls off in the playoffs(shooting especially). Both underperformances have injury context and when they lose, they are mostly losing to champions or finalists,

Now let's do Jokic:

Jokic and the Nuggets in the playoffs

2019 Jokic is a fringe MVP candidate and Nuggets see a 2.5 SRS improvement to post a strong +4.13(7th best). They win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Spurs(7 games, 1 ppg) and then lose a razor-close series(7 games, actually outscore by 1 ppg) against the +4.4 SRS Nuggets who proceed to get destroyed in a sweep against a losing-finalist. You may recall the champion that year was that Raptors side that just about survived Giannis.

2020 Jokic is again a fringe MVP candidate and the Nuggets regress to +2.5 thanks to injuries to Jokic's best teammates. In the playoffs they get lucky against the +2.5 Jazz winning in 7 despite getting outscored by 3-points a game. They then upset the +6.6 Clippers in a close series(7 games, <1ppg) before getting thumped by the eventual champs(5 games, 4 ppg). You may recall the Heat, without their leading scorer and with their defensive anchor hobbled, were the only team all playoffs to take the Lakers to a 6th game.

2021 MVP Jokic leads a +4.8 Nuggets side(6th best) despite a team that is outright bad without him. They proceed to win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Trailblazers(6 games, actually outscored) and are then obliterated in a sweep against the +5.5 eventual finalist Suns(15! ppg). Those suns would lose to...checks notes...Giannis's Bucks. Nuggets are bad without Jokic

2022 B2B MVP Jokic leads a +2.15 Nuggets team(injuries play a big-factor) and then is thumped in 5 by the +5.15 eventual champs(8 ppg).

2023 Should have been B2B2B MVP Jokic, with a team that is still bad without him in 13 games, leads the Nuggets to a +3 srs(6th best in the league). Against a relatively weak field(though everyone coasting undersells the competition) they are dominant in the postseason going 16-6 with a m.o.v of +8. This is an all-time dominant run, but it also coincides with dramatic cast elevation and unusually favorable injury context(like Milwaukee's 2021 Run). Nonetheless as a singular note it has a decent case against anything Giannis has done considering
-> team is bad without him(in the regular-season anyway)
-> unusually dominant
-> One-superstar(Murray is close)

5 postseasons total, I think it's fair to say the Nuggets overperformed in 2 and underperformed in 2. A weaker trackrecord than Giannis's Bucks despite
-> a better playoff coach
-> teammates generally elevating(Murray arguably outplayed Jokic in 2020)

The Nuggets are also flatly a far worse regular-season and postseason team getting destroyed when they face eventual finalists and champions which Milwaukee only really do if Giannis gets hurt. When the Nuggets faced a 2019 Raptors-calibre opponent, they were crushed despite Murray playing like a superstar. The Bucks have never suffered a defeat like the Nuggets did against the suns despite running into an eventual or defending finalist each of the last 5 playoffs.

Giannis's Bucks have also posted 2 regular-seasons where their srs nearly doubled any of the suns and one of those regular-seasons was followed by post-season improvement and a tough fight against the type of team the nuggets tend to get dominated by.

All considered, saying Giannis has "Playoff issues" and Jokic doesn't seems like you're applying a gigantic double-standard because Jokic id a one-way player while Giannis is a two-way one. Just like when we act like Jordan was "perfect" any-run he posts sub-2009 Lebron box-aggregates or when we act like Shaq is more "unstoppable" than two-way bigs because defense doesn't matter.

Excepting their championship years, Giannis has led far better regular season and playoff teams, and has also has a significant longetivity advantage, while elevating more often. And while Jokic's regular-season impact looks great(like Giannis)...

Statistically the Giannis Bucks seem to overperform their rs performance more frequently facing a tougher slate of opponents.

You and Luka seem to think this constitutes "clearing" Giannis statistically, but I would say that applies far more strongly to what we have between Jokic and, hmm, what was his name again? Oh yes:

Spoiler:

Tired of hearing about LeBron yet? Too bad. LeBron has two unique five year stretches during which he had a higher RAPM than all but one other player’s best single five year stretch. In other word, LeBron’s 6.15 RAPM from 2006 to 2010 is the 4th highest five year RAPM peak since 1997. Of the three five year stretches ahead, two belong to LeBron and both of those stretches didn’t overlap with the 2006-10 stretch at all.

Giannis is around where winning seems to think Jokic should be considered.

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

[OhayoKD]

NGL mate I've been on this train for a few years now and it makes sense because most actions in the NBA are pick and roll or off-ball screens at heart so with how homogenized the game gets as the years go on due to positionless basketball it only makes sense that POA defenders increase in value with modern offenses.

I don't think the skew is that great though when you consider how much more important and difficult defensive rebounding has become due to bigs being stretched out of the paint more and forwards getting bigger and more mobile.

Love how everyone sidestepped this not being remotely reflected in the example used as evidence:



Are we going to acknowledge the Bucks suggest the exact opposite of what is being argued or...

No offense but I really don't care about what the Bucks' stats say seeing as how that's just one team and there's more to basketball than 1v1 matchups of this player vs this player. I care more about the fact that the actual metagame of basketball itself has changed to be highly spec'd towards spread PnR variants or off-screen concepts now vs earlier eras so that likely necessitates a rethinking of the value of perimeter defense.

That's all well and good, but Peregrine built their case on the Milwaukee Bucks and then claimed the Bucks dropped off more in 2024 than they did in 2021. Are we determining this on what actually happened, or the premise that the opposite of what happened happened?

Actually I specifically remember almost a decade back making a thread on the importance of perimeter defense after watching Kawhi clamp up JJ Reddick running off screens in the 2015 series while miraculously also being an effective help defender in the paint which in essence made him as valuable as 2 average defensive players that can only handle 1 assignment each. Then right after that my read was proven right with Kawhi winning 2 DPOYs (1 undeserved over Draymond imo).

I mean by this logic poa defense peaked in 70's/80's since a guard was awarded a dpoy every year. Kawhi has never statistically beeb the gold standard of non-big defense(outdone by better interior defenders) let alone a rival for bigs.

The Raptors were a perimiter slanted defense but their success emperically hinged on gasol far more than it did on OG, Kawhi, or Siakim. And we don't need to go over what the Clippers looked like defensively in the playoffs when Kawhi, exerting significantly more effort than he did in Toronto, swapped an over-the-hill Gasol for Zubac.

The tilt isn't as high as saying something as stupid as perimeter defense matters more than interior defense now but the gap has closed significantly in terms of value just from what I see in the modern NBA now.

Perhaps team-wide. But i dont see much evidence the calculus has changed in regards to individuals.

[OhayoKD]

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute.

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/.

And as you know,

A. Raptor is one of the least accurate modern all-in-ones with it's d-raptor being especially inaccurate

B. Accuracy writ large does not make a stat useful for a specific individual comparison. Bias is bias.

C. As there is correlative data that favors Giannis, "accuracy" is not any real basis to claim one player is ahead of the other.

I think you know all this already and are just being obtuse, so this is for others who may be reading. Of course, the box components of different metrics still weigh things differently, and that will lead to some measures being more favorable to a player than other measures—which is why I listed a bunch of different measures

You can list as many as you want. Unless you can actually justify the inputs chosen being useful for the specific comparison, then there is no reason to assume players potrayed as peers by unbiased data are actually not just because a number of biased outputs suggest otherwise.

And Jokic was better in all of them and also better in the ones I listed that don’t have a box component.

He is even even with your own stats if you extend the time frame. If you want to argue Jokic is a marginally better regular season player for his prime, go ahead, but that is not what has been pushed here.

And it gets especially odd for you to consider any of this as evidence of "clearly ahead" when you argue Jokic is a match for a player who beats him by much larger margins far more thoroughly in RAPM, WOWY, and on/off no matter the source/time-frame(excepting 1 year regular-season only).

Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

Lol, LEBRON was one of the measures I listed in my post, buddy. Jokic has been ahead of Giannis in LEBRON for four straight years—and usually by a pretty good margin.

So if you exclude Giannis's 2 mvp seasons?

You can say “infinite stats with a similar approach can be made,” and that’s theoretically true, but there aren’t even close to infinite stats

That there can be is all that really matters here. Arguing for Jokic because of the "finite stats" going one way effectively is just a glorified popularity appeal.

If I simply use synergy's Rim-deterrence tracking, Jokic will grade out as mediocre. Then I can point out rim-detterence positively correlates with winning, and then I can create a 100 metrics where the most weighed input is that tracking. Would that show Jokic is clearly worse than Embid? No. Because you need to actually justify the inputs.

If you want to say that as a general matter we can’t totally trust the relatively small number of impact measures we have since they might all be biased in the same direction, then I wouldn’t disagree with you in general, but that’s an argument for acknowledging that impact data is imperfect overall and therefore should not be the only thing we look at (something I often have to caution you about)

Yes, because I am constantly parroting impact-box hybrids...wait no that's you.

I generally start with data that minimizes potential bias and then try and justify the inputs if i am going to use more biased data. Your approach is pretty much the opposite of mine.

But given how far ahead Jokic is in this data you’d have to be positing a very wide uncertainty band on impact data in general in order to get to that conclusion.

Thus far he is only "far ahead" in RAPTOR and a career RAPM set(so not even samples).. unless of course you exclude Giannis's best data.

In any event, I also see this thread as asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis more recently. Giannis was better than Jokic in 2020 and 2019. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise. The OP isn’t asking about that. The OP is asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis during the period in which Jokic has actually been generally considered better than Giannis. The data I provided goes to that question by focusing on those years where people actually have thought that.

The OP never specifies but sure. Jokic has clearly been the better regular season player for the last 4 years. 2021 and 2022 for Giannis is specifically about the playoffs. I was talking peaks and primes.

That mostly settles the rest of this.

You literally wrote "Not without specifc box-score inputs..." in your response.

What without specific inputs? Why are you throwing a dependent clause and then ignoring what it was in reply to? (The question is rhetorical, you did it to distract from the fact you lied about what someone said)

So yes you did. I'm not getting into a semantics argument with you

You are uninterested in semantics because you do not care about meaning. You are intentionally or unintentionally(history suggests the former) misrepresenting what someone means.

Lol, this is a crazy comment to make to me. There’s basically no one on this forum that more consistently cautions about sample sizes—whether doing so supports or weakens the particular point being made—than I do.

I assume you meant to say no one is more consistently cautioned

Yes he does.

Let’s look at a survey of various impact measures and note who is ahead in each (focusing on these past four years, since no one would say Jokic was better than Giannis before that

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute. Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

That said, if we decide not to exclude Gianni's two MVP years from this regular-season discussion with stats you utilized, RPM potrays the two as peers:

Spoiler:

Jokic/Giannis:

23: 7.39 / 5.95
22: 11.78 / 8.18
21: 5.08 / 5.09
20: 6.01 / 10.30
19: 3.58 / 6.12
18: 3.60 / 3.38
17: 4.78 / 3.13
16: 4.45 / -0.57
Average: 5.83 / 5.20

Over actual games WOWY puts Giannis near for 1-year and 7-year and higher for 2-years on much better teams, and Cryptbeam rapm prefers Giannis with JE's previous set putting them similar for their career despite giannis playing more(not to mention, as highlighted earlier, jokic getting very high rapm in low minutes in his early years).

Spot minutes favors Jokic, +12 vs +7 since 2018, +10 vs +6 since 2016(pbp)

And then if we look at the postseason:

Spoiler:

Keeping in mind Giannis has made 8 post-seasons to Jokic's 5

Giannis and the Bucks in the playoffs
2015: lose to the bulls as a role-player

2017: Giannis becomes a fringe superstar, team sees +3 srs improvement and plays a razor-close series(<1 ppg, 6 games) vs the +3.65 srs opponent(Giannis puts up strong offensive production)

2018: Giannis is a fringe MVP candidate, team mantains in the rs, and then playes an even closer series vs +3.2 srs Boston who nearly make the finals after beating the near +4.5 srs Sixers

2019: Giannis gets a not bad coach for the first time in his career and breaks out as a historically strong MVP winner as the Bucks jump by 8 points to post a historically remarkable +8 srs team(almost never happens in non-expansion periods) despite a cast that plays at .500 without him form 19-20(and marginally above from 21-23. That team improves to +13.75 in the playoffs on the back of a big defensive improvement. They are merely +7 in that oh so bad 6-game(1 ppg) loss to a coasting Toronto side which saw a cast capable of 60-win basketball add Kawhi Leonard, aka, clutch Durant, aka "resiliency king". In the conference finals Giannis's offensive production falters against one of the best defenses ever but he also puts up one of the best defensive performances ever to push a toronto side about as good as anyone Jokic has ever faced and far better than any team Jokic has ever beat to the brink(double-overtime and giannis fouling out prevented a 3-0 defecit).

2020: Giannis has one of the very best regular seasons ever(arguably better than any regular season from certain players who have already been voted in) and the Bucks post a +9.41 SRS(basically unheard of in non-expansion periods) with a team that plays average basketball without Antetokounmpo. Team collapses defensively in the bubble and are upset by the eventual finalists despite Giannis's offensive production improving from last year as their defense is torched by Miami. There is injury context with Giannis eventually missing a game and 3 quarters.

2021: Giannis coasts as merely a top 3 regular season player in the regular season and the Bucks post a +5.6 SRS(4th in the league) with a team that is a bit above .500 without him. The Bucks again get significantly better in the playoffs on the back of their defense and Giannis is good to great on both ends throughout as Giannis becomes one of the few players to win a championship...
-> without a 2nd superstar
-> without perennial all-star
-> without "help" that is significantly > .500 without him
-> without a strong playoff coach

The competition is fairly weak, but so was the support, and ultimately it's topped off with Giannis posting one of the greatest performances ever against a very good team on both ends of the floor

2022: Giannis is again, merely a top 3 regular season player, and the Bucks regress to +3(7th best) with the big-three missing a significant number of games. Bucks are(opponent-adjusted) more than +12 against the Bulls with Middleton and take a near-champion to 7 without a middleton in a not that close series(+8 point differential). Overall Bucks improve dramatically. again, on the back of their defense.

2023: Every contender is coasting and Giannis is again merely a top 3 regular season player as the Bucks post a 3rd best +3.61 SRS despite Middleton missing a bunch of games. Against Miami, Giannis misses almost half the series and is injured throughout. Consequently, the Bucks defense collapses as they lose to the eventual finalists(again)

8 postseasons total, 7 as a superstar, and the Bucks underperform twice and overperform 5 times despite a deeply flawed postseason coach, a cast who generally falls off in the playoffs(shooting especially). Both underperformances have injury context and when they lose, they are mostly losing to champions or finalists,

Now let's do Jokic:

Jokic and the Nuggets in the playoffs

2019 Jokic is a fringe MVP candidate and Nuggets see a 2.5 SRS improvement to post a strong +4.13(7th best). They win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Spurs(7 games, 1 ppg) and then lose a razor-close series(7 games, actually outscore by 1 ppg) against the +4.4 SRS Nuggets who proceed to get destroyed in a sweep against a losing-finalist. You may recall the champion that year was that Raptors side that just about survived Giannis.

2020 Jokic is again a fringe MVP candidate and the Nuggets regress to +2.5 thanks to injuries to Jokic's best teammates. In the playoffs they get lucky against the +2.5 Jazz winning in 7 despite getting outscored by 3-points a game. They then upset the +6.6 Clippers in a close series(7 games, <1ppg) before getting thumped by the eventual champs(5 games, 4 ppg). You may recall the Heat, without their leading scorer and with their defensive anchor hobbled, were the only team all playoffs to take the Lakers to a 6th game.

2021 MVP Jokic leads a +4.8 Nuggets side(6th best) despite a team that is outright bad without him. They proceed to win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Trailblazers(6 games, actually outscored) and are then obliterated in a sweep against the +5.5 eventual finalist Suns(15! ppg). Those suns would lose to...checks notes...Giannis's Bucks. Nuggets are bad without Jokic

2022 B2B MVP Jokic leads a +2.15 Nuggets team(injuries play a big-factor) and then is thumped in 5 by the +5.15 eventual champs(8 ppg).

2023 Should have been B2B2B MVP Jokic, with a team that is still bad without him in 13 games, leads the Nuggets to a +3 srs(6th best in the league). Against a relatively weak field(though everyone coasting undersells the competition) they are dominant in the postseason going 16-6 with a m.o.v of +8. This is an all-time dominant run, but it also coincides with dramatic cast elevation and unusually favorable injury context(like Milwaukee's 2021 Run). Nonetheless as a singular note it has a decent case against anything Giannis has done considering
-> team is bad without him(in the regular-season anyway)
-> unusually dominant
-> One-superstar(Murray is close)

5 postseasons total, I think it's fair to say the Nuggets overperformed in 2 and underperformed in 2. A weaker trackrecord than Giannis's Bucks despite
-> a better playoff coach
-> teammates generally elevating(Murray arguably outplayed Jokic in 2020)

The Nuggets are also flatly a far worse regular-season and postseason team getting destroyed when they face eventual finalists and champions which Milwaukee only really do if Giannis gets hurt. When the Nuggets faced a 2019 Raptors-calibre opponent, they were crushed despite Murray playing like a superstar. The Bucks have never suffered a defeat like the Nuggets did against the suns despite running into an eventual or defending finalist each of the last 5 playoffs.

Giannis's Bucks have also posted 2 regular-seasons where their srs nearly doubled any of the suns and one of those regular-seasons was followed by post-season improvement and a tough fight against the type of team the nuggets tend to get dominated by.

All considered, saying Giannis has "Playoff issues" and Jokic doesn't seems like you're applying a gigantic double-standard because Jokic id a one-way player while Giannis is a two-way one. Just like when we act like Jordan was "perfect" any-run he posts sub-2009 Lebron box-aggregates or when we act like Shaq is more "unstoppable" than two-way bigs because defense doesn't matter.

Excepting their championship years, Giannis has led far better regular season and playoff teams, and has also has a significant longetivity advantage, while elevating more often. And while Jokic's regular-season impact looks great(like Giannis)...

Statistically the Giannis Bucks seem to overperform their rs performance more frequently facing a tougher slate of opponents.

You and Luka seem to think this constitutes "clearing" Giannis statistically, but I would say that applies far more strongly to what we have between Jokic and, hmm, what was his name again? Oh yes:

Spoiler:

Tired of hearing about LeBron yet? Too bad. LeBron has two unique five year stretches during which he had a higher RAPM than all but one other player’s best single five year stretch. In other word, LeBron’s 6.15 RAPM from 2006 to 2010 is the 4th highest five year RAPM peak since 1997. Of the three five year stretches ahead, two belong to LeBron and both of those stretches didn’t overlap with the 2006-10 stretch at all.

Giannis is around where winning seems to think Jokic should be considered.

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

[LukaTheGOAT]

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute.

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/.

And as you know,

A. Raptor is one of the least accurate modern all-in-ones with it's d-raptor being especially inaccurate

B. Accuracy writ large does not make a stat useful for a specific individual comparison. Bias is bias.

C. As there is correlative data that favors Giannis, "accuracy" is not any real basis to claim one player is ahead of the other.

I think you know all this already and are just being obtuse, so this is for others who may be reading. Of course, the box components of different metrics still weigh things differently, and that will lead to some measures being more favorable to a player than other measures—which is why I listed a bunch of different measures

You can list as many as you want. Unless you can actually justify the inputs chosen being useful for the specific comparison, then there is no reason to assume players potrayed as peers by unbiased data are actually not just because a number of biased outputs suggest otherwise.

And Jokic was better in all of them and also better in the ones I listed that don’t have a box component.

He is even even with your own stats if you extend the time frame. If you want to argue Jokic is a marginally better regular season player for his prime, go ahead, but that is not what has been pushed here.

And it gets especially odd for you to consider any of this as evidence of "clearly ahead" when you argue Jokic is a match for a player who beats him by much larger margins far more thoroughly in RAPM, WOWY, and on/off no matter the source/time-frame(excepting 1 year regular-season only).

Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

Lol, LEBRON was one of the measures I listed in my post, buddy. Jokic has been ahead of Giannis in LEBRON for four straight years—and usually by a pretty good margin.

So if you exclude Giannis's 2 mvp seasons?

You can say “infinite stats with a similar approach can be made,” and that’s theoretically true, but there aren’t even close to infinite stats

That there can be is all that really matters here. Arguing for Jokic because of the "finite stats" going one way effectively is just a glorified popularity appeal.

If I simply use synergy's Rim-deterrence tracking, Jokic will grade out as mediocre. Then I can point out rim-detterence positively correlates with winning, and then I can create a 100 metrics where the most weighed input is that tracking. Would that show Jokic is clearly worse than Embid? No. Because you need to actually justify the inputs.

If you want to say that as a general matter we can’t totally trust the relatively small number of impact measures we have since they might all be biased in the same direction, then I wouldn’t disagree with you in general, but that’s an argument for acknowledging that impact data is imperfect overall and therefore should not be the only thing we look at (something I often have to caution you about)

Yes, because I am constantly parroting impact-box hybrids...wait no that's you.

I generally start with data that minimizes potential bias and then try and justify the inputs if i am going to use more biased data. Your approach is pretty much the opposite of mine.

But given how far ahead Jokic is in this data you’d have to be positing a very wide uncertainty band on impact data in general in order to get to that conclusion.

Thus far he is only "far ahead" in RAPTOR and a career RAPM set(so not even samples).. unless of course you exclude Giannis's best data.

In any event, I also see this thread as asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis more recently. Giannis was better than Jokic in 2020 and 2019. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise. The OP isn’t asking about that. The OP is asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis during the period in which Jokic has actually been generally considered better than Giannis. The data I provided goes to that question by focusing on those years where people actually have thought that.

The OP never specifies but sure. Jokic has clearly been the better regular season player for the last 4 years. 2021 and 2022 for Giannis is specifically about the playoffs. I was talking peaks and primes.

That mostly settles the rest of this.

What without specific inputs? Why are you throwing a dependent clause and then ignoring what it was in reply to? (The question is rhetorical, you did it to distract from the fact you lied about what someone said)


You are uninterested in semantics because you do not care about meaning. You are intentionally or unintentionally(history suggests the former) misrepresenting what someone means.


I assume you meant to say no one is more consistently cautioned

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute. Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

That said, if we decide not to exclude Gianni's two MVP years from this regular-season discussion with stats you utilized, RPM potrays the two as peers:

Spoiler:

Jokic/Giannis:

23: 7.39 / 5.95
22: 11.78 / 8.18
21: 5.08 / 5.09
20: 6.01 / 10.30
19: 3.58 / 6.12
18: 3.60 / 3.38
17: 4.78 / 3.13
16: 4.45 / -0.57
Average: 5.83 / 5.20

Over actual games WOWY puts Giannis near for 1-year and 7-year and higher for 2-years on much better teams, and Cryptbeam rapm prefers Giannis with JE's previous set putting them similar for their career despite giannis playing more(not to mention, as highlighted earlier, jokic getting very high rapm in low minutes in his early years).

Spot minutes favors Jokic, +12 vs +7 since 2018, +10 vs +6 since 2016(pbp)

And then if we look at the postseason:

Spoiler:

Keeping in mind Giannis has made 8 post-seasons to Jokic's 5

Giannis and the Bucks in the playoffs
2015: lose to the bulls as a role-player

2017: Giannis becomes a fringe superstar, team sees +3 srs improvement and plays a razor-close series(<1 ppg, 6 games) vs the +3.65 srs opponent(Giannis puts up strong offensive production)

2018: Giannis is a fringe MVP candidate, team mantains in the rs, and then playes an even closer series vs +3.2 srs Boston who nearly make the finals after beating the near +4.5 srs Sixers

2019: Giannis gets a not bad coach for the first time in his career and breaks out as a historically strong MVP winner as the Bucks jump by 8 points to post a historically remarkable +8 srs team(almost never happens in non-expansion periods) despite a cast that plays at .500 without him form 19-20(and marginally above from 21-23. That team improves to +13.75 in the playoffs on the back of a big defensive improvement. They are merely +7 in that oh so bad 6-game(1 ppg) loss to a coasting Toronto side which saw a cast capable of 60-win basketball add Kawhi Leonard, aka, clutch Durant, aka "resiliency king". In the conference finals Giannis's offensive production falters against one of the best defenses ever but he also puts up one of the best defensive performances ever to push a toronto side about as good as anyone Jokic has ever faced and far better than any team Jokic has ever beat to the brink(double-overtime and giannis fouling out prevented a 3-0 defecit).

2020: Giannis has one of the very best regular seasons ever(arguably better than any regular season from certain players who have already been voted in) and the Bucks post a +9.41 SRS(basically unheard of in non-expansion periods) with a team that plays average basketball without Antetokounmpo. Team collapses defensively in the bubble and are upset by the eventual finalists despite Giannis's offensive production improving from last year as their defense is torched by Miami. There is injury context with Giannis eventually missing a game and 3 quarters.

2021: Giannis coasts as merely a top 3 regular season player in the regular season and the Bucks post a +5.6 SRS(4th in the league) with a team that is a bit above .500 without him. The Bucks again get significantly better in the playoffs on the back of their defense and Giannis is good to great on both ends throughout as Giannis becomes one of the few players to win a championship...
-> without a 2nd superstar
-> without perennial all-star
-> without "help" that is significantly > .500 without him
-> without a strong playoff coach

The competition is fairly weak, but so was the support, and ultimately it's topped off with Giannis posting one of the greatest performances ever against a very good team on both ends of the floor

2022: Giannis is again, merely a top 3 regular season player, and the Bucks regress to +3(7th best) with the big-three missing a significant number of games. Bucks are(opponent-adjusted) more than +12 against the Bulls with Middleton and take a near-champion to 7 without a middleton in a not that close series(+8 point differential). Overall Bucks improve dramatically. again, on the back of their defense.

2023: Every contender is coasting and Giannis is again merely a top 3 regular season player as the Bucks post a 3rd best +3.61 SRS despite Middleton missing a bunch of games. Against Miami, Giannis misses almost half the series and is injured throughout. Consequently, the Bucks defense collapses as they lose to the eventual finalists(again)

8 postseasons total, 7 as a superstar, and the Bucks underperform twice and overperform 5 times despite a deeply flawed postseason coach, a cast who generally falls off in the playoffs(shooting especially). Both underperformances have injury context and when they lose, they are mostly losing to champions or finalists,

Now let's do Jokic:

Jokic and the Nuggets in the playoffs

2019 Jokic is a fringe MVP candidate and Nuggets see a 2.5 SRS improvement to post a strong +4.13(7th best). They win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Spurs(7 games, 1 ppg) and then lose a razor-close series(7 games, actually outscore by 1 ppg) against the +4.4 SRS Nuggets who proceed to get destroyed in a sweep against a losing-finalist. You may recall the champion that year was that Raptors side that just about survived Giannis.

2020 Jokic is again a fringe MVP candidate and the Nuggets regress to +2.5 thanks to injuries to Jokic's best teammates. In the playoffs they get lucky against the +2.5 Jazz winning in 7 despite getting outscored by 3-points a game. They then upset the +6.6 Clippers in a close series(7 games, <1ppg) before getting thumped by the eventual champs(5 games, 4 ppg). You may recall the Heat, without their leading scorer and with their defensive anchor hobbled, were the only team all playoffs to take the Lakers to a 6th game.

2021 MVP Jokic leads a +4.8 Nuggets side(6th best) despite a team that is outright bad without him. They proceed to win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Trailblazers(6 games, actually outscored) and are then obliterated in a sweep against the +5.5 eventual finalist Suns(15! ppg). Those suns would lose to...checks notes...Giannis's Bucks. Nuggets are bad without Jokic

2022 B2B MVP Jokic leads a +2.15 Nuggets team(injuries play a big-factor) and then is thumped in 5 by the +5.15 eventual champs(8 ppg).

2023 Should have been B2B2B MVP Jokic, with a team that is still bad without him in 13 games, leads the Nuggets to a +3 srs(6th best in the league). Against a relatively weak field(though everyone coasting undersells the competition) they are dominant in the postseason going 16-6 with a m.o.v of +8. This is an all-time dominant run, but it also coincides with dramatic cast elevation and unusually favorable injury context(like Milwaukee's 2021 Run). Nonetheless as a singular note it has a decent case against anything Giannis has done considering
-> team is bad without him(in the regular-season anyway)
-> unusually dominant
-> One-superstar(Murray is close)

5 postseasons total, I think it's fair to say the Nuggets overperformed in 2 and underperformed in 2. A weaker trackrecord than Giannis's Bucks despite
-> a better playoff coach
-> teammates generally elevating(Murray arguably outplayed Jokic in 2020)

The Nuggets are also flatly a far worse regular-season and postseason team getting destroyed when they face eventual finalists and champions which Milwaukee only really do if Giannis gets hurt. When the Nuggets faced a 2019 Raptors-calibre opponent, they were crushed despite Murray playing like a superstar. The Bucks have never suffered a defeat like the Nuggets did against the suns despite running into an eventual or defending finalist each of the last 5 playoffs.

Giannis's Bucks have also posted 2 regular-seasons where their srs nearly doubled any of the suns and one of those regular-seasons was followed by post-season improvement and a tough fight against the type of team the nuggets tend to get dominated by.

All considered, saying Giannis has "Playoff issues" and Jokic doesn't seems like you're applying a gigantic double-standard because Jokic id a one-way player while Giannis is a two-way one. Just like when we act like Jordan was "perfect" any-run he posts sub-2009 Lebron box-aggregates or when we act like Shaq is more "unstoppable" than two-way bigs because defense doesn't matter.

Excepting their championship years, Giannis has led far better regular season and playoff teams, and has also has a significant longetivity advantage, while elevating more often. And while Jokic's regular-season impact looks great(like Giannis)...

Statistically the Giannis Bucks seem to overperform their rs performance more frequently facing a tougher slate of opponents.

You and Luka seem to think this constitutes "clearing" Giannis statistically, but I would say that applies far more strongly to what we have between Jokic and, hmm, what was his name again? Oh yes:

Spoiler:

Giannis is around where winning seems to think Jokic should be considered.

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

You wrote, "Not without specific BOX-SCORE inputs" Don't forget the box-score phrase when you try to backtrack. Of course your backtracking would be ineffective by including it so I see why you did it.

[lessthanjake]

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute.

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/.

And as you know,

A. Raptor is one of the least accurate modern all-in-ones with it's d-raptor being especially inaccurate

B. Accuracy writ large does not make a stat useful for a specific individual comparison. Bias is bias.

C. As there is correlative data that favors Giannis, "accuracy" is not any real basis to claim one player is ahead of the other.

I think you know all this already and are just being obtuse, so this is for others who may be reading. Of course, the box components of different metrics still weigh things differently, and that will lead to some measures being more favorable to a player than other measures—which is why I listed a bunch of different measures

You can list as many as you want. Unless you can actually justify the inputs chosen being useful for the specific comparison, then there is no reason to assume players potrayed as peers by unbiased data are actually not just because a number of biased outputs suggest otherwise.

And Jokic was better in all of them and also better in the ones I listed that don’t have a box component.

He is even even with your own stats if you extend the time frame. If you want to argue Jokic is a marginally better regular season player for his prime, go ahead, but that is not what has been pushed here.

And it gets especially odd for you to consider any of this as evidence of "clearly ahead" when you argue Jokic is a match for a player who beats him by much larger margins far more thoroughly in RAPM, WOWY, and on/off no matter the source/time-frame(excepting 1 year regular-season only).

Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

Lol, LEBRON was one of the measures I listed in my post, buddy. Jokic has been ahead of Giannis in LEBRON for four straight years—and usually by a pretty good margin.

So if you exclude Giannis's 2 mvp seasons?

You can say “infinite stats with a similar approach can be made,” and that’s theoretically true, but there aren’t even close to infinite stats

That there can be is all that really matters here. Arguing for Jokic because of the "finite stats" going one way effectively is just a glorified popularity appeal.

If I simply use synergy's Rim-deterrence tracking, Jokic will grade out as mediocre. Then I can point out rim-detterence positively correlates with winning, and then I can create a 100 metrics where the most weighed input is that tracking. Would that show Jokic is clearly worse than Embid? No. Because you need to actually justify the inputs.

If you want to say that as a general matter we can’t totally trust the relatively small number of impact measures we have since they might all be biased in the same direction, then I wouldn’t disagree with you in general, but that’s an argument for acknowledging that impact data is imperfect overall and therefore should not be the only thing we look at (something I often have to caution you about)

Yes, because I am constantly parroting impact-box hybrids...wait no that's you.

I generally start with data that minimizes potential bias and then try and justify the inputs if i am going to use more biased data. Your approach is pretty much the opposite of mine.

But given how far ahead Jokic is in this data you’d have to be positing a very wide uncertainty band on impact data in general in order to get to that conclusion.

Thus far he is only "far ahead" in RAPTOR and a career RAPM set(so not even samples).. unless of course you exclude Giannis's best data.

In any event, I also see this thread as asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis more recently. Giannis was better than Jokic in 2020 and 2019. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise. The OP isn’t asking about that. The OP is asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis during the period in which Jokic has actually been generally considered better than Giannis. The data I provided goes to that question by focusing on those years where people actually have thought that.

The OP never specifies but sure. Jokic has clearly been the better regular season player for the last 4 years. 2021 and 2022 for Giannis is specifically about the playoffs. I was talking peaks and primes.

That mostly settles the rest of this.

What without specific inputs? Why are you throwing a dependent clause and then ignoring what it was in reply to? (The question is rhetorical, you did it to distract from the fact you lied about what someone said)


You are uninterested in semantics because you do not care about meaning. You are intentionally or unintentionally(history suggests the former) misrepresenting what someone means.


I assume you meant to say no one is more consistently cautioned

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute. Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

That said, if we decide not to exclude Gianni's two MVP years from this regular-season discussion with stats you utilized, RPM potrays the two as peers:

Spoiler:

Jokic/Giannis:

23: 7.39 / 5.95
22: 11.78 / 8.18
21: 5.08 / 5.09
20: 6.01 / 10.30
19: 3.58 / 6.12
18: 3.60 / 3.38
17: 4.78 / 3.13
16: 4.45 / -0.57
Average: 5.83 / 5.20

Over actual games WOWY puts Giannis near for 1-year and 7-year and higher for 2-years on much better teams, and Cryptbeam rapm prefers Giannis with JE's previous set putting them similar for their career despite giannis playing more(not to mention, as highlighted earlier, jokic getting very high rapm in low minutes in his early years).

Spot minutes favors Jokic, +12 vs +7 since 2018, +10 vs +6 since 2016(pbp)

And then if we look at the postseason:

Spoiler:

Keeping in mind Giannis has made 8 post-seasons to Jokic's 5

Giannis and the Bucks in the playoffs
2015: lose to the bulls as a role-player

2017: Giannis becomes a fringe superstar, team sees +3 srs improvement and plays a razor-close series(<1 ppg, 6 games) vs the +3.65 srs opponent(Giannis puts up strong offensive production)

2018: Giannis is a fringe MVP candidate, team mantains in the rs, and then playes an even closer series vs +3.2 srs Boston who nearly make the finals after beating the near +4.5 srs Sixers

2019: Giannis gets a not bad coach for the first time in his career and breaks out as a historically strong MVP winner as the Bucks jump by 8 points to post a historically remarkable +8 srs team(almost never happens in non-expansion periods) despite a cast that plays at .500 without him form 19-20(and marginally above from 21-23. That team improves to +13.75 in the playoffs on the back of a big defensive improvement. They are merely +7 in that oh so bad 6-game(1 ppg) loss to a coasting Toronto side which saw a cast capable of 60-win basketball add Kawhi Leonard, aka, clutch Durant, aka "resiliency king". In the conference finals Giannis's offensive production falters against one of the best defenses ever but he also puts up one of the best defensive performances ever to push a toronto side about as good as anyone Jokic has ever faced and far better than any team Jokic has ever beat to the brink(double-overtime and giannis fouling out prevented a 3-0 defecit).

2020: Giannis has one of the very best regular seasons ever(arguably better than any regular season from certain players who have already been voted in) and the Bucks post a +9.41 SRS(basically unheard of in non-expansion periods) with a team that plays average basketball without Antetokounmpo. Team collapses defensively in the bubble and are upset by the eventual finalists despite Giannis's offensive production improving from last year as their defense is torched by Miami. There is injury context with Giannis eventually missing a game and 3 quarters.

2021: Giannis coasts as merely a top 3 regular season player in the regular season and the Bucks post a +5.6 SRS(4th in the league) with a team that is a bit above .500 without him. The Bucks again get significantly better in the playoffs on the back of their defense and Giannis is good to great on both ends throughout as Giannis becomes one of the few players to win a championship...
-> without a 2nd superstar
-> without perennial all-star
-> without "help" that is significantly > .500 without him
-> without a strong playoff coach

The competition is fairly weak, but so was the support, and ultimately it's topped off with Giannis posting one of the greatest performances ever against a very good team on both ends of the floor

2022: Giannis is again, merely a top 3 regular season player, and the Bucks regress to +3(7th best) with the big-three missing a significant number of games. Bucks are(opponent-adjusted) more than +12 against the Bulls with Middleton and take a near-champion to 7 without a middleton in a not that close series(+8 point differential). Overall Bucks improve dramatically. again, on the back of their defense.

2023: Every contender is coasting and Giannis is again merely a top 3 regular season player as the Bucks post a 3rd best +3.61 SRS despite Middleton missing a bunch of games. Against Miami, Giannis misses almost half the series and is injured throughout. Consequently, the Bucks defense collapses as they lose to the eventual finalists(again)

8 postseasons total, 7 as a superstar, and the Bucks underperform twice and overperform 5 times despite a deeply flawed postseason coach, a cast who generally falls off in the playoffs(shooting especially). Both underperformances have injury context and when they lose, they are mostly losing to champions or finalists,

Now let's do Jokic:

Jokic and the Nuggets in the playoffs

2019 Jokic is a fringe MVP candidate and Nuggets see a 2.5 SRS improvement to post a strong +4.13(7th best). They win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Spurs(7 games, 1 ppg) and then lose a razor-close series(7 games, actually outscore by 1 ppg) against the +4.4 SRS Nuggets who proceed to get destroyed in a sweep against a losing-finalist. You may recall the champion that year was that Raptors side that just about survived Giannis.

2020 Jokic is again a fringe MVP candidate and the Nuggets regress to +2.5 thanks to injuries to Jokic's best teammates. In the playoffs they get lucky against the +2.5 Jazz winning in 7 despite getting outscored by 3-points a game. They then upset the +6.6 Clippers in a close series(7 games, <1ppg) before getting thumped by the eventual champs(5 games, 4 ppg). You may recall the Heat, without their leading scorer and with their defensive anchor hobbled, were the only team all playoffs to take the Lakers to a 6th game.

2021 MVP Jokic leads a +4.8 Nuggets side(6th best) despite a team that is outright bad without him. They proceed to win a razor-close series against the +1.8 Trailblazers(6 games, actually outscored) and are then obliterated in a sweep against the +5.5 eventual finalist Suns(15! ppg). Those suns would lose to...checks notes...Giannis's Bucks. Nuggets are bad without Jokic

2022 B2B MVP Jokic leads a +2.15 Nuggets team(injuries play a big-factor) and then is thumped in 5 by the +5.15 eventual champs(8 ppg).

2023 Should have been B2B2B MVP Jokic, with a team that is still bad without him in 13 games, leads the Nuggets to a +3 srs(6th best in the league). Against a relatively weak field(though everyone coasting undersells the competition) they are dominant in the postseason going 16-6 with a m.o.v of +8. This is an all-time dominant run, but it also coincides with dramatic cast elevation and unusually favorable injury context(like Milwaukee's 2021 Run). Nonetheless as a singular note it has a decent case against anything Giannis has done considering
-> team is bad without him(in the regular-season anyway)
-> unusually dominant
-> One-superstar(Murray is close)

5 postseasons total, I think it's fair to say the Nuggets overperformed in 2 and underperformed in 2. A weaker trackrecord than Giannis's Bucks despite
-> a better playoff coach
-> teammates generally elevating(Murray arguably outplayed Jokic in 2020)

The Nuggets are also flatly a far worse regular-season and postseason team getting destroyed when they face eventual finalists and champions which Milwaukee only really do if Giannis gets hurt. When the Nuggets faced a 2019 Raptors-calibre opponent, they were crushed despite Murray playing like a superstar. The Bucks have never suffered a defeat like the Nuggets did against the suns despite running into an eventual or defending finalist each of the last 5 playoffs.

Giannis's Bucks have also posted 2 regular-seasons where their srs nearly doubled any of the suns and one of those regular-seasons was followed by post-season improvement and a tough fight against the type of team the nuggets tend to get dominated by.

All considered, saying Giannis has "Playoff issues" and Jokic doesn't seems like you're applying a gigantic double-standard because Jokic id a one-way player while Giannis is a two-way one. Just like when we act like Jordan was "perfect" any-run he posts sub-2009 Lebron box-aggregates or when we act like Shaq is more "unstoppable" than two-way bigs because defense doesn't matter.

Excepting their championship years, Giannis has led far better regular season and playoff teams, and has also has a significant longetivity advantage, while elevating more often. And while Jokic's regular-season impact looks great(like Giannis)...

Statistically the Giannis Bucks seem to overperform their rs performance more frequently facing a tougher slate of opponents.

You and Luka seem to think this constitutes "clearing" Giannis statistically, but I would say that applies far more strongly to what we have between Jokic and, hmm, what was his name again? Oh yes:

Spoiler:

Giannis is around where winning seems to think Jokic should be considered.

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

This is virtually all just a nonsense justification for your general approach that revolves around creating some rationale to prefer whatever measure can get you closest to the conclusion you want and to ignore everything else for specious reasons (though, here, it’s not even clear what your preferred measure would be, since none of them support your point, so you’re more just going for ignoring everything). But since it seems we both agree with the unremarkable premises that (1) Giannis was better than Jokic in 2019 and 2020; and (2) Jokic has “clearly” been better since then, it doesn’t seem worth my time to go around in more circles with you.

[OhayoKD]

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

You wrote, "Not without specific BOX-SCORE inputs" Don't forget the box-score phrase when you try to backtrack. Of course your backtracking would be ineffective by including it so I see why you did it.

Shifting goalposts, I see:

You said no stat without box-score inputs as Jokic as clearly better, which I'd why I referred to RS numbers.

No stat is something you conjured up. You also picked a time-frame.

[LukaTheGOAT]

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

You wrote, "Not without specific BOX-SCORE inputs" Don't forget the box-score phrase when you try to backtrack. Of course your backtracking would be ineffective by including it so I see why you did it.

Shifting goalposts, I see:

You said no stat without box-score inputs as Jokic as clearly better, which I'd why I referred to RS numbers.

No stat is something you conjured up. You also picked a time-frame.

They mean the same thing.

[Colbinii]

You really wonder if people post here to just argue or to learn.

[Heej]

Love how everyone sidestepped this not being remotely reflected in the example used as evidence:



Are we going to acknowledge the Bucks suggest the exact opposite of what is being argued or...

No offense but I really don't care about what the Bucks' stats say seeing as how that's just one team and there's more to basketball than 1v1 matchups of this player vs this player. I care more about the fact that the actual metagame of basketball itself has changed to be highly spec'd towards spread PnR variants or off-screen concepts now vs earlier eras so that likely necessitates a rethinking of the value of perimeter defense.

That's all well and good, but Peregrine built their case on the Milwaukee Bucks and then claimed the Bucks dropped off more in 2024 than they did in 2021. Are we determining this on what actually happened, or the premise that the opposite of what happened happened?

Actually I specifically remember almost a decade back making a thread on the importance of perimeter defense after watching Kawhi clamp up JJ Reddick running off screens in the 2015 series while miraculously also being an effective help defender in the paint which in essence made him as valuable as 2 average defensive players that can only handle 1 assignment each. Then right after that my read was proven right with Kawhi winning 2 DPOYs (1 undeserved over Draymond imo).

I mean by this logic poa defense peaked in 70's/80's since a guard was awarded a dpoy every year. Kawhi has never statistically beeb the gold standard of non-big defense(outdone by better interior defenders) let alone a rival for bigs.

The Raptors were a perimiter slanted defense but their success emperically hinged on gasol far more than it did on OG, Kawhi, or Siakim. And we don't need to go over what the Clippers looked like defensively in the playoffs when Kawhi, exerting significantly more effort than he did in Toronto, swapped an over-the-hill Gasol for Zubac.

The tilt isn't as high as saying something as stupid as perimeter defense matters more than interior defense now but the gap has closed significantly in terms of value just from what I see in the modern NBA now.

Perhaps team-wide. But i dont see much evidence the calculus has changed in regards to individuals.

Surely you can't be determining anything regarding the metagame of basketball off of stats from one team in general LMFAO

There is no logic or anything to draw regarding peak defensive value from guards just going by DPOYs. That something you need to use film and tracking data to tell you so the 70s DPOY points mean very little to me. The only thing that more DPOYs for guards tell you is that the meta has a higher chance of having shifted towards guards just like how more bigs winning MVPs tells you there's a higher chance the meta is shifting towards bigs (which it may be given that pivot passing is at more of a premium now due to offenses needing more answers to defensive schemes). At that point you need to dig deeper into film, media narrative, and tracking numbers to find out what's actually happening.

None of what you're saying detracts from my point that while POA defensive value has almost certainly gone up, that it's not enough to say the tilt has entirely shifted towards guards (OREBs go brrr now so DREBs matter more); but it absolutely necessitates a rethinking of how much value needs to be ascribed towards POA defense vs help defenses. And with switching centers and more shooters on an NBA floor now biasing teams towards conservative drop or switch schemes to avoid putting 2 on the ball it's only going to go up over the years.

If you wanna cry about Bucks defensive differentials that are likely a combination of multiple factors vs a 1v1 player comparison go ahead but I could care less about that seeing as how that's adjacent to what I'm discussing. You're probably better off arguing with Peregrine about something i consider granular in the grand scale of league-wide schematic adaptations.

And with regards to impact metrics not showing much of a difference in favor of guards, I'd imagine that has a bit more to do with flaws in how defensive metrics are calculated themselves; and especially in ones that rely on prior-informed data would likely to take years to reflect gradual changes to the NBA metagame. Not to mention that teams will literally hold back on certain coverages or defensive packages now during the regular season to spring them on opponents in the playoffs.

Playoffs in general are highly sensitive to variance in specific skillsets (like the POA D/screen navigation being discussed) as personnel dictate what +ev chess moves you can make schematically. Can't really take RS data on face value like that if it doesn't agree with what I'm seeing on film regarding how the NBA has changed over the course of a decade while I'm sure you don't take my "eye test" at face value.

[AEnigma]

You really wonder if people post here to just argue or to learn.

Thankfully I have outsourced all my learning to 538.

[LukaTheGOAT]

So one RAPM set with disparate samples and...rapm mixed with cherrypicked and arbitrarily weighed basketball actions. Cute.

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/.

And as you know,

A. Raptor is one of the least accurate modern all-in-ones with it's d-raptor being especially inaccurate

B. Accuracy writ large does not make a stat useful for a specific individual comparison. Bias is bias.

C. As there is correlative data that favors Giannis, "accuracy" is not any real basis to claim one player is ahead of the other.

"And as you know"

...{Proceeds to mention a bunch of statements as truisms with no kind of backing. Another example of when you know he's beginning his long foray into a bunch of nonsense that he is hoping no one picks up}

Raptor is one of the last accurate all-in-ones because you say it is?

RAPTOR performs excellently alongside other major one-number metrics. During Taylor Snarr’s retrodiction testing of some of these metrics, which involved estimating a team’s schedule-adjusted point differential (SRS) with its players’ scores in the metrics from previous seasons, RAPTOR was merely outperformed by two metrics and was on almost equal footing with RPM (the older version).

https://dunksandthrees.com/blog/metric-comparison

If you would like a different flavor, maybe see the correlation between metrics and team win% then we have Krishna has tested this and RAPTOR still performs well decently well:

Read on Twitter

/photo/1


RAPTOR is more susceptible to some sporadic PS results in tiny sample sizes compared to other metrics, since it doesn't really have change its calculations for PS numbers like a LEBRON metric but, that doesn't mean its's useless.

If you do like general testing, front-office members in the league see RAPTOR in the top 4 of the publicly available metrics, and favorable to just pure RAPM over at NBA ShotCharts.

https://hoopshype.com/lists/advanced-stats-nba-real-plus-minus-rapm-win-shares-analytics/


What's the evidence backing your statement? Your special eye-test that transcends all numbers and calculations that anyone else could concoct? What do you know that no one else knows?

[Statlanta]

ElGee35 has to be reading the forums

Watch on YouTube

[NO-KG-AI]

Giannis was always more of a piece in a defense than a transformative anchor.

[Jaqua92]

As you know, these measures don’t “arbitrarily weigh” things. They aim to weigh things such that the box component makes the measure be demonstrably less noisy (and therefore more accurate). A good explainer of this for one of the measures can be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/.

And as you know,

A. Raptor is one of the least accurate modern all-in-ones with it's d-raptor being especially inaccurate

B. Accuracy writ large does not make a stat useful for a specific individual comparison. Bias is bias.

C. As there is correlative data that favors Giannis, "accuracy" is not any real basis to claim one player is ahead of the other.

I think you know all this already and are just being obtuse, so this is for others who may be reading. Of course, the box components of different metrics still weigh things differently, and that will lead to some measures being more favorable to a player than other measures—which is why I listed a bunch of different measures

You can list as many as you want. Unless you can actually justify the inputs chosen being useful for the specific comparison, then there is no reason to assume players potrayed as peers by unbiased data are actually not just because a number of biased outputs suggest otherwise.

And Jokic was better in all of them and also better in the ones I listed that don’t have a box component.

He is even even with your own stats if you extend the time frame. If you want to argue Jokic is a marginally better regular season player for his prime, go ahead, but that is not what has been pushed here.

And it gets especially odd for you to consider any of this as evidence of "clearly ahead" when you argue Jokic is a match for a player who beats him by much larger margins far more thoroughly in RAPM, WOWY, and on/off no matter the source/time-frame(excepting 1 year regular-season only).

Darko and LEBRON have their own inputs and favor Giannis. Infinite stats with a similar approach can be made, but you are concerned with how many outputs people have been willing to generate rather than what those outputs actually prove.

Lol, LEBRON was one of the measures I listed in my post, buddy. Jokic has been ahead of Giannis in LEBRON for four straight years—and usually by a pretty good margin.

So if you exclude Giannis's 2 mvp seasons?

You can say “infinite stats with a similar approach can be made,” and that’s theoretically true, but there aren’t even close to infinite stats

That there can be is all that really matters here. Arguing for Jokic because of the "finite stats" going one way effectively is just a glorified popularity appeal.

If I simply use synergy's Rim-deterrence tracking, Jokic will grade out as mediocre. Then I can point out rim-detterence positively correlates with winning, and then I can create a 100 metrics where the most weighed input is that tracking. Would that show Jokic is clearly worse than Embid? No. Because you need to actually justify the inputs.

If you want to say that as a general matter we can’t totally trust the relatively small number of impact measures we have since they might all be biased in the same direction, then I wouldn’t disagree with you in general, but that’s an argument for acknowledging that impact data is imperfect overall and therefore should not be the only thing we look at (something I often have to caution you about)

Yes, because I am constantly parroting impact-box hybrids...wait no that's you.

I generally start with data that minimizes potential bias and then try and justify the inputs if i am going to use more biased data. Your approach is pretty much the opposite of mine.

But given how far ahead Jokic is in this data you’d have to be positing a very wide uncertainty band on impact data in general in order to get to that conclusion.

Thus far he is only "far ahead" in RAPTOR and a career RAPM set(so not even samples).. unless of course you exclude Giannis's best data.

In any event, I also see this thread as asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis more recently. Giannis was better than Jokic in 2020 and 2019. I don’t think anyone would say otherwise. The OP isn’t asking about that. The OP is asking about what makes Jokic better than Giannis during the period in which Jokic has actually been generally considered better than Giannis. The data I provided goes to that question by focusing on those years where people actually have thought that.

The OP never specifies but sure. Jokic has clearly been the better regular season player for the last 4 years. 2021 and 2022 for Giannis is specifically about the playoffs. I was talking peaks and primes.

That mostly settles the rest of this.

There was no dependent clause. You stopped your sentence/thought right there and quoted another another portion of post to rag on.

"Not without specific inputs" means nothing without the context of what the not is addressing. In other words, to prove I said something I did not say, you...quoted something that does not show what I was saying.

This is an example of "playing dumb" btw.

Can't wait for you to play dumb and come up with a convoluted argument against Jokic after this most recent PS run. Just yelling and hollering words for the sake of arguing.

Ironic.

This is virtually all just a nonsense justification for your general approach that revolves around creating some rationale to prefer whatever measure can get you closest to the conclusion you want and to ignore everything else for specious reasons (though, here, it’s not even clear what your preferred measure would be, since none of them support your point, so you’re more just going for ignoring everything). But since it seems we both agree with the unremarkable premises that (1) Giannis was better than Jokic in 2019 and 2020; and (2) Jokic has “clearly” been better since then, it doesn’t seem worth my time to go around in more circles with you.

He's used metrics he's **** on to dismiss MJ compared to Lebron and he's done this with every MJ and Jokic thread.

He posts nonsense.

[Top10alltime]

Jokic is a + on defense (good PnR defender and defensive rebounder), while being a GOAT level offensive player, gapping Giannis who isn't even elite on offense (I heard someone say KG is worse than Giannis on offense once ).

2019: Not top 5, below Curry, KD, Kawhi, Harden, and Embiid/Bron. Not even top 10 offensively, and Embiid/Gobert/Draymond all wipe him defensively. This is a strong prime Giannis year and he's not even top 5 in the league.

2020: A top 2 Giannis year, not even that good (people call it top 3-7 of 2000s, and top 20, when it's not even). Below Bron, Harden, AD, Kawhi, and unlikely, but Luka has a case. Fringe top 5 player. Not top 3 defender in the league, behind Gobert, AD, and possibly Bron (in his defensive peak). Not top 10 offensively in the league either.

2021: A top 3 Giannis year, not even a top 5 player in the league. Curry, KD, Jokic, Luka, and Embiid are all better this season, with an argument to be made for CP3 as better. Not top 5 offensively in the league, and behind Gobert, Draymond, Bam, AD, and Embiid on defense. Fringe top 5 defender. This is the most overrated season in NBA history.

2022: The best Giannis year IMO, this is finally a year where he cracks the top 5 players. Jokic, Embiid, Luka, Tatum are all still better than him, so he's only #5 though. Still isn't a top 5 offensive in the league, and Draymond, Gobert, JJJ, Bam, AD, and Embiid is all better defenders this season. An overrated season, but not as overrated as 2021. Finally cracks the top 5.

2023: That was the last year he was cracking the top 5, ever. He's not even over Jokic, Embiid, Curry, SGA, Tatum, Luka, Butler, and maybe Bron is all better in this season. This is a mid defensive year, so now he's outside the top 5 defenders for good (AD, JJJ, Mobley, Embiid, Dray is a LOCK over him defensively). Along with this, you have him being just as bad at offense the previous year, not top 5 (everyone I named over him is better offensively).

2024: MASSIVE drop-off on defense. Now he's horrible at it. Jokic, Embiid, Luka, SGA, Tatum, Brunson, and yes, even Ant (who himself is extremely overrated) is better. Probably Lebron and Haliburton as well. Again, not top 5 in the league offensively, and I wouldn't even say he's top 10 defensively in the league (Wemby, Gobert, Bam, AD, Dray, Caruso, Herbert, Jrue, White, JJJ, Embiid, Tatum, Chet, and JDub are all better defenders).

2025: Even though this is his peak offensively, he was horrible defensively. He might drop out of his prime after this (I'll be glad), and that was a horrible prime.
He might not even be a top 15 player this year. Jokic, Shai, Tatum, Luka, Wemby, Brunson, Steph, KD, Hali, AD, Lebron, JDub, Chet, and Ant is all better this season. Not top 5 on offense and not top 20 on defense.



So yeah, by casuals and everyone Giannis is overrated. He had a horrible prime, outside a top 15-20 peak in 2000s. Do not understand the glaze about Giannis at ALL. He is the most overrated basketball player in history by a longshot, but don't worry, he's still the GOAT role-player of all-time.
Jayson Tatum is better, and we are talking about Jokic here. SMH

[Mavericksfan]

I’m sorry but Jokic is neither a + on defense or a good PnR defender

Teams hunt him throughout the playoffs and the Nuggets entire defensive scheme is built around protecting Jokic.

He’s not a huge negative and the Nuggets can field a solid defense with him but it’s despite him not because of him.

Also , claiming Jokic is a better defender than Giannis at any point is pure trolling.

Jokic is certainly a GOAT level offensive player (I’d argue top 5 without question) but the way people ignore his defensive flaws is very interesting.

When Curry was picked on defensively nobody pretended he was a good defender just because the Warriors were able to field good defensive units with him on the floor.

[falcolombardi]

For some people is on/off or rapm (albeit i doubt people give the same weight to current shai rapm or chris paul on/off)

For other is total boxscore point/rebound/assist (strong correlation with jordan fans i would imagine)

For other is prioritizing offense value or offense skillset and the aesthetic element

There is the element of jokic having been healthier in more playoffa runs last 3 years

Probably the bigger reasons this suddendly became a "closed debate" even though their overall team and individual accomplishments are so similar

[Peregrine01]

For some people is on/off or rapm (albeit i doubt people give the same weight to current shai rapm or chris paul on/off)

For other is total boxscore point/rebound/assist (strong correlation with jordan fans i would imagine)

For other is prioritizing offense value or offense skillset and the aesthetic element

There is the element of jokic having been healthier in more playoffa runs last 3 years

Probably the bigger reasons this suddendly became a "closed debate" even though their overall team and individual accomplishments are so similar

Jokic's durability is the biggest separator for me.