OPOY
1 - Magic, duh
2 - Moses, sure
3 - Marques Johnson, why not
DPOY
1 - Tree Rolins
2 - Bill Cartwright
3 - Jack Sikma
Nets were the #1 defensive team but were coached by Larry Brown, who consistently coached league-leading defensive teams across different franchises in his career. Either he had a gift for simply ending up on teams with the best defensive player in the league, or he deserves the bulk of the credit for those #1 finishes.
1. Moses Malone
Not much regular season improvement in Philly, but we have a great (if noisy) signal from Houston and in the part of the season that really matters we see dramatic improvement from the Sixers (admittedly aided by worse competition). This is also something to consider:
LA Bird wrote:To be fair, the version of Dr J we saw post All Star break (18/6/3 on 53% TS) and in the playoffs (18/8/3 on 50% TS) wasn't close to the MVP candidate in prior years
He's a good not great defender at the most valuable defensive position, a great scorer, and is likely generating more value of rebounding than his raw averages would suggest. In a weak year that seems enough theoretically to be a POY and the results(at least in the postseason) suggest he is that guy.
He almost won in 1981. He almost won in 1982. He'll be almost unanimous for 1984. Fo Fo Fo.
2/ Magic Johnson
He's the best playmaker in the league by a massive margin so there's that. While people seem to acknowledge this, I think people underestimate the gap between him and the competition:
Trelos6 wrote:1.Larry Bird. +3.57 OPIPM, +1.6 DPIPM, +5.16 PIPM. 16.04 Wins Added. Great regular season. I don’t think he sucked in the playoffs. Vs. Hawks he was 22/13/7/1/1. 18/11/6/3 vs Bucks, where he missed a game with a broken finger. McHale wasn’t there yet, and Tiny and Maxwell were both fading. The ‘83 Celtics weren’t great outside of Bird.
2.Magic Johnson. Magic was the driver of a great offense. +3.92 OPIPM, +0.65 DPIPM, +4.57 PIPM. 16.04 Wins Added. He’s #2 more because I’m just not as high on Moses as the consensus, but that’s below.
Bird had 6 assists. Magic had 12.
Here's what those assists look like:
For Magic’s 17 tracked assists, I gave him 37 DTOs, 19 EDTOs, and a total of 3 ADAs giving Magic a total of 40 defenders affected; This also gives Magic per-assist rates of 2.2 defenders taken out, 1.1 extra defenders taken out, and 2.4 total defenders affected.
For comparison, over 13 tracked assists, the Bird-man had 16 DTOs, 7EDTOs, and 9 ADAs for a total of 25 defenders affected and per-assist rates of 1.2 defenders taken out, .54 extra defenders taken out, and 1.9 total defenders affected.
Contrary to the meta pushed by alot of the analytics community, probably in part because of Larry Bird, efficiently dominating the ball is extremely valuable, and no one, besides maybe Nash, did it as well. Here's the result:
Magic Johnson(3x MVP) 1980-1991
Lakers are +0.8 without, +7.5 with
Micheal Jordan(5x MVP) 1985-1998
Bulls are +1.3 without, +6.1 with
Hakeem(1x MVP) 1985-1999
Rockets are -2.8 without. +2.5 with
Some would insist, that Magic, with the best rs signals of the era, the best replication across contexts, the #1 all-time winning percentage, and 5 titles to pair with 10 final trips, played a less effective stye of basketball. That insistence is why you get ballots where Bird ends up ahead in a year he is swept by Marques Johnson as his 56-win team plays like a 44-win team as Bird heroically scores a decently efficient 21 points.
Needless to say, Bird at 1, or 2 for that matter, is unserious.
3. Marques Johnson
Was unsure of this a voter who shan't be named made a decent case elsewhere (admittedly the most compelling point was, "you know he swept Bird, right?")
Marques seems to have a really good team. It's not as clear cut Bird has a good team (I mean he does, but we don't really get to see the Celtics without him for a while until a much weaker supporting cast is about average without him in the regular season and good without him in the playoffs, and my eyetest isn't an argument inofitself...). But is that team 12-points better? Because that was their margin of victory. It was 11 points if we stick to the games Bird played and give him a pass for missing game 4.
It just so happens amidst this collapse, Marques scored more, on much better efficiency, while averaging 2 less assists than the guy with the lowest assist quality by my tracking and surprisingly low creation in the peer-vetted full-game tracking we've done so far.
Bird's regular-season signals are admittedly strong. But that really only holds if you stick to what happens in the regular season those years, and ignores what follows in the playoffs those years(1980, 1988, 1991, 1992). This becomes more damning when one looks at Bird's numbers those years in the rs vs the postseason as opposed to his teammates:
Spoiler:
Outside of the years he is asked to do a little bit more offensively than Kevin Durant on the Warriors(while being asked to do even less defensively), Bird is a pumpkin whose teams pumpkin with him and curiously anti-pumpkin'd the year they were basically without him.
This is not a player you should be comparing to Magic Johnson. This is David Robinson with generational PR(and much more complimentary roster construction). And that is him at his best. Not the one who got swept by 11 points by the one MJ no one cares about.
4. Julius Erving
He probably puts up more guady numbers if he's asked to lead and he got the Sixers quite close without Moses. There may also be something to said about culture-setting and whatnot. Still, he's just worse than Malone. And he seemed to player worse than he usually does. There's a reason his biggest defenders mainly talk about things he failed to do at the higghest level:
One_and_Done wrote:IlikeSHAIguys wrote:1 - Moses Malone
FYI Erving has 4 MVPs and 3 rings, and in his prime was definitely a better player than Moses.
As you helped establish, the ABA was much weaker than the NBA, even in 1976. I don't care much about MVP voting, but for those who do, Moses's should matter far more.
5. Kareem
Unless someone wants to argue Bird was a negative defender in 83, it's hard for me to get past him averaging 27 on strong efficiency. As has been covered before, Kareem seemed capable of getting his without Magic in his later years and on top of still strong paint-protection, that seems hard to leave off the ballot in favor of Gus Williams or George Gervin or also past-his-prime Artis Gimore
