tsherkin wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I specifically think it's instructive to think about the prototype for the "defensive big" archetype, Bill Russell. Nowadays people believe that someone with as limited offense as Russell had couldn't possibly be the most valuable player today, and while I'm inclined to believe them, I also know that BEFORE Russell no one thought you could be the MVP of the NBA without being an offensive star.
Russell overcame the concerns about the limitations in his game by being WAY more valuable in his strengths than people thought possible, and so that's basically what Jokic will need to do to, he'll just have different strengths and weaknesses, and be playing in a different era where different things are possible.
I still think Russell is the best defensive player we've ever seen, incidentally, it's just that while I think he'd be winning DPOYs in the modern game, his raw impact on that side would be smaller now primarily because of the spacing of modern offense. (Note that I'm super excited about Wemby as a super-defender and who knows, maybe we'll end up seeing him as a super-Russell who can dominate the game with defense despite the 3, but it won't be easy to top Russell in my assessment.)
I think this illustrates the importance of timing in how we evaluate a player's career.
Russell, playing like Russell, wouldn't have the same level of impact today. That seems clear. But in the context of a league which hadn't really seen anyone like him before, with no 3 and all the other details of the late 50s game, he was an absolute dynamo. He had size, he had mobility, he had huge rebounding and defense with great instincts. Clearly a dude who'd stand out on D in any era. Dogcrap useless at the line, no range, fell off an efficiency cliff as he entered the 60s. But the impact of his D outpaced the drop-off in his O for a long time, particularly in the abbreviated playoff environment he enjoyed through most of his career.
And I think the same sort of thing can be applied to the other titanic-impact guys in their eras, forward and backward from Russell, right? Never having seen someone quite like (PLAYER), rules and context lining up perfectly, an environment is produced for dominance and success. Look at the top stars by decade, right? You'll generally see the trend, though there are obviously some classic holdovers (someone, for example, like Tim Duncan), though there will be other details around them as well (like Pops use of Bowen and Manu, international players in general, etc).
In Jokic's case, he's a ridiculous assembly of skill, and has some underrated physical attributes. I think a lot of folk overlook him because he isn't a fast-twitch guy and because he isn't much of a shotblocker, but his scoring tools are ridiculous and his passing is insane. And he's been killing it on the offensive glass, and from 3. He's... very difficult to stop on offense. You basically can't, unless he's just having a crap night on his own. And he's actually having a down year inside the arc, which makes that feel a little insane.
Outlier-level stuff, but the timing is right for him because of how the league is operating around, right? Moving back up tempo, lots of spacing, lots of PnR and DHOs, lots of freedom for bigs to take jumpers, etc.
Good insights.
One thing I can't help but point out though: While I agree that the 3-point shot is a new thing that's helping Jokic's strengths be more valuable, I don't see the style of play Jokic plays to be a thing that didn't work before the 3-point shot. I see it as something that used to be the dominant paradigm in elite American basketball, then got supplanted domestically but continued to live on globally. And I've long wondered (because of Walton, who played this style successfully pre-3) if it's there was ever any strong disadvantage to the style of play compared to modern norms, or if American basketball just happened to go another way based on the specific superstars that emerged.
I do think that this sort of scientific/positionless/pivot/wheel/read&react-ish style where all 5 players are actively doing stuff is more valuable when passing is more valuable, and 3's make passing more valuable, but I think it's a fun thing to consider:
In the 1920s, the emergence of Dutch Dehnert on the Original Celtics' "Scientific Basketball" offense leads to "pivot play", which spreads like wild fire - in part because Dehnert's teammate Nat Holman is literally writing books about how the team plays, and they are universally seen as the best team in the world.
While Dehnert himself wasn't the team's center, it's quickly recognized that height helps your passing angles and so the concept of "pivot" and "center" get merged, with centers typically playing "Dutch".
Then Mikan comes out in the 1940s, as the most effective offensive force in the history of the game working as a volume scoring interior big. (Note that there's a brief moment in college pre-goaltending rule where the shotblocking is more noteworthy than the scoring - with Bob Kurland being the face of that even more than Mikan - but then they put the rule in place.)
Then the NBA widens the key, and Mikan he no longer has that same type of effectiveness on offense. However, the Lakers keep winning titles with defense. Mikan deserves a lot of credit for that defense, but the funny thing is, I'm not sure if contemporaries were really able to internalize that that's what was happening. The Lakers kept on playing through Mikan and he kept up scoring a lot, so it would have been easy for people to keep focusing on that as the value-add even though it wasn't.
And I'd say for the most part, star bigs after Mikan continued to play like Mikan even though it wasn't actually working all that well. Even the guys who could do it more efficiently than Mikan (most notably Wilt), didn't have massive team offensive success that way.
And of course when Wilt did win that first title, people called it "playing like Russell", but I think you might also say it was playing like Dutch or Walton. Not that all these guys were identically to each other, but all were focused on passing more than scoring.
And yet, after Walton, it's like the approach just completely dies in the NBA in the '80s all the way up until Jokic comes back. (To be fair, you might say Adelman had something kinda like this, but even that disappeared.)
All this to say that I think things could have evolved differently in the NBA pre-Jokic - which I find very interesting - and the way teams are emulating how Denver now plays with Jokic across the NBA is something that makes me
.
