Defensive Player of the Year
1. Marc Gasol
2. Tim Duncan
3. Paul GeorgeEasy top choice and runner-up for me this year. Marc was by pretty much any reasonable measure in discussion for most impactful defender in the league, played more minutes than any other big man contender, anchored a top two defence, and led a conference finals run. Duncan in turn was also highly impactful (setting a regular season career high in block rate at age 36), anchored a top three defence, and was a shot away from winning the title. Minutes is a significant weakness for him relative to Marc, but not relative to other contending bigs — none of whom even won a series.
I was pondering options for third because of the fact most top bigs other than Marc missed a lot of time this year, without a 2013 Duncan / 2010 Garnett postseason run to offset it. One exception to that trend in minutes was Dwight, but I do not think Dwight deserves any particular reward for how that Lakers season went. That all opens a potential spot for a non-big, and among them I am looking at either Lebron or Paul George, who both had strong postseason runs of their own. And seeing as the Pacers were the league’s best defence, and George did play (slightly) more than Lebron did this year, I suppose that is enough for me to decide on George to occupy that final spot.
Offensive Player of the Year
1. Lebron James
2. Chris Paul
3. Kevin DurantSame top two as last year (and probably next year). Not too much different for Paul; his regular season scoring dipped, but that was circumstantial, and even though this time the series ended with a loss, I was more impressed by his offence against a better version of the Grizzlies team he beat last year. Lebron meanwhile was further improved, reaching historic new heights in scoring efficiency and taking on a larger share of the team’s playmaking. The Spurs did a good job limiting him for the first few games, but by the end he was once again dictating the series and securing another title.
I thought Durant was grossly over-rewarded by this voting bloc last year. However, the narrative around him as a player
this year has frequently been too critical. The postseason was a disappointment depending on how much you felt/knew Westbrook provided to the team, but what it really came down to was 93 disappointing minutes. Without Westbrook, Durant played 9 postseason games this year. Without Westbrook, Durant went 2-2 (+0.8) against a good Rockets team and 1-4 (-4) against a better Grizzlies team. The first Grizzlies loss has no real blame on him: the Grizzlies mounted a furious fourth quarter comeback, and although Durant hardly helped the defensive bleeding, he was doing what he could to keep pace on offence. Two games into the semifinals, Durant still looks every bit the part of “world’s second-best player”.
Then the Thunder head to Memphis. The second loss is more on him for a terrible second half (after a strong first half), and the third loss followed a similar path. With four and a half minutes left in the third quarter of Game 4, the Thunder led by 9. Durant
at that point had provided 22 points on 8 of 13 from the field and 4 of 4 from the line. For the rest of the game, he provided 5 total points on 2 of 14 from the field and 1 of 3 from the line, as the Grizzlies brought the game to overtime and ultimately won by 6. That collapse carried over to an abominable Game 5, where the Thunder lost by 4 as Durant only made 5 of 21 shots, turned the ball over ~7 times, and continued his uncharacteristically mediocre free throw shooting (11 of 15).
Because of the sample size involved, that all significantly drags down his overall postseason averages. Through say 7.7 games without Westbrook, Durant was averaging 32.5/9.9/6.1 on 62.9% true shooting per game, which looks a lot like his 2014 Westbrook-less numbers. He plummeted at an inopportune time, but seeing as it did not exactly cost his team a title — they were never beating the Spurs without Westbrook, and who knows if they even close out the series against the Grizzlies — I can only really penalise him for two or two and a half games of atrocious scoring (after halftime of Game 3, he scored 57 total points on 43.16% true shooting… and that was
with a strong first two and a half quarters in Game 4 providing a highly efficient 22 points to that total).
Player of the Year
1. Lebron James
2. Kevin Durant
3. Tim Duncan
4. Chris Paul
5. Marc Gasol
HM: Kobe Bryantcolts18 wrote:2013 LeBron gets underrated because of the context of the situation he faced. 2013 LeBron was facing one of the toughest defensive playoffs ever for a superstar. Going against young Jimmy Butler, Paul George, and Kawhi who were all hungry athletic defensive stoppers. Then he had to go against Joakim Noah, Roy Hibbert, and Tim Duncan, the top 3 defensive rim protectors in the league. The #1, #3, and #6 defenses in the league. There has never been a wing player who to go against a tougher defensive slate. Even his 1st round against Milwaukee was no joke as he had to face Mbah a Moute and Peak Larry Sanders. He did all of that while playing with a hobbled Dwyane Wade who had to get his knees drained during the finals.
Then to top it off LeBron was a legit DPOY candidate in 2013. His finals defensive performance was underrated. He completely shut down Tony Parker when he guarded him. Everyone knows that LeBron scored 37 Points in Game 7 and hit the game clinching shot. What's forgotten is that LeBron was guarding Tony Parker for the whole 2nd half. Do you know what Tony Parker's stats was for the 2nd half? 0 Points, 1 Assists, 2 Turnovers, 0 Rebounds. Completely taken out of the picture by LeBron. He was scared to attack LeBron. This is peak Tony Parker who finished 6th in MVP voting.
letskissbro wrote:Many knock this season for his postseason dip, I used to myself, but I've become more forgiving the last few years as I've come to understand it as a situational drop and symptomatic of sharing the floor with Wade, who was a ball dominant guard with basically no off-ball utility.
With Wade off the floor in the 2013 playoffs LeBron averaged
33.8 IA PTS/75 on +7.8 rTS%
8.6 REB/75
8.6 AST/75
1.8 STL/75
1.2 BLK/75 (0.9 at the rim)
He propelled the Heat to a +17.7 rORtg in these minutes as well (would be the best all time). Even against the Spurs, the series that people remember for LeBron struggling, Miami fielded an insane 131.3 offensive rating with LeBron on the court and Wade off.
Sample size is 282 minutes. If that isn't large enough he averaged 36.5 per 75 on +7.8 rTS% across his entire 3 year peak in Miami from 2012-2014. That's 703 minutes which roughly amounts to 18 games. These numbers are consistent with the regular season too.
Playing off the ball with another ball dominant slasher, while effective enough to win 2 championships, actually was not the most optimal strategy for the Heat and suppressed his raw numbers and impact. If LeBron had the opportunity to play with an off ball motion shooter like Klay or a star guard who could pass and shoot like Kyle Lowry as examples he realistically could've been putting up 2009/2018 playoff numbers every season of his prime.
Some might point this out as a criticism of LeBron's portability but I think Wade's own portability issues get unfairly attributed to LeBron. LeBron himself has shown to mesh well with basically any archetype of player outside of ball dominant, non-shooting guards like Wade or Westbrook. He and Bosh were extremely effective as a duo and worked well off of each other but this was ruined when Wade was on the court. Portability absolutely matters when it comes to secondary stars and role players but it's pretty overrated to me when talking about superstars because teams typically construct their rosters with their best player's strengths and weaknesses in mind.
LeBron gets a bad rap off the ball. He's an elite roll man, an elite secondary passer, the best cutter in the league when he actually gets the opportunity to play with good passers, a great post player, and shot 40% on catch and shoot 3s in Miami. He actually shot a higher percentage on perimeter shots than MVP Kevin Durant as well, 42.5% to 40.8%. If this doesn't constitute elite off-ball play then I don't know what could outside of running around off the ball and shooting 3s like Reggie Miller.
Wrote plenty about Durant already; stays locked in that #2 spot, with a brutal scoring slump midway through the Grizzlies series insufficient to change his position. Paul was a relative consensus top three among the 2013 voters, and…. Ahhh… he was again pretty irrelevant to the story of the season (the Grizzlies did manage to win a round after beating Paul, but they were still ultimately swept by a non-champion). I know Duncan was more frequently argued as a potential 1b to Parker, but that means little to me when Paul was playing next to Blake Griffin. Either way I end up with an underwhelming choice for third, but at least with Duncan I can say that yes, he was an essential part of any decent recollection of the season and managed a season on par with what Garnett did last year (when the majority of us had him top three and a couple even put him top two).
Kobe had an admirable regular season, but I cannot put him on this ballot with a missed postseason. Paul George will be a strong candidate for me next year, but he took a little too long to truly come into his own as a first option this year. Similar story for Steph, whose breakout in the last third of the season earned a lot of attention on this board… but nevertheless ended with some ugly slumps against the Spurs more in line with the player we saw at the beginning of the season, or an otherwise “mere” all-star player like Lillard or DWill. So my decision for the fifth spot is between Carmelo and Marc, and although I associate this season more with Carmelo, the combination of Knicks media and the infamous first place MVP vote probably has an outsized effect on that enduring impression. If he had played a complete season, then perhaps I could make a stronger case for him; however, tough for me (and evidently anyone) to advocate for him when he missed fifteen games on top of a bad impact profile and a postseason run only notable because the Knicks had been (and would return to) a long drought of any postseason success. Therefore, the beneficiary is Marc, who in what I assess as his peak season was atop ten player all year and led the Grizzlies to their only (to date) conference finals.
