2024-25 RealGM All-Season Awards Discussion Thread

[Junoobi]

Full season including the playoffs, my ballot is:

POY
1.SGA
2.Jokic
3.Giannas
4.Dmitch
5.Tatum

SGA definitely earned the top spot with one of the best seasons we’ve ever seen from a guard. That said, I was pretty disappointed with how he played in the Finals—the flopping, rough shooting splits, and the questionable calls really made some of those games hard to watch throughout the playoffs. But honestly, that was more of a team-wide issue than just him. Jokic was great offensively all season, but had some surprisingly bad games in the playoffs. His defence did get better in the postseason, but his rim protection is still pretty rough some of the worst for a big at that level.
Giannis is still the best two-way player in the league, even if he’s lost a bit of that freak athleticism. Injuries and a shaky roster are really the only things keeping him from making another deep run, especially with how open the East looks next year.
Donovan Mitchell had a great regular season, though it cooled off near the end. He turned it up in the playoffs like usual, but injuries to teammates once again got in the way and held the team back. Tatum looked way better in the regular season compared to last year, but the playoffs were a letdown. The injury was unfortunate, but even before that, he got outplayed by the Knicks and was a big reason they went down 0–2, just a lot of bad shots and terrible decisions.
Luka’s not on the list because of injury.

[jalengreen]

One of these years we won't have any non-vote posts in the voting thread, I'm a believer.

[lessthanjake]

So i am seeing a lot of comments about shai having some big drop off but honestly almost all of it was the memphis series and 2-3 fairly bad games dragging averages down (game 3 vs minny comes to mind in the dragging down department) his median game was extremely consistent amd valuable scoring or otherwise and even more so in the higher leverage games

Usually players "pad up" so to speak their stats a bit against theor weaker 1st round opponents, shai this year and last (his dallas series was way better than his pels series) has the opposite problem of being qt his worst in the easiest/lowest leverage first round series, lebron had it a bit too

Like he has played 33 playoffs games with okc as a lead star and probably like 6 of the worst 10 happened vs memphis and pelicans (where oklahoma went 8-0 with like a +15 point differential)

From 1-2 down to denver to 3-2 up on indiana shai had like 10 efficient 30+ point games with around 2 bad games only scoring less or unneficiently, and even some of his unneficient games where great from other perspectives (turnovers, assists, blocks amd steals)

Not saying those bad games dont count but i dont think you guys are considering the actual full run and how it went and how few true bad games he had past like, up 3-0 on memphis

Take away his consistent 30+ scoring with the opposite teams locked up over him, (and playmaking, defense and ballhandling) in a team with terrible shooting amd unreliable ballhandlers and secondary shot creators ans it could have got ugly (okc was still like a top 3 playoffs offense)

I don’t think this was directed at me, since I said SGA dipped in the playoffs but was still good. That said, I thought it worth discussing.

From Game 5 of the Denver series through Game 5 of the Indiana series, I thought SGA played at a level that was not really indicative of a playoff dip. In those games, he scored 32.1 PPG on 60.3% TS%, with 6.4 APG and 2.8 turnovers per game. In terms of sheer numbers, even the numbers in this span were a dip from his regular season numbers. His regular season TS% was 63.7%, and given that he played 3.3 more MPG in that span than he did in the regular season, a dip from 32.7 PPG to 32.1 PPG and his assists staying the exact same (6.4 APG) is a dip in his rate of production, while the turnovers were still slightly higher. That said, I don’t think our standard for saying something is a playoff drop should be if one’s production is lower than RS production. After all, playoff defenses tend to be better and some series take on a pretty gritty tenor (the Denver series did, for instance). So I look at that period of the playoffs and don’t think I’d really feel comfortable saying he’d notably dipped from his RS level.

The issue is that there were games outside of that timeframe.

In the first 8 games of the playoffs, SGA averaged 27.6 PPG on 54.5% TS%, though with 6.5 APG and only 1.9 turnovers per game. That was definitely notably below his normal level. I think if we were being as charitable as possible, we’d say that the Grizzlies series was so easy that it didn’t really matter how he played, and the Nuggets series was a bit of a grind. But, even if the Thunder didn’t need SGA to play great in the first round, it’s still part of his playoff resume and wasn’t the type of performance we’d expect. The Denver series definitely did matter, and while the first four games of the Denver series were still pretty good under the circumstances, they were not in line with the type of season he’d had IMO.

And then we get to the last two games of the Finals. SGA was poor in Game 6 of the Finals. In Game 7, he did at least playmake well, but it’s very hard to overcome having a 33.3% effective FG% for the game. These games were well below his normal level, and were extremely important games.

So the way I see it is this: SGA had a period of 13 games in the middle of the playoffs where I’d say he played up to his normal standards, even if the actual box score production did dip a bit even in that time period. However, he played below his normal level in the first round. His first-round performance didn’t matter much because his team won easily anyways, but those performances are still on the resume. He also performed a bit below his normal standards in the first four games of the Denver series, though I’d still say he was pretty good overall in those games. Finally, he was disappointing in the last two games of the Finals. Therefore, the overall picture is that he had a definite playoff dip, though he was still good in absolute terms and he still led his team to the title.

[eminence]

One of these years we won't have any non-vote posts in the voting thread, I'm a believer.

You're crazy, but I like the optimism.

[Doctor MJ]

Quoting my post from the Voting thread so everybody knows the situation:

Hey folks, I've tallied the votes we have, and you can see them in this spreadsheet:

RealGM NBA All-Season Award Voting '24-25

But I'm going to extend this for a day, because of something weird that happened with Most Improved Player.

By my tallies, only 2 of us voted for MIP, and the two ballots were mirrors of each other resulting in a 3-way tie between Mobley, Cunningham & Zubac.

If no one else votes, I think I'm going to avoid naming a winner for the award, so please, can we get anyone else to vote and break the tie?

Speaking a bit more broadly: For the NBA awards I've never not named winners before, but when we started the WNBA awards last year there was an award (EOY) only I voted in, and so I didn't name a winner there. That's my general rule that I've never officially announced: If it's just my vote, it's not the official RealGM award.

In theory I'm fine with 2, but there are times where 2 people don't reach a consensus and this is one of those times. One thing to name a tie between two guys, but a 3-way tie with a 3-man ballot because only 2 vote? Nah, that's weird to me.

So please, help us out here!

One other thing:

There were some votes I wasn't able to count because the voter didn't complete the entire ballot. So remember:

For your POY vote to count, you have to have a 5-man ballot.
For your other votes to count, you have to have a 3-man ballot.

The reason is that if we're in a competitive race, as in between two guys, and they split the #1 & #2 votes, but one voter doesn't post a #2 vote, then his #1 vote will effectively count for more than other people's.

So check your ballots - there were a couple of you - and make changes in the next day if you're going to make them.

I'll be announcing the awards tomorrow with or without an official MIP winner.

[AEnigma]

Quoting my post from the Voting thread so everybody knows the situation:

If no one else votes, I think I'm going to avoid naming a winner for the award, so please, can we get anyone else to vote and break the tie?

Speaking a bit more broadly: For the NBA awards I've never not named winners before, but when we started the WNBA awards last year there was an award (EOY) only I voted in, and so I didn't name a winner there. That's my general rule that I've never officially announced: If it's just my vote, it's not the official RealGM award.

In theory I'm fine with 2, but there are times where 2 people don't reach a consensus and this is one of those times. One thing to name a tie between two guys, but a 3-way tie with a 3-man ballot because only 2 vote? Nah, that's weird to me.

So please, help us out here!l

I'll be announcing the awards tomorrow with or without an official MIP winner.

Edited my voting post to include MIP. I truly dislike how arbitrary this award feels every year, but at least in this instance I know what approach rings truer to me in terms of “most improved”.

[Doctor MJ]

Quoting my post from the Voting thread so everybody knows the situation:

If no one else votes, I think I'm going to avoid naming a winner for the award, so please, can we get anyone else to vote and break the tie?

Speaking a bit more broadly: For the NBA awards I've never not named winners before, but when we started the WNBA awards last year there was an award (EOY) only I voted in, and so I didn't name a winner there. That's my general rule that I've never officially announced: If it's just my vote, it's not the official RealGM award.

In theory I'm fine with 2, but there are times where 2 people don't reach a consensus and this is one of those times. One thing to name a tie between two guys, but a 3-way tie with a 3-man ballot because only 2 vote? Nah, that's weird to me.

So please, help us out here!l

I'll be announcing the awards tomorrow with or without an official MIP winner.

Edited my voting post to include MIP. I truly dislike how arbitrary this award feels every year, but at least in this instance I know what approach rings truer to me in terms of “most improved”.

Thank you AEnigma! With that I'm still going to wait until tomorrow, but MIP will get an official winner(s).

Re: MIP, so arbitrary. Well you've got a point, but I still see value in it to look back and see how people were thinking about particular guys as they rose up.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

Yay Shai lets go!!!!

[Verticality]

Glad Haliburton and Pascal were recognized.