ball_takes23 wrote:f4p wrote:Wolfgang630 wrote:
Shaping up to be one of the greatest seasons ever from the top 5 players in a season.
I do think the incredibly easy scoring of the game now, especially the massive leap in scoring this season from what was already ridiculously easy scoring, is probably helping the top 5 look even crazier. Thing like PER and BPM have already trended up significantly the last decade and now I think it's turbocharged. Like now that defense basically doesn't exist there's no real way to keep giannis from a 35/15 game and jokic is taking his ridiculous touch and now getting such good looks that it seems impossible for him to miss. Essentially it's just too easy to put up numbers so the guys with the ball all the time are looking even better than normal.
Having said that, jokic is at 39 PER, 0.467 WS48 and 20.8 BPM, all so record shattering that the league environment hardly matters. At this point I would say there's basically no way he doesn't get the record in all 3. There's no believable way to think he can drop off enough the rest of the season to.bring those numbers down below the existing records.
Jokic probably comes down 5 points just from this latest minnesota game. It only takes a couple of average games to bring an 80% TS down to 70%. Last season Jokic had a much wider gap when facing top 10 defenses vs bottom 10 defenses than Shai did, I would expect over a larger sample that Joker/Shai advanced stats will start to converge.
Yep, he has been stopped before and this game against the Wolves showed a lot of his weaknesses.
I watched this game and Randle attacked him on offense, Edwards also got layups there even if he was a trashcan this game but more on that later. Jokic is a traffic cone on defense, I don't care how smart he positions himself he is too slow and too non-vertical to be a good defender. Against teams with elite driving players he will be a negative, every time, until he gets in better shape. I honestly think Randle played almost as well as Jokic this game for a long period of time, Jokic is a better playmaker, but Randle was much better on defense than Jokic.
Randle 26 pts 9-17 fg, 1-5 3pt, 7-7 ft, 8 ast/2 to, 6 reb, 2 stl -4 in 38 min.
Jokic 27 pts 8-15 fg, 3-6 3pt, 8-8 ft, 12 reb, 11 ast/6 to, 2 stl, 1 blk +3 in 37 min (Aaron Gordon was a +33 for comparison because he is an elite defender unlike Jokic).
Jokic looked very human, missed some open threes, when the Wolves defenders pressured him he lost a lot of balls when pressured and had some bad passes. 27 pts on 72.9 ts %, 12 reb, 11 ast with bad defense and 6 turnovers. Is he an MVP level player? Absolutely. Is the MVP race over? **** no, this is more in line with how Jokic performs against better defense, he is too passive in this game and he did not playmake as efficiently with so many turnovers. Shai was better in his game last night, so Shai stocks move up and Jokic is not a demigod as expected by people that look at games and don't masturbate to box score stats.
TO BE FAIR TO JOKIC! And I want to always be objective, he created a lot of good looks for his team on three pointers and cuts that they missed. His vision and playmaking is still fantastic, but he is susceptible to turnovers against active defenses and he is too passive at times.
Murray is also the biggest idiot in the world, he is so selfish and a bad shot does not exist for Murray. He was 7-20 or something at one point in the 3rd I think and he just ruins the offensive flow that they had playing through Jokic early in the 1st period. The guy has periods where he is terrible for the teams offensive gameflow, and everyone would hate playing with him. Stats look good with 12 ast/3 to but that's because of periods where he actually plays smart like in the 4th or in the early 1st and also because Jokic makes him look better by finishing some plays for him.
He needs to let more of the offense be run through Jokic, he plays like he is Michael Jordan with 40 + % usage or more today. He is very slow, he wasn't even close to getting past Mike Conley in a drive one on one, and he finishes pretty inconsistently at the rim due to his subpar athleticism. Just a very bad player for offensive flow, he is like the total opposite of Jokic when he goes into his shoot everything mode for no reason.
So I will give Jokic a bit of a pass because Murray kind of ruins the offensive flow that Jokic can create.
At the same time Aaron Gordon is +33 in 36 min, 23 pts, 8-15, 4-6 3pt, 3-4 ft, 10 reb, 1 ast/1 to, 2 stl, 2 blk and he plays ELITE defense. So underrated and he is the Nuggets second best player, so for people giving Jokic credit for everything, you're just wrong. Gordon is so important for the Nuggets and one of the most underrated if not the most underrated player in the league. After this game he is probably in the 99th percentile in lowering the field goal percentage of opponents, just incredible and we saw what he did in the last postseason, doing all the big plays when needed. Randle tried to do his bully ball on Gordon in the post, it wasn't even close, Gordon was stronger and Randle had to fade from a tougher spot and missed a jump shot.
If Edwards wasn't absolute trash this game, the Wolves win. 8-23 fg, 0-8 from three with tons of bad shots, and he looked really slow at times. I wonder if he is playing without being 100 % in the hamstrings, because at times he had some burst, and at times he looked slow and his drives were really sloppy. That's why I still think the Wolves can take the Nuggets in the postseason if Edwards is 100 %, but I am not sure, because he looked good sometimes, so idk. Edwards is a weird player.
Yeah the Nuggets lacked Braun and Johnson, but they have been trash this season anyways. I will say they are better shooters, likely, so if the Nuggets play through Jokic not Murray they will be there in the postseason.
The Wolves also should involve McDaniels more, 7-15 fg, 1-3 3pt, 0-0 ft, 2 stl, 2 blk and played great defense. A lot of the shots he took were forced shots/grenades at the end of the shotclock after poorly run offense, sometimes through **** play from Conley or Donte which has to be the worst point guard rotation for any contender. If he gets some offense run for him it could unlock a lot of the Wolves offense, he showed some playmaking stuff as well with 3 ast/0 to in low usage.
Donte -23 in 34 min, the guy is absolute garbage. 4-11 for 11 pts, 1-6 from three with terrible defense and he is in the bottom of defensive stats on nbarapm, they need to bench this guy. He is absolutely terrible, can't drive, can't playmake, can't shoot and cant' defend. Horrible player, washed watch activated 100 %. Nothing from him. I am also surprised by how little good decisions come from Conley, he isn't exactly CP3 out there with his decisionmaking. Wolves need a pg, and they need one badly.
In the second period, the Wolves forced back2back turnovers on Jokic, who only had 5 pts and 5 assists with 4 min left of the second period, and in the playoffs with a fresh Edwards you could see the Wolves going on a run against the Nuggets there. No chance for that today since he was 0-8 from three and totally off on the jump shot/shot selection, but they also had forced 6 turnovers on Jokic with 4.20 left in the 3rd period. That's why I am not sold on the Jokic hype train against better defensive teams, if he does that against a better 3pt shooting team like the Rockets you can get blown out fast. The Wolves are not that team with Edwards looking like Shaedon Sharpes long lost brother though.
So for the MVP Race I still have:
1 Jokic
2 Shai
But the gap is getting closer as Shai is playmaking better and shooting more efficiently, slowly but surely this season, and he is clearly a better defender than Jokic.
