Andri wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:falcolombardi wrote:
Denver fans/writers have for the most part been the most ardous haters of shai since last season. In social media being a sports writer who writes about denver goes hand in hand to leading the anti shai campaigns and i dont think that is a coincidence
A similar logic is happening with his fans being worried that shai could pass him in awards (2 mvp/2fmvp/2 rings) this year
Understandable pushback, I'll clarify what I mean:
Every new upcoming challenger faces push back from the previous guy with the proverbial title belt and his fans, but given that the title belt guy is kinda definitionally going to be one of the top two vote getters, and the new challenger is supposed to get the other spot, the title belt guy can't be the reason why the new challenger can't seem to get in the top 2 on a poll like this, right?
So folks who wonder about why Shai lags behind compared to what he seems to warrant as this new challenger who now already has an MVP & Finals MVP, are thus essentially wondering why other guys are getting more love than Shai.
Shai is in 4th in this poll behind Jokic, Wemby & Luka. Jokic is the title belt guy, meanwhile Wemby is probably the GOAT prospect and given his injury the poll represents the excitement that started the season rather than the general orientation of discussion.
But Luka has remained that guy getting at least comparable buzz to Shai these last 3 years here despite the fact that Shai's been clearly the stronger MVP candidate based on how NBA MVP voters actually vote. So what's going on? I'd say it represents a certain kind of fan investment when a young prospect blows the collective mind early in his career - which Luka did with all of us. Luka's 2nd year ('19-20) absolutely made Luka THE exciting next guy to likely take the title belt from Giannis.
When that didn't happen, but Luka was still amazing with big numbers as a matter of course and scary-as-hell playoff performances, it seemed to leave the most invested fans in an awkward place where they wanted Luka to claim that crown so bad that they were constantly arguing that he deserved the crown RIGHT NOW, or at least THIS NEXT SEASON.
But we're still not quite there, and while there's no denying he's played like an MVP candidate in his career, the fact remains he's never been the kind of top tier contender that warrants the amount of conversation (greater than Shai) he gets.
Very long post to reflect on you not liking Luka showed in your last sentence.
Has he never been the kind of top tier contender? Well, maybe you missed 2 seasons ago when he reached the finals against the odds, while leading in points, assists and rebounds, at 24 years old. Before that, he carried a very crappy team to the western conference finals at 22 yo.
Again, people like are moving goalposts depending on whom you support. Sometimes the context matters a lot, sometimes it seems it should not matter...
I guess LeBron running away to Miami to be able to win rings, or Jordan waiting until his 28 for the Bulls to finally assemble a good enough team, or Shaq signing with the Lakers, or Hakeem delaying his titles run until Mike's first retirement, and so and so, didn't teach anything to many people.
Oh my goodness, you think that's a long post? On the short side for me.
Re: "you not liking Luka showed in your last sentence." For context, my last sentence was:
"But we're still not quite there, and while there's no denying he's played like an MVP candidate in his career, the fact remains he's never been the kind of top tier contender that warrants the amount of conversation (greater than Shai) he gets."
What is it about this sentence that makes you think it could only be caused by the emotion of a hater?
Re: never been top tier (MVP) contender...made the finals 2 years ago! This is a thread about MVP which is a regular season award.
Let me put it like this: Typically the MVP debate is a 2-man thing. The talking heads are debating between those two guys, and any of them chiming in for a 3rd guy is doing so recognizing that the guy he's mentioning can't win. We then go into the post-season awaiting the voting results knowing that only 2 guys can win.
Luka's never been one of those two guys. Period.
Some might want to debate about my 2 man threshold, but the thing is, the people here arguing for Luka don't think he should have been only 3rd. They say flat out he should have won MVP.
Now, I'm not trying to say that people don't get to have iconoclastic opinions on this stuff - they absolutely do.
But on a meta level, there's the question of why Luka specifically has such passionate advocacy on her in MVP threads year after year when he doesn't get that support from the actual voters.
Now, some will say the reason is because the voters are just wrong, and they get to believe that, but doesn't really explain why it is the voters don't seem to "get" Luka's candidacy like they "should".
I'd say that those supporting Luka would generally say that the voters over-index on team W-L, which is another way of saying they penalize Luka for having a bad supporting cast.
For those of us who've been at this a very long time and are familiar with the analytics, we tend to look at impact-related stats. While there's no way to completely separate the player's raw goodness from the interactive effects that drive impact, what we do know is that if someone is having sufficient on-off signals, they can overcome that disadvantage. The classic example there was Kevin Garnett. The problem for Luka there is that all that data has favored Jokic & Shai over him the last few years.
What's left after that?
Well, as noted, Luka supporters love to bring up the playoffs, and I think that's great move for many threads... but why do they bring it up in a regular season MVP conversation? Pretty clearly because it tells a narrative they can fit in with their beliefs better than just looking at regular season data. The strangeness then is about why they're so insisted on Luka's regular season MVP candidacy when they can't focus just on his regular season play.
And there I'd say the answer is that it's not really about who happens to be the most valuable player in this regular season, but the status they associated with the MVP award that they really want Luka to be anointed with, because they are posting with their fan heart on their sleeve.
Of course all major player's have emotionally driven fans and I don't want to talk as if having emotions here is some kind of a sin.
But particularly potent fandoms are noteworthy, and I'd say that the Luka fandom has been arguably the most significant to emerge in the 2020s. That might be going to far because of Jokic, but on a certain level the Jokic fandom is kinda boring. How could a guy be Top 2 in MVP voting 5 years in a row (before this one) while winning it 3 times and leading his team to a title not have a fandom like this?
The Luka fandom is so interesting because he has that level of passionate loyalty without any of that, while his draftmate doesn't have that fandom despite being an MVP and Finals MVP winner. THAT is interesting.
And that's what I was speaking to above.
One last thing: When you mention LeBron/Jordan/Shaq/Hakeem, you're clearly implying that I'm writing Luka's future success off because of what he hasn't yet done.
I want to be clear that I'm always trying NOT to do that generally, and I've been explicit about this for years about Luka. I generally avoid making actual predictions, both because of what I know I don't know, and because I don't want to get too focused on binary results. I try to focus on process.
So I don't know what Luka's future holds. It's always possible that a player takes a leap because of this skill or that focus in the context to come, and Luka's specifically someone we've all been looking forward to seeing that proverbial final form based on leaps just like that. Should we reach the 2026 off-season with the consensus that Luka has taken the title belt as the best player in the world, this won't be some shocking thing only the zealots foresaw, but something we've all been anticipating since 2020. It's just that that duration of anticipation tends to lead to a dissipation of interest, and that's not what we're seeing with the Luka conversation. And that, is interesting.
