2010-11 POY Voting Thread - Congrats Dirk Nowitzki!

[Doctor MJ]

Please cast your votes here. Rank your top 5 picks, and I will tally up the the points.

I intend to tally up the votes Sunday night.

Below is a tentative list of voters based on participation in the Discussion thread as the playoffs progressed. If you do not see your name on the list, and are interested in voting PM me. Be aware though I don't expect to add anyone else in. Unless I missed your name accidentally, or you're someone whose reputation I know very, very well, you're out of luck.

alucryts
An Unbiased Fan
CellarDoor
colts18
DocHoops
Don Draper
Dr Mufasa
drza
DumbyTheWizard
ElGee
fallacy
fatal9
Gongxi
GreenHat
JordansBulls
KB8MVP
lukekarts
mopper8
MrHidden
mysticbb
NO-KG-AI
Optimism Prime
Rick45
ronnymac2
Sedale Threatt
semi-sentient
Sinant
slick_watts
sp6r=underrated
supfoo
Tim_Hardawayy
TMACFORMVP
Vinsanity420

[JordansBulls]

With Dirk's performance in the playoffs and finals and upsetting teams that were the prohibitive favorites and being the only allstar on his team, I can't see how he isn't #1 right now.

Top 5 as of now.

1. Dirk
2. Wade
3. Lebron
4. Dwight
5. Rose

[Don Draper]

1. Dirk
2. LeBron
3. Howard
4. Wade
5. Rose

I think the top 4 are locked in. I considered giving the 5 spot to Durant or Kobe, but Rose did win the MVP and his team offensively for an entire season despite his play in the playoffs.

[Optimism Prime]

Doc, am I excluded? I thought what we had was special!

[Mean_Streets]

Name is not on the list, but I was participating in the project when we went threw the 70's & 60's & 1980.

1. Dirk
2. LeBron James
3. Dwight Howard (I find it amazing what he did considering what a horrible team he had.)
4. Dwyane Wade
5. Kevin Durant

HM: D-Rose.

[Doctor MJ]

:( Doc, am I excluded? I thought what we had was special!

Ah, yes we did talk about this. You're name should've been on the list, adding you.

[Optimism Prime]

1. Dirk Nowitzki
2. Dwight Howard
3. Lebron James
4. Dwyane Wade
5. Derrick Rose

HM: Durant, Paul

[Doctor MJ]

Name is not on the list, but I was participating in the project when we went threw the 70's & 60's & 1980.

1. Dirk
2. LeBron James
3. Dwight Howard (I find it amazing what he did considering what a horrible team he had.)
4. Dwyane Wade
5. Kevin Durant

HM: D-Rose.

For Mean_Streets, and for everyone to hear,

I'm going to have to think over RPOY people who didn't participate in the discussion thread. Half the purpose of these projects is to generate conversation. I made a thread on this and said in the first post that you needed to participate there and/or contact me privately if you want to have a vote.

Anyone who wants to make their plea, please PM me rather than posting here.

[ElGee]

1. LeBron James
2. Dirk Nowitzki
3. Dwyane Wade
4. Dwight Howard
5. Chris Paul

Tricky ballot for me. Frankly, this is a tentative No. 1 for James. His skills may be at their best, and the defense IS at its best, but his Finals do scale back his season a bit. That, coupled with some growing pains all year, and this isn't like 09 and 10 with great separation from the pack. But the body of work and performances until the Finals are too much to overlook -- he and Wade did *massive* heavy lifting this year, and to my surprise, came within a whisker of a title.

I've been torn on Wade and Dirk throughout the playoffs. I do think Dirk was better this year than ever on offense (slight upgrade from last year). I'm not sure he was better than 06 Dirk though (rebounding and defense). I want to elevate Wade over Dirk for his Finals performance, but I'm struggling with how to handle his series against Chicago, and he gets some of the same growing pain injuries as LBJ from the RS.

It's close though, because Howard's impact on the game isn't far off. Howard is arguably the best defender in the league, fits in everywhere, and, as I said in the discussion thread, has become somewhat of a Shaq Lite on offense. He has a post game and no one can really handle him. I look at raw box numbers less and less these days, but I just noticed DH finished at 23 per on just under 60% TS (27 and 68% v Atlanta). Team's offense fell off far more than his D when Howard when out this year. I'd argue that right now, he's better than peak Patrick Ewing. Probably the closest 2-4 vote for me, as

I don't see much to differentiate them at all. Based on best player, I'd say Wade. Based on analytical impact, I'd say Howard. Based on gut/impressiveness, Dirk. I don't see much of a difference though.

The fifth spot was also tricky and came down to Derrick Rose or Chris Paul (a notch above Durant, Kobe and even Manu). This is a philosophical issue since Paul was a different player since he took that knee brace off. Then again, he wasn't really that bad with the brace -- not top 5, but it's not like he was terrible. It's somewhat similar to the Duncan 06 season (in which I think I had T 6th). Rose gets some of the rookie treatment to me, in that this was first time at the rodeo as a superstar and I think he wore down/wasn't ready. Some of that is team load, so I'm barely holding that against him, but I expect a much better postseason performance next year regardless of team circumstances. In that sense, I believe Paul gives me a better shot at a title this year, even if the team finishes with fewer RS wins because of BracePaul.

[mopper8]

My reasoning is roughly similar to ElGee's and I think my top 4 are the same. I've been divided on how to order Lebron/Wade/Dirk/Howard for awhile now, and the Finals made it that much trickier. Still, on overall body of work:

1. Lebron
2. Dirk
3. Wade
4. Howard
5. Rose

Based on the same criteria...I think Paul is probably the better player at the end of the day, but not for the balance of the season. Rose had a better overall body of work IMO.

If you caught me yesterday (or tomorrow) instead that easily could've been Dirk, Wade, or Howard at the top.

[Doctor MJ]

Interesting. I was wondering how you'd rank LeBron & Wade mopper. Care to expound a little more?

[Dr Positivity]

1. Dirk Nowitzki - Gets as much regular season credit as #2 and #3, won as many games as the Heat in the regular season on a team that would survive without him much less. Then destroyed the playoffs and was as consistently big in 4th quarters as anyone in recent memory, being the driving force behind key comebacks. All together, an easy #1 for me.

2. Dwyane Wade - Elite regular season as usual, then destroyed the Celtics, was weak against the Bulls, but almost stole the Finals for the Heat with his domination the first 4 games. No way I can put Lebron over him with what happened in the Finals, despite Lebron's performance in the ECF. Finals matters more.

3. Lebron James - My #1 after the regular season and frankly after 3 rounds even with Dirk's play. His Finals play was just embarrasing. My best guess on what happened to him is he lost confidence shooting, which combined with Dallas playing zone and Stevenson/Kidd guarding him - basically daring him to shoot over them until they had to adjust - made a stew of perimeter hot potato whenever he was given an open shot. But the fact is, he made it to the Finals from great play in Rounds 2 and 3, over #4 in particular.

4. Derrick Rose - Regular season MVP was deserved in my opinion cause he was the only thing that offense had and his league best energy level carried over to the rest of the team. Bad shooting in the playoffs was one part a flawed team and one part his mistakes (the 3s in particular)

5. Dwight Howard - Felt like he was less consistent effort wise this year and it has to hurt when your team's ORTG drops because they decide to stop guarding you as much in favor stopping your teammates. Still, he carried a brutal team to 50 Ws+ and through a mid season turnover.

HM: Kevin Durant. Second straight year he doesn't make my ballot, I don't like his lack of ability on set plays and isolations right now, nor do I like his inability to get in Westbrook's face and say WTF, this is my team. Thunder did make the WCF and he played well most of the playoffs though.

[mopper8]

Interesting. I was wondering how you'd rank LeBron & Wade mopper. Care to expound a little more?

Apologies if this is a little rambling...

I was one of the few people who saw very little separation between the two during the regular season, so you'd think the playoffs would make me lean more towards Wade. I actually often found myself going back-and-forth on it a lot on this. Lebron obviously had the ball in his hands more and as a result flat-out produced more, even minutes-adjusted, and played more minutes overall and per-game, which is a big deal. At the same time, I felt like this season re-affirmed my belief that Wade has a better feel for the game, how to pick his spots, change speeds, etc.

My impression is that Wade is able to more effective in short bursts than Lebron can be on a consistent basis. For Lebron to reach Wade's ceiling of offensive impact, he needs to have his J going, whereas Wade can basically get there just by trying harder. And when he gets to that peak energy level and has his J going? He's better than Lebron can be IMO.

But how valuable is that if he can only do that for short bursts? Obviously, as we saw in the Finals, when the finish line is close, he can just do it seemingly all game, but throughout the regular season there's no way he can keep that energy level up, and is able to "pick his spots" like that in part because of Lebron's ability to play long minutes at consistent energy levels.

I'm pretty sure Wade is better at the game of basketball, and I texted my friend during game 6 (right after he blocked that Chandler layup) that Lebron might be the best player on the planet, but if I needed to absolutely win one game, give me Wade. He's a huge Lebron fan and he wrote back that he agreed. I'm not sure what that means.

Wade might be better at the game, but he's not as big, as strong, as resistant to injury, or as versatile defensively as Lebron, which means he's not necessarily more valuable, if that makes sense. Maybe for some people then by definition he is not "better" but that's more semantics.

Wade started the year somewhat injured, which was a big part of Miami sputtering to a 9-8 start. He played 3 fewer games and ~200 fewer minutes than Lebron for the balance of the regular season. His Chicago series was better than Lebron's Finals, if for no other reason than he managed to make big plays at the end of games while Lebron failed to do that same, but it was still pretty bad.

My dilemma: if it seems like Miami only really picked it up defensively when Wade did, is that a sign that Wade was a leader for the Heat? That his energy was "infectious"? Or was it a sign that the Heat's defense really took off if and only if both Wade and Lebron played at a high level, and Lebron was always at that level, so it just seemed like Wade was the catalyst because the conditions were met when Wade played hard and not met when he didn't? How do you parse that out? And doesn't he lose points then for not always being at that level?

So, I guess, I see them as roughly equal, and the recency of the Finals and the fact that it was not just the most recent games but also, well, the Finals, makes me want to rank Wade above Lebron. But overall body of work? It's hard to argue with the guy who scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, dished out more assists, played more games and more minutes, and played defensively at a more consistent level.

I will say this: I felt like all season long Lebron was more resistant to coaching than Wade. He seemed more reluctant to let go of control of the offense, more reluctant to start doing things like setting screens, etc, and I think that slowed the development of Miami's offense. He also seemed more to prone to breaking off plays after one or two triggers rather than running it through, especially pre-March.

I'll also add that its pretty obvious to me that Wade has a far superior understanding of how to attack a zone compared to Lebron. Even when Lebron moved the ball it didn't seem to me he was passing to move the zone, and he certainly didn't seem to understand the driving angles or anything like that.

The thing is, all 4 of them are so close. Now I want to put Wade ahead of Lebron, even though its pretty undeniable that Lebron did more (in the rawest sense) for the team, lol.

edit: So, in short, Wade's peaks were higher, but his valleys lower, and he was more up and down whereas Lebron was more steady. Since the peaks and valleys were as a much product of effort at anything else, the guy with the higher peaks is more valuable for a game or a series, but I'm not sure he's more valuable over the course of a season. Right now I'm leaning towards the guy who's more consistent, even if IMO he has a lower bball IQ.

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks mop!

[mopper8]

Thanks mop!

Haha no problem, check the edits.

[RocketPower23]

Dirk Nowitzki
Dwight Howard
LeBron James
Dwyane Wade
Derrick Rose

HM: Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Zach Randolph, Brian Scalabrine

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks mop!

Haha no problem, check the edits.

Makes sense.

I'll be honest, right now I'm leaning Wade over LeBron.

It's absolutely true that Wade benefited from being able to lean on LeBron's stamina. On the other hand, leaning on someone else to conserve energy in a situation where your team is never really close to being eliminated, is not the same as having trouble bringing it when your team desperately needs you.

There's also the matter that I felt that the winner of the Boston-Miami series would win the title, and in that series Wade was phenomenal. So it's not simply that Wade put up big numbers when Dallas did some tactical thing that worked out for them.

I also think about the intangibles. I always felt Wade was the social hub of the team, and I think that even more now.

[Sinant]

1. Dirk Nowitzki - A monster this season. Whether it be the W-L record in the regular season while he was away, or his performances in the 4th quarter he continued to prove day in and day out that his team not only needed him, but knew they could depend on him. Absolutely impressive.
2. LeBron James - The best player in the world had an awful Finals. His performance continues to confuse me and I expect it will continue to confuse me for quite a while. Still, he had another terrific regular season and for three rounds he was everything I expected him to be. I can't slide him lower than #2.
3. Dwyane Wade - Reminded us all how insane a player he can be when the lights are at their brightest. He may well end up being one of the best Finals performers ever when it's all said and done.
4. Dwight Howard - What can be said, a shark in a fish bowl. He was dominant defensively once again, and his offense improved. He should be higher, but c'est la vie.
5. Derrick Rose - Barely edges out Paul and Durant. The RS MVP earned it by leaving everything he had on the floor every night. He had his problems in the conference finals, but that doesn't negate his body of work throughout.

[Gongxi]

1. LeBron James- Still the best player in the NBA, and that's pretty much the logic behind my vote, so...

2. Dwight Howard- Dominant player, and were he to have better teammates, the narrative of this postseason could've easily been the rebirth of the legitimate "Big Man" just as Shaq was retiring. But his teammates weren't good enough, so we got the LeBron-is-awesome-oh-wait-he's-a-choker and the Dirk-is-a-choker-oh-wait-he's-awesome narratives.

3. Dirk Nowitzki- A frontrunner for the MVP before he got hurt this season, was close to 1 and 2, but aforementioned narratives aside, didn't eclipse them.

4. Dwyane Wade- Seemed on many nights to be holding something back. One of the greatest players in the game holding something back is still a great player, but not top 3, apparently.

5. Kevin Durant- Clearly behind the top 4. Slightly ahead of Rose and Kobe.

[drza]

I've gone back and forth and back and forth on this. LeBron was #1 easily 2 weeks ago. Dirk was in my top-5, maybe even my top-3, but he wasn't near #1. Then, the Finals happened. And I had to ask myself how much to put on them. Did I really think that Dirk had played better this year than LeBron?

But then, I remembered. This isn't about who is better. It's about who is more valuable. As I understand it, the RPoY vote is supposed to be a season-long MVP vote, done after everything was settled. And in that vein, it doesn't matter if LeBron is the better player. Dirk was more valuable this year. He was ultra valuable to his team all year, as all of the +/- stats confirmed, and then he did his thing leading his team to a title through rough waters. He earned it.

After that is rougher. I can't drop LeBron further than 2nd. Howard was my 2nd 2 weeks ago, and Wade didn't do enough to jump over him, so that moves him to 3rd.

Which leaves me with Wade vs Paul to round out my top-5. I've seen folks point out that Paul wasn't fully himself in the knee brace this year, and I agree. He has played better. But the thing is, we aren't judging him vs himself. We're judging him vs this year's competition. And even with his injuries, I think he was more impressive through the regular season than Wade was. He essentially matched him in box score production (Wade edged him in PER, Paul beat him more convincingly in win shares and wins produced), but was much more vital to his team's outcomes this year than Wade was (Paul murdered him in APM). This matches both my eye test and my intuition. Then, in the postseason, Wade was excellent against the Celtics, faded against the Bulls, and was strong through 4 Finals games before tailing off. Paul was ridiculous against the Lakers. But here's the thing, I can only punish Paul so much for his team not being strong enough to get to the big stage. He did everything he could in both the regular and postseason, and was individually at least as good as Wade while pulling a heavier load. I'm leaning Paul at 4. Making my list...

1) Dirk
2) LeBron
3) Howard
4) Chris Paul
5) Wade

HM: Rose, Durant, KG, Ginobili, Nash