2013-14 Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[CBA]

Durant, Lebron, Love, Paul, Harden, Curry, Griffin, George, Lowry were on my list before the postseason. I don't put too much weight in the small sample sizes of the playoffs.

1. Lebron - Despite facing wholly inferior competition up to the Finals, his play was so consistently great that I have to nudge him to #1, where I had Durant before the postseason. Though it was only 40 games played between them in the playoffs, I didn't feel there was that much separation between them in the RS and never felt Durant was the superior player despite having the superior season.

2. Durant

3. Love

4. Paul - I'm still not sure if he or Durant is the better player, but I docked him for missing a quarter of the season, again. He also got injured, again, in the playoffs but bounced back vs OKC, 23 and 12 with a ridiculous 129 ORTG and is honestly a level above these others as a player.

5. Harden - Had this between Griffin, Curry and Harden, but really just the latter two as I just don't believe Griffin is as good as them. The two had very similar seasons, both operating effectively as the engines of their teams' offenses. The team result (4th ranked vs 12th) served as the tiebreaker.

HM: Curry

[ShaqAttack3234]

Despite having Durant number 1 after the regular season, I think I'll lean towards Lebron. I don't think Lebron's playoff run was as exceptional as his efficiency suggests, partially due to easy competition in the East, but he still played well and would say he had a pretty good, not great finals series and I don't put that loss on him. I don't necessarily put OKC's loss on Durant either, and though I thought his performances vs Memphis and San Antonio were pretty underwhelming, I did continually point out how OKC desperately needed a 3rd scorer or more offense outside of Durant and Westbrook, and the role player's support in some games was downright awful. Plus, I think as much of their problems had to do with a poorly run, stagant offense with no real movement that was easy to counter. As I was saying in the threads for the WCF games, once you denied Durant, OKC would have nothing going with a lot of clock wasted and they'd usually end up needing a bailout shot by Durant or Westbrook. More than anything, they were just exposed by a much better team similar to the way Miami was.

The one thing I'll say about Durant vs Lebron is that Lebron really turned on his defense in the Eastern Conference playoffs and in general, stepped up midseason after a very lazy start to the season at the end, while Durant's man defense is often fine, but he seemed to be lost without the ball for the entire playoffs. That might be why I'm leaning towards Lebron over Durant, and when it was all said and done, Lebron still felt like the best player more than Durant. Though given Durant's incredible regular season, particularly the stretch where he carried OKC for such a long time without Westbrook, I'm not 100% set.

I'd normally list CP3 as the 3rd best player, but he missed 20 games and really didn't do anything exceptional with a team that was pretty loaded so I'm not sure he qualifies. Westbrook was very impressive in the playoffs when I actually thought he outplayed Durant, but he missed 36 games in the regular season, and that has to hurt his ranking. I'm going to have to consider Steph Curry pretty high. He's as dangerous of a shooter as I've seen and he creates so much for the Warriors, plus, his incredible on/off numbers make him difficult to ignore on a 51 win team. I'm also going to have to consider two players who missed the playoffs. First, Melo, who played about as well as he ever has from an all around standpoint. He did a respectable job battling bigger players defensively, and as a scorer, he's behind probably only Duranta and Lebron, especially with his volume 3 point shooting these past 2 years, plus he was great on the boards. His cast was just terrible due to a ton of injuries and just a poorly built team, but Melo still made the Knicks offense comfortably above average, and slightly better than the Warriors for example. I'll also have to consider Kevin Love who Minnesota depended a ton on to get a 40-42 record as Love improved as a passer and facilitator and improved as far as getting his shot off, both his jump hooks, drives and stepping back for 3. He's still not a great defender, but Minnesota wasn't worse defensively when he was on the court and Minnesota still managed a top 9 offense and a top 12 defense with a margin of victory that was +2.7 despite the sub-.500 record, and this was with Love's 2nd leading scorer Martin missing 14 games and his 3rd leading scorer Pekovic missing 28 games.

There's also Dwight who made a solid impact defensively and with his rebounds, plus was playing quite well offensively after his post game returned to the form he showed in Orlando from about January on. Not sure he's top 5, but worth mentioning, more so than Harden, imo. Of course, Aldridge, Griffin and Dirk deserve consideration, but I probably won't put any in my top 5. Griffin was great in the stretch without CP3, but I still wouldn't say he's a better player than Love or Melo for example.

[ceiling raiser]

I ended up going:

LeBron
KD
LMA
Dwight
Curry

I was trying to justify Paul George, but I couldn't. I do think he's perhaps the best perimeter defender in the league and shows flashes as a scorer, but I couldn't

Ended up leaving both Clippers players out. Wasn't a case of them not doing enough per se, just more so me being more impressed with the five guys I selected.

[PaulieWal]

I ended up going:

LeBron
KD
LMA
Dwight
Curry

I was trying to justify Paul George, but I couldn't. I do think he's perhaps the best perimeter defender in the league and shows flashes as a scorer, but I couldn't

Ended up leaving both Clippers players out. Wasn't a case of them not doing enough per se, just more so me being more impressed with the five guys I selected.

I was thinking of putting Dwight at my 5 but picked Curry over him. Can you please explain LMA at 3?

[ceiling raiser]

I ended up going:

LeBron
KD
LMA
Dwight
Curry

I was trying to justify Paul George, but I couldn't. I do think he's perhaps the best perimeter defender in the league and shows flashes as a scorer, but I couldn't

Ended up leaving both Clippers players out. Wasn't a case of them not doing enough per se, just more so me being more impressed with the five guys I selected.

I was thinking of putting Dwight at my 5 but picked Curry over him. Can you please explain LMA at 3?

Sure.

He came out favorably in DRAPM

http://www.gotbuckets.com/statistics/rapm/2014-rapm/

He worked well together with Lopez. Improved team rebounding on both ends too. The defense/rebounding improvements were a huge part of his selection.

Stotts is running an interesting offense there, which I've heard compared to Pinholster's pinwheel. A bunch of the plays they're running put him in a great position to succeed, and make great use of Lillard, who is maybe the perfect player to play off of Aldridge with his near-unlimited range.

Lastly, of course, is his shooting on long 2s. He had career highs in terms of both % of his FG's and FG% from that distance, and I feel like he singlehandedly won several games for Portland in that Houston series by hitting consistently from that range.

So yeah, I think greater commitment defending/rebounding, as well as being put in a good situation to succeed within Portland's offense, made him a legitimate candidate.

[PaulieWal]

I ended up going:

LeBron
KD
LMA
Dwight
Curry

I was trying to justify Paul George, but I couldn't. I do think he's perhaps the best perimeter defender in the league and shows flashes as a scorer, but I couldn't

Ended up leaving both Clippers players out. Wasn't a case of them not doing enough per se, just more so me being more impressed with the five guys I selected.

I was thinking of putting Dwight at my 5 but picked Curry over him. Can you please explain LMA at 3?

Sure.

He came out favorably in DRAPM

http://www.gotbuckets.com/statistics/rapm/2014-rapm/

He worked well together with Lopez. Improved team rebounding on both ends too. The defense/rebounding improvements were a huge part of his selection.

Stotts is running an interesting offense there, which I've heard compared to Pinholster's pinwheel. A bunch of the plays they're running put him in a great position to succeed, and make great use of Lillard, who is maybe the perfect player to play off of Aldridge with his near-unlimited range.

Lastly, of course, is his shooting on long 2s. He had career highs in terms of both % of his FG's and FG% from that distance, and I feel like he singlehandedly won several games for Portland in that Houston series by hitting consistently from that range.

So yeah, I think greater commitment defending/rebounding, as well as being put in a good situation to succeed within Portland's offense, made him a legitimate candidate.

Thanks, I appreciate the detailed response and I agree with it. I am tempted to put Dwight at 5 over Curry, I will reexamine my vote once more before Friday night.

[ceiling raiser]

I think I overreacted to Aldridge a bit, in retrospect. Nothing to do with this year so far, but I think single year DRAPM might be a bit noisy (even with a prior), so I probably shouldn't have valued it as much in comparison. Maybe something like (3*year_n+2*year_[n-1]+1*year_[n-2])/6 would help remedy this. Also much higher on PG defense now. SSB suggested (and I think he noted that mystic felt the same) that CP3's low turnovers could have exaggerated the offense/defense split, so it's perhaps preferable to look at total RAPM rather than treating the splits as gospel.

Higher on Dirk and Love as well. I'd go with:

1) LeBron
2) Durant
3) CP3
4) Curry

pretty confidently. I'm still not comfortable with Griffin in my top 5, I'll need to watch more tape. I might keep Dwight in my top 5 (had him 4th on my ballot), but Love/Dirk could knock him off perhaps. They are all kind of close, and fortunately I didn't impact the voting.