Clyde Frazier wrote:MO12msu wrote:Clyde Frazier wrote:I think you're really overstating this here. People are talking about the possibility of lebron moving to #1 if he has a great finals and they upset the warriors. Not some defacto "whoever wins the finals will be #1". I also still see plenty of paul > harden supporters. Is where players get eliminated influencing the results? Sure, but why wouldn't it if this is an "all season" award?
Because if WHERE the player gets eliminated is influencing the result more than HOW the player played(regular and postseason) then I don't think we're actually trying to find the player who played the best for all of this season. I know people interpret player of the year differently, but I still feel as if the essence of the discussion should be focused on how the players actually played.
Strictly for me, if everyone is playing really really similar in the playoffs to how they played throughout the larger sample size of the regular season, then I'll feel pretty confident keeping my rankings very similar from the end of the regular season.
I'm also not sure that if it was anyone other than Lebron having the season & playoffs he's had and making it through the East, that people would be so open to propelling that player to #1 for the season. But that's besides the point.
I agree with you that how the player played is very important. I'd like to think most of us are above the "oh [insert player here] didn't get to the conf finals, why should we even bother giving him credit for what he did up to that point?" I also think some context is needed beyond just looking at their individual performance at face value. I don't see myself ranking lebron ahead of curry, but I do think the playoff run he's had has moved him up somewhere in that top 3 range as opposed to 4/5. A
re people really ready to look at his 49% TS in the playoffs and just say "bleh, lebron doing his best iverson impression"?
I hope not. My problem with James isn't that he hasn't been good, my problem is has the other POY candidates performed worse?
James was typically 4th or 5th around these parts, some had him at #3 - close to no one other than a few Cav homers probably had him at #1 and #2. (seriously, no offense, just observation to cav fans)
Is him shooting below 50 TS%....
negligible when he is being compared to the best players in the world? Did Chris Paul step his game up int he PS? Did James Harden finally show up? Did Anthony Davis show that his impact matches his statline? I would say yes for all 3. All of the other POY candidates except Westbrook (who didn't make the PS) showed up for the playoffs - unlike in previous years where a few POY candidates would often have questionable playoff performances that would knock themselves out of contention.
The other great players including Curry have all done what they've done over the RS (very large sample size, with many of them not only out performing James in the RS, but playing significantly more games), and they also played big time in the PS - James got further in the playoffs than everyone but Curry, but that does not mean he played better than them. It's debatable how much James has really stepped up his game in the PS - he is taking it way more seriously than he is during the RS and is generally impacting his team more, but all the other players did the same thing for their teams while having gigantic scoring advantages over James.
I think it is even borderline ridiculous that someone could think James might be better than Curry this year - I mean I know there is some basketball left to be played, but I feel like Curry should be almost a lock to go over James considering how the season has gone up to this point. Obviously if the Cavs win we need to see how James did it, but at this point it almost like people are finding reasons to give James POY.
Coincidentally, James is also the only POY candidate - heck, the only top ten player in general who is even in the East. His competition
is relevant. He can't control who he faces, but we can assess the difficulty of his challenges.
I mean if we go back 10 pages or so, we'll see people putting Blake Griffin in the top 5 - why not? He had an underrated RS, and he was downright dominant in the PS. Now that he has lost, when was the last time he's been mentioned as a top 5 candidate? I have a hard time not seeing winning bias playing a big role in the perceptions of the current players. I just don't see how James can be placed above Curry and Paul - and I also think Davis has been better, but I get the argument against him (that his impact does not match his statline, which is pretty unfair given that he is clearly a huge impact player).
Did you think the Cavaliers would beat the Bulls and Hawks after Love and Irving got injured? Because nobody seemed to think that and only after the Cavs made these teams look bad were they suddenly talked about like they are complete trash. Their combined RS SRS was about the same as Rockets + Grizzlies.
Absolutely, and I got a ton of flack for saying that the Cavs would beat the Bulls. The Bulls looked shaky the entire season. I don't know how anyone thought the Hawks would beat the Cavs after the way they played Washington.
There is a lot of strawman arguments about people who thought the Hawks might be contenders (like myself). Just because someone said the Hawks were a great team prior to the playoffs taking off, doesn't mean that their opinion of that team can't change during the PS. It is not a conspiracy against the Cavs.
The Hawks struggled to beat the NETS in 6 games, I mean the NETS. The Wizards best player, who is probably the 2nd best player in the East broke his hand and the Hawks won in 6 games with multiple games coming down to the last possession.
Now, like your post suggest - we also have more fact via hindsight, that these guys got swept by a Cavs team that did not have Irving or Love (so really, if James was even prime Michael Jordan, if the team he was playing was a real contender, they would have taken at least one game considering what James was playing with, obviously them being swept has a lot to do with the Hawks not being a great team). What other proof do we need to see that the guys were not very good in the first place?
The Hawks were pretty healthy for the first 2 rounds, and when Korver got sidelined they were already losing with HCA. Why pretend that the Hawks were a great team still, it just doesn't make sense. Call a spade a spade, it's a cap in James feather that he is able to beat a solid team (and that's really all the Hawks can be called at this point), but it isn't David vs Goliath, I don't get how the Cavs beating the Hawks is a greater feat than the Clippers upsetting the Spurs or Rockets upsetting the Clippers while being down 3-1.
