All-Season Other Awards Discussion thread

[HeartBreakKid]

How are the points being distributed? How much does 2nd play and 3rd place votes get for these awards?

[ceiling raiser]

Struggling to put together my MIP ballot. How do you guys feel about Davis as a top 3 guy? Is rewarding a jump like his appropriate, or do you feel it makes less sense because it's natural development with age/time in the league?

[Doctor MJ]

My rough draft ballots for the other awards:

Offensive POY
1. Steph Curry - realistically the kitchen sink was thrown at the guy, and the scheme built around him still worked. He's done more this year to put his name next to the dictionary definition of "Offensive Anchor" than anyone else.

2. James Harden - no one lifted his team's offense more. He loses out because I simply have more confidence in building around Curry's offense than Harden's the way Houston is currently using him.

3. Chris Paul - 3rd on the list but still has an excellent case for winning the thing. The Clipper offense worked so well I feel like a bad person saying it, but I feel like he and Griffin still aren't fully realizing their potential together.

Defensive POY
1. Draymond Green - an easy choice for me after the playoffs are over. I questioned how he'd fit in against serious opposing threats of size. Turns out he that no matter the Warriors adapt, Green remains incredibly useful and that their big (Bogut) is the guy who fits in less well.

2. Khris Middleton - the "quiet Draymond" this year. Very much of the same breed of players who we didn't used to think of in this light. Middleton has yet to really prove it in the playoffs, but at this point I see no reason to leave him off this list considering what he did all year.

3. Rudy Gobert - The Jazz were 27th in defense for the first half of the year, and 2nd for the second half. Hard to imagine not giving him the mythical DPO-Half-Y, but how to factor in the first half? Well the reality is Gobert was helping the defense all year, and played more minutes than Kawhi. So tough as it is, he squeaks in the 3rd spot here.

ROY
1. Nerlens Noel - It was between he and Wiggins for me. Mirotic had a hell of a month or so, but for the most part he just had a much smaller role than these other guys did, and he's a lot older, which if I'm honest does matter to me here. Between the two putative budding superstars, who both showed improvement over the course of the year, the thing is that Noel can point to actual team effect more than Wiggins. In the second half of the year Noel's team did considerably better than Wiggins' did when they were each on the floor, and specifically it was happening because of defense...which is Noel's forte. Simply put, Noel seems more established as a defensive anchor than Wiggins does as an offensive one.

2. Andrew Wiggins - for reasons stated. Certainly the future looks bright for him.

3. Elfrid Payton - Probably seems like a real slap in the fact to Mirotic, but Payton had a lot asked of him all year and he did solid under that pressure.

MIP
1. Rudy Gobert - by a country mile. Going from a guy many (including me) couldn't pick out of a pile of other big man stiffs, to being the single scariest defender in the game, it's just huge. Incidentally, sometimes 2nd year players get DQed because they are seen as simply doing what everyone expected them to do. Gobert was not expected, and so I could use that as his loophole, but really he serves better as an example for why no one should get DQed. Had things bounced differently before the draft, he almost certainly goes much higher. That shouldn't have any effect on how we see it when a guy makes the leap.

2. Jimmy Butler - yeah, as has been pointed out by many, he's a worthy candidate here.

3. Hassan Whiteside - I penalize him in this category because he only played half the year, but still, extraordinary jump.

6MOY
1. Andre Iguodala
2. Tristan Thompson
3. Boris Diaw

I'll just address all 3 at once: To me it makes no sense to consider a 6th Man from a bad team here without addressing the necessary huge WTF involved. That being: The top 6th Men on great teams are fulfilling a role that the vast majority of semi-stars on crappy teams couldn't do, and should be seen as a higher echelon than those guys as a result. I think Iguodala was a clear cut case of this from the beginning of the year, and Thompson is now: These guys are a hell of a lot more noteworthy that ANY STARTER on the Celtics...so how exactly can the guy who can't start on the Celtics get the nod over them?

There is room to say "Well actually, he should be starting?", but short of that, I think people need to remember how unimportant it is to be "the first guy off the bench" on a team that isn't even worth turning the TV on for.

COY
1. Steve Kerr - okay, so I officially have a crush on Kerr. What a legendary entrance into the coaching ranks. You could write a book on how he evaluates his players, how he asks him to do things, how he assembles his coaching brain trust, and how he keeps an environment of effective brainstorming. Surely there was luck too, but there's just no reason to think that Kerr couldn't run really any kind of organization the way he's done things here.

2. Mike Budenholzer - Stock has fallen some as the Hawks came down to earth, but we still saw major improvements from this team on many fronts in making a very solid team out of no talents that are really that exciting.

3. Jason Kidd - A very impressive first year in Milwaukee. He definitely pushed the right buttons. I'm not really a "do more with less" holy grail-er though. I've seen plenty of times in the past where someone does something very impressive all things considered, but never actually takes that last step toward greatness. If and when Kidd does it, then he'll leapfrog others in these awards.

EOY
1. Bob Myers - Here's where I have to emphasize again: The EOY is a weird award for many reasons, but one is that one guy is the figure head for an Executive Team that can include the actual Owner. It's one thing to praise a guy like Kerr for choosing to add Gentry to his staff, but Myers is arguably only the 4th most powerful person in the room for the big Warrior decisions (owner, son, Jerry West), why should he get the award? There's just no other way to give awards for executives other than to treat each candidate's name like they are doing the same thing. And I personally don't really mind just saying, "The Warriors did the smartest stuff this year".

On that note, there's just no way around it: The Warriors could have kept Coach Jackson and traded for Love. Both moves would have made sense. They did neither, and both ended up being about as HUGE as huge can get. Sure there's some luck involved, but their reasoning made sense even though it cut against the grain, and to me that's the most impressive thing you can do as an executive team.

2. David Griffin - I've been railing against Griffin all year, but he still gets my #2 spot frankly because it was a really weak year for candidates. Griffin gets absolutely NO credit for LeBron, and very little for Love. But the Mozgov acquisition was absolutely crucial. One can - and I do - knock the move to a degree based on the fact that we all knew the Cavs needed a legit big, but that only puts Griffin behind an exec team like the Warriors. Fact is, Griffin did what needed to be done, and because of that the Cavs could well have won a title this year. That ain't nothing.

3. Danny Ainge - You can actually make a real case Ainge deserves this award. Dude just keeps making small deals that amount to stealing the jewels one sliver at a time. But to me those little things are on their own are not enough to put a guy above others who actually made BIG moves in a given year.

[Doctor MJ]

Struggling to put together my MIP ballot. How do you guys feel about Davis as a top 3 guy? Is rewarding a jump like his appropriate, or do you feel it makes less sense because it's natural development with age/time in the league?

I think Davis deserves consideration, but I think from objective perspectives, his leap is not as crazy as the guys who went from essentially nowhere to somewhere really great.

For a different perspective: I think in Kevin Durant's 3rd year he absolutely deserved MIP, but it's primarily because Durant was far less impressive as a 2nd year player than Davis was.

[Doctor MJ]

How are the points being distributed? How much does 2nd play and 3rd place votes get for these awards?

5 points for 1st
3 points for 2nd
1 point for 3rd

[CBA]

For Offensive PotY, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that James Harden and Russell Westbrook outpace Curry in ORPM; in ORAPM, Harden, Lebron and Korver in terms of legitimate candidates; OWS, Paul and Harden. I don't think Curry is the obvious #1 candidate people assume he is.

How do you allocate credit between Green/Bogut and Curry on those 4v3 plays? For me, it seems creating an opportunity for your big man to create a play is less valuable than creating a good shot for players who have zero playmaking ability (Barnes, Reddick, Jordan, Ariza, Jones, Howard, Morrow, Ibaka, etc). When CP3, Harden and Westbrook are doubled you are looking at much tougher plays - pocket passes to a cutter, skip passes to the corner - they have to make usually because they simply don't have the players that Curry did.

[HeartBreakKid]

My ballot is nearly done, just gotta finish executive of the year.

[Doctor MJ]

For Offensive PotY, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that James Harden and Russell Westbrook outpace Curry in ORPM; in ORAPM, Harden, Lebron and Korver in terms of legitimate candidates; OWS, Paul and Harden. I don't think Curry is the obvious #1 candidate people assume he is.

How do you allocate credit between Green/Bogut and Curry on those 4v3 plays? For me, it seems creating an opportunity for your big man to create a play is less valuable than creating a good shot for players who have zero playmaking ability (Barnes, Reddick, Jordan, Ariza, Jones, Howard, Morrow, Ibaka, etc). When CP3, Harden and Westbrook are doubled you are looking at much tougher plays - pocket passes to a cutter, skip passes to the corner - they have to make usually because they simply don't have the players that Curry did.

ftr, I think a serious debate for OPOY would be really good. I don't think it's by any means beyond debate that Curry is the guy.

My take is basically that among the guys in serious contention, Curry's the one who I feel most comfortable building my offense around based on what was done in this season. This is not to say that I'm getting too abstract here, it's just that while Harden is a great candidate for me, I'm not quite as sold on what he did if I'm really trying to win it all.

But I question whether that's fair to be honest.

[bondom34]

Yeah, my OPOY was Curry, but you could definintely make a case for either WB or Harden to me as well, I was torn but in the end just went w/ my gut which was Curry, I honestly could still be talked out of it, and took Harden over Westbrook due to games played.

[HeartBreakKid]

Food for thought, how can Curry be someone's POY but not be someone's OPOY? If Curry is not the best offensive player this year, then he wasn't the best basketball player.

[Doctor MJ]

Food for thought, how can Curry be someone's POY but not be someone's OPOY? If Curry is not the best offensive player this year, then he wasn't the best basketball player.

Not true. One could easily argue Harden was OPOY but enough worse on defense he wasn't POY.


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[lorak]

I still wonder how Curry can be POY, when he wasn't better defensively than CP and Paul was at least as good on offense as Steph (and IMO that's generous for Curry, because CP was better offensive player).

[Dr Spaceman]

I still wonder how Curry can be POY, when he wasn't better defensively than CP and Paul was at least as good on offense as Steph (and IMO that's generous for Curry, because CP was better offensive player).

Why do you feel Paul is better than Curry offensively?

[lorak]

I still wonder how Curry can be POY, when he wasn't better defensively than CP and Paul was at least as good on offense as Steph (and IMO that's generous for Curry, because CP was better offensive player).

Why do you feel Paul is better than Curry offensively?

Led Clippers to no 1 offense, team ortg with him on the floor was better than with Curry and all that with less balanced team, with almost no bench and basically three decent offensive players (and one of them missed 15 games).

[CBA]

Food for thought, how can Curry be someone's POY but not be someone's OPOY? If Curry is not the best offensive player this year, then he wasn't the best basketball player.

I'm still thinking about POY.

These choices I'll probably stick with.

Offensive Player of the Year
1) James Harden
He provided the most lift for a team laughably absent of good offensive players and what I considered to be mediocre coaching at best most of the year. He leads in ORPM, ORAPM and OWS (#2, actually) among all legitimate candidates and I haven't yet seen any good arguments as to why those numbers might not be entirely accurate.

2) Stephen Curry
I think everything has already been said here. The threat of his GOAT shooting and good ball handling ability makes him a terrifying threat as soon as he crosses half court. PNRs with him and Draymond Green should remain the most prolific go-to play over the next five years.

3) Chris Paul
He always has an argument here, always being at the head of the league's best offenses. He has the single best teammate, offensively, in Blake Griffin so he doesn't deserve all of the credit, but in a season which put him #1 in OWS and #4 in ORPM, he deserved this third spot.

HM: Westbrook. He just didn't play enough games next to the great candidates above.

Defensive Player of the Year
1) Draymond Green
His ability to guard multiple positions while playing at the big spots may have provided a bigger lift for Golden State than Curry's offensive skills. He was pretty much tied for #1 in DRPM with Bogut.

2) Kawhi Leonard
His impact may be the easiest to prove. The Spurs were only a great team when he was healthy and they looked ordinary otherwise.

3) Andrew Bogut
As long as he stays on the floor, he'll always be one of the greatest defenders who has played in the NBA (#1 in DRPM). Unfortunately, he's not on the floor as much as we would like.

Rookie of the Year
1) Nerlens Noel
Noel was a disaster offensively early on, but seeing as how he's just a rookie I'm willing to forgive him after the second half of the season which showed that he can be legitimately DPoTY-caliber, while being at least an acceptable offensive player.

2) Andrew Wiggins
3) Nikola Mirotic

Most Improved Player
1) Rudy Gobert
I admit I don't really know how to decide this award, but Gobert seems like he ticks every box. No one knew he would be a good player at all and he made a huge leap into star-level. A large and unexpected leap into stardom earns him first honors.

2) Jimmy Butler
Butler seemed to simply pick up where he left off after a down season last year, but his ability to create his own shot was legitimately surprising. Chicago will regret not meeting his request for a contract extension.

3) Hassan Whiteside
Another truly surprising leap, though I'm definitely more wary of his sustainability than Gobert and Butler.

Sixth Men of the Year
1) Andre Iguodala
Weirdly becomes a good shooter out of nowhere in the playoffs, but whatever. His defense was outstanding as always and he proved to anyone unaware in the last two series that he is Golden State's best perimeter defender. Huge in the Finals and deserved the award.

2) Tristan Thompson
Was very good during the regular season and like Iguodala raised his game in the playoffs with Kevin Love out.

3) Lou Williams

Coach of the Year
1) Steve Kerr
2) Mike Budenholzer
3) Jason Kidd

Executive of the Year
1) David Griffin
A lot of a GM's job should be focused on looking steps ahead, past just one year, so this is a weird award. I'll follow what I believe is the spirit of the award and center just on the accomplishments of 2014/15. In this case, Griffin - well, Lebron - definitely did the most to improve his team. Bringing in Love, Mozgov, and the Knicks while losing Waiters.

2) John Hammond
Fired Larry Drew and hired Jason Kidd. A 26 win improvement over 13/14.

3) Daryl Morey
He had quite the adventurous offseason which brought the ridicule of seemingly the entire basketball community. Then, of course, Parsons proved to be overpaid, Asik underperformed and Lin was Lin. His best move was bringing in Ariza, who proved to be the perfect fit, at the half the price of Parsons. Terry, Brewer, Prigioni and Smith were welcome additions to a team ravaged by injuries.

[GSP]

Offensive POY
1. Steph
2. Cp3
3. Harden

I think Steph and Cp3 is a tossup, but ill go with Steph for superior portability and offball game. Even tho i think Cp3 is much better onball, best midrange shooter this season, pickandroll and generally is more reliable in the halfcourt. Steph knows when to pick his shots and increase his volume when his team needs it. Thats been a knock on Cp3 pretty much his whole career and i dont think he will ever get it. Honorable mentions to Westbrook and Lebron who i think are arguably better than Harden on offense, but he has a larger body of work, he just proved me wrong in the playoffs, had some alltime bad stinkers, but some alltime great performances too. That near 50pt first quarter he led against golden state was INSANE

Defensive POY
1. Draymond
2. Tony
3. Kawhi

I think Tonys the best defender in the league but i had to dock him for the minutes/missed time. Draymond isnt far behind plus his minutes/role he took this season was massive. Biggest reason they can go small and still keep alot of their defensive principle. Tony is the defensive anchor of the Grizz, Marc is very important for that he does for their defense but his impact (and weaknesses and protecting paint) isnt on Tonys level. I think its clear now. The way he pretty much singlehandedly destroyed the Warriors perimeter offense in games 2 and 3 were insane and he was hurt all series too. Its a shame but i wouldve loved to a see a healthy Tony and Conley in that series. Its very tough to leave Gobert out, hes my early favorite for DPOY next season. Honorable mention to Bogut as well

ROY
1. Noel
2. Niko
3. Wiggins

MIP

1. Gobert-very impressive year i think after his showing against Spain he was on alot of ppls radars but he legit looks like an alltime great defensive anchor in the making. Who saw THAT coming even with his already earthshattering physical gifts?

2. Jimmy
3. Whiteside

6MOY
1. Iggy- honestly this is one of the best 6th man seasons of alltime. I dont think its being given enough credit even after the finals MVP. He is still very much in the discussion with the best perimeter defenders in basketball, his ballhandling, passing and transition game were HUGE. Especially when Warriors were struggling against teams to pick up their tempo/pace he was almost always the sparkplug. I wouldnt put it on the level of 05 Manu, 86 Walton, best 6M Mchale seasons but i think he might be better than anyone else (prolly a couple others i cant think off ATM)
2. Tristan
3. Lou

COY
1. Brad Stevens-This might look like a bit of a homer pick but hes the best coach in the league. For this criteria i guess team success has to count a bit against him but his ingame adjustments are 2nd to none. Just look at the team we have i have no clue how we had the 18th ranked offense. Look at that roster and IT only played 20 games. We execute extremely well our offense isnt talent at all. I mean Kerr and Bud have numerous offensive players better than our best discounting IT who played 20 games (Steph, Klay, Lee, Iggy, Teague, Korver, Millsap, Horford), and numerous defensive players too (Draymond, Bogut, Iggy, Millsap, Carroll, Thabo). Im more confident giving the large bulk of the credit of the teams success to Stevens too, on both ends of the court. We cant ignore Ron Adams is one of the best defensive minds of this era, and Gentry tho to a lesser extent on offense. Its also VERY telling that we played Cleveland (a healthy one at that) MUCH closer than Atlanta did. Yeah Atlanta missed Korver late in the series but they were already getting abused and that was with Love out and Kyrie missing games. Both got swept but we put up a better fight and against a healthy Cleveland which might well be the best team in basketball

2. Steve Kerr-he is legit but i dont know how legit yet. No Gentry next year so will see. What i like about Kerr he has no problems giving credit to his defensive coaches for adjustments like Ron Adams or that assistant coach that told them to go small in the finals. He is great at judgment calls, he helped built a great culture and offense. I want to see more of him next season

3. Bud-very disappointing postseason but he is great at building a culture/system, just couldnt adjust at all in the playoffs, Brooklyn who should never be in the playoffs gave them alot of problems. When Korver was defended as tight as he was in the playoffs they looked lost on offense. Now he deserves credit for using Korver the way he did all season but in the 2nd half and the playoffs Korvers impact considerably fell so it could just be him regressing/teams gameplanning better.

I want to give Blatt an honorable mention. He stepped it up in the playoffs while he was underwhelming early on. He may very well be the 2nd best defensive coach behind Thibs. I think Brad outcoached him, but he got the better of Thibs and Bud and went toe to toe with Kerr in the finals. As for Jason Kidd i dont know yet. I think hes a top 10 coach for sure, their offense is still bad and im inclined to believe the defensive coordinator the Bucks have deserves more credit than him for their D.

EOY
1. Myers
2. Ainge
3. Morey

[Doctor MJ]

I still wonder how Curry can be POY, when he wasn't better defensively than CP and Paul was at least as good on offense as Steph (and IMO that's generous for Curry, because CP was better offensive player).

I figured some folks would still be here. That's fine, I can see your case. I do wonder though the tone of this. When we started having these conversations, I think people made quite clear that they just saw things differently from you.

I like Paul a lot, but I think that so much of what makes the Warriors work as they do has to do with Curry having an impact that makes it easy for others to work well with him. He's not the control freak that Paul is. Is that enough to say definitively that Curry deserves to be ranked higher? No, but Curry led a better team, while leading the team in a different way, and had better regression numbers than Paul while doing it, so it's not like it's out of the blue to think this might be the case.

[lorak]

but Curry led a better team

But he had better supporting cast. Without Curry Warriors were better (by much) than Clippers without CP, so "led better team" is weak argument here.

and had better regression numbers than Paul while doing it

Offensively RAPM says it's a wash. Curry gets overall advantage thanks to defense, what shows how much RAPM depends on team numbers, because Steph wasn't better defensive player than CP in 2015, yet his DRAPM is significantly better - at least in some RAPM models, because now we have at least three (Evan's, J.E.'s w/o box and ESPN) and that (different results) should be big red flag to use RAPM in a way some people do here. RAPM generally has value for perditions (and better with box score component), not for explanation of the past, so using it in discussion like that kind of misses the point of what RAPM is.

[Texas Chuck]

He had quite the adventurous offseason which brought the ridicule of seemingly the entire basketball community. Then, of course, Parsons proved to be overpaid, Asik underperformed and Lin was Lin. His best move was bringing in Ariza, who proved to be the perfect fit, at the half the price of Parsons. Terry, Brewer, Prigioni and Smith were welcome additions to a team ravaged by injuries.

I'm glad you mentioned him. I was one of the guys who was pretty hard on him after the way last off-season turned out for them and I did not expect Houston to land the #2 seed even with a healthy Howard. I hate to give him credit for not re-signing Parsons when he could have paid him ~$1M and then let him walk this summer. That was still a mistake he didn't need to make.

But once he let him hit FA, not matching him was smart, Ariza was a smart signing. The JET trade worked out far better than expected. Smith was a smart pick-up. Brewer was a smart pick-up. He got more value in dealing Asik than he paid to dump Lin. Prigs was a smart cheap add, etc.... He really had a good year and I have to eat crow on how heavily I criticized him. For a guy chasing the home run, once he missed he sure made a lot of smart small moves.

[Doctor MJ]

but Curry led a better team

But he had better supporting cast. Without Curry Warriors were better (by much) than Clippers without CP, so "led better team" is weak argument here.

and had better regression numbers than Paul while doing it

Offensively RAPM says it's a wash. Curry gets overall advantage thanks to defense, what shows how much RAPM depends on team numbers, because Steph wasn't better defensive player than CP in 2015, yet his DRAPM is significantly better - at least in some RAPM models, because now we have at least three (Evan's, J.E.'s w/o box and ESPN) and that (different results) should be big red flag to use RAPM in a way some people do here. RAPM generally has value for perditions (and better with box score component), not for explanation of the past, so using it in discussion like that kind of misses the point of what RAPM is.

But you can't just interpret the data like that.

"I'll trust it for Offense and then completely throw it away on Defense". It's the same damn metric and the lines between offense and defense cannot be separated out. A player's offensive capabilities can and will influence how the team plays defense and vice versa.

If you're using RAPM at all, Curry has the edge there on that front. There is NO valid interpretation of that data that makes it look like it's knocking Curry relative to Paul. Fine for that not to determine your final decision, but it should be obvious to you why those who do value the stat might conclude that the guy with the better RAPM on the better team that also won the MVP rates higher than the guy you prefer.