'17-'18 POY discussion

[Missing Rings]

Butler -- his basic stats of 21.7 pts, 5.4 reb, and 5.0 ast are well below other candidates, and he trails other candidates in BBRef advanced stats like ORtg, win shares, box plus/minus, and VORP. Much of his candidacy is based on turning Minnesota around and the improvement the Wolves have shown over last season, and he does deserve credit for that, but part of the reason that change is so dramatic is because they underperformed drastically last season (many people had them picked to be in the 4-8 range in the West last season). He's also not the only change from last season; Taj Gibson also deserves credit for injecting defense and toughness, and Jamal Crawford has added much-needed bench scoring.

Quick retort: Once Jimmy Butler put his foot on the gas pedal and said "This is my team", his numbers have been phenomenal. 24.2/5.2/5.3 with only 1.7 turnovers and 2.1 steals is nothing to scoff at. Considering he has a free throw rate of 46% in those games and is making his 3's at a decent clip (36%), he is an elite offensive and defensive presence. His on/off of +16.7 is comparable to any player in the NBA, and his on-court rating of +8.9 is impressive given the fact it is 1) Highest of the starters by a comfortable margin and 2) One of only 6 players on the team to have a positive net rating.

There is no point in using statistics like ORtg, Win Shares, and VORP because all of these are based upon box-score statistics which do not capture much of what Jimmy Butler is bringing to the table. They do a piss-poor job at capturing defense, and they do not capture what you do on offense without the ball (or with the ball if what you do doesn't show up on the stat sheet).

The things that ultimately stick out with Jimmy Butler are leadership and defense. Butler has been a better defensive player than every other player listed on most top 5 lists so far, and it isn't close.

I don't think you are making this mistake, but many people are looking at box-scores, determining their "best" players, and then watching them play. What should be happening is we are watching them play and utilizing the box-score as support to what we have seen, not the other way around.

Those stats do take team defensive ratings and offensive ratings into some account, as well as some just general team metrics. They're poor judges but they capture a bit more than you're giving credit for, all be it I'd agree Butler is likely underrated by them.

They do, but they are primarily box-score derived.

For example:
Westbrook DWS: 3.0
Westbrook DBPM: 3.2

Butler DWS: 1.5
Butler DBPM: 0.3

[E-Balla]

Under ~65 I would have a hard time calling anyone POY unless the competition was bad. But comparing Curry to say Butler, I'm rather OK with a big minute gap. I'm less ok with a huge game gap.

Effectively they're the same thing. Curry plays 33 mpg to Butler's 37. The reason for bringing up the minutes gap is to say "Curry got hurt in short PT" which I think does matter.

I'll dock a guy who misses 15-20 RS games, but it's not disqualifying. This is POY including playoffs, and if Curry misses 20 RS games but plays at the level he's demonstrated in 62 RS games and has a stellar PS, I'd have no problem voting him for POY.

No one said its disqualifying but when discussing who's POY so far missing 30% of games is a major negative.

Giannis, Butler, and Westbrook deserve credit if they carry their teams as iron men in the RS, but it's not as if each doesn't have his own flaws in the RS resume.

Giannis -- the Bucks have underperformed as a team, currently 6th in the East and only four games over .500. For being the point forward of the future, he has low assist stats -- 4.7 APG and 23.7 AST%, nowhere near the top 20 in either category. His shooting percentages outside of three feet are abysmal -- 37.7 for 3-10 ft, 38.9 for 10-16 ft, 34.7 for 16-3pt, and 31.0 on threes.

.... Outside of the Bucks underperforming (which i would blame on Kidd because Giannis has been amazing) what out of all you said is a flaw in his case? This seems more like criticizing his play style and not level of play.

Butler -- his basic stats of 21.7 pts, 5.4 reb, and 5.0 ast are well below other candidates, and he trails other candidates in BBRef advanced stats like ORtg, win shares, box plus/minus, and VORP. Much of his candidacy is based on turning Minnesota around and the improvement the Wolves have shown over last season, and he does deserve credit for that, but part of the reason that change is so dramatic is because they underperformed drastically last season (many people had them picked to be in the 4-8 range in the West last season). He's also not the only change from last season; Taj Gibson also deserves credit for injecting defense and toughness, and Jamal Crawford has added much-needed bench scoring.

1. They didn't underperforming last season people just over hyped their young guys. Wiggins and Towns weren't that good.

2. Jamal Crawford is probably the worst player in the league over 20 mpg.

3. The team plays at a -7.7 level with Jimmy on the bench and a +8.9 level with him on the floor. They're 2-4 when he misses games losing by an average of 8.7 ppg.

4. His individual numbers are low because he wanted Wiggins and Towns to get involved. Once he said he was going to start scoring he immediately went from averaging 14 ppg before saying he was going to score to averaging 23 ppg. That's why the boxscore numbers don't matter to me and the impact does. Even when he was scoring 14 a game he had a +21 on/off and it was obvious he was stepping aside to let them run the offense while anchoring the D.

Westbrook -- the Thunder have been coming around, but they still don't look like the viable contenders in the West they were expected to be. Westbrook's brute force stats of points, rebounds, and assists are once again impressive, but his TS% of 51.9 is well below the league average of 55.6 and not even in the same area code as other candidates, most (all?) of whom are above 60 percent.

Westbrook has been a tale of 2 seasons so far. Still his team is 6th in ORTG and 4th in DRTG and they have a 114 ORTG when he's on the floor. Seems to me his bad efficiency isn't an issue when he's also elite at drawing in the defense and an elite passer. Also OKC is playing at a +7.8 level (2nd to Golden State) over the last 2 months and they're 22-8 since December (2nd only to Golden State). I don't know how you can say they don't look like viable contenders when they look like the best team in the league next to Golden State over the last 2 months in a season that's been 3.5 months so far.

Those guys do deserve credit for leading their teams, but I still have them in the bottom tier of candidates, below the top tier of Harden and Curry and a middle tier of LeBron, DeRozan, and Irving.

Harden's on court rating is a +9.3. Jimmy's is a +8.9. Harden plays with Chris Paul, Trevor Ariza, Ryan Anderson, Clint Capela, and the beat bench in the league (Eric Gordon, PJ Tucker, Luc Richard, Nene, Gerald Green). Jimmy plays with Towns, Teague, Gibson, Jones, and everyone else is somewhere between bad (Wiggins) and terrible (Crawford). Something's not adding up here if you put Harden top tier and not Jimmy. What can explain the small gap in performance when there's such a large gap in supporting casts if Jimmy isn't outplaying Harden?

Derozan has a +7.1 on court rating (which is ine of the lowest on the team). Kyrie has a +7.1 on court rating too. Westbrook has a +7.7. How are they a tier above him?

Lebron? This guy has a negative net rating, his team plays better when he's not on the floor, and outside of that 18-1 stretch Cleveland has been terrible. How is he over guys that are winning?

[E-Balla]

Y'know I'm a Harden fan, but actually the two guys I have atop my list are Steph Curry and Jimmy Butler.

I'll start of by noting that I have a kind of "but did it really hurt?" approach to considering injuries in POY discussions. So, Bill Walton, for example, I quite agree with him winning the MVP in '77-78 but he had no prayer when we did the Retro POY for that year. He missed a ton of time in the regular season but the team was so good when he was on the floor that it basically clinched the 1st seed in the West, so all's well that end's well. He was the most valuable player in the league when he played, and he was valuable enough to get his team to the #1 seed. Good enough for me. But of course come playoff time Walton's inability to play like he'd been doing meant that his team went nowhere during the most important season.

So right now, Curry leads the league in raw +/- despite his missed time. When a player is so clearly the most impactful player in the league, and missed time isn't keeping his team from being the toast of the league, and he still has experienced more raw "winning" than everyone else...why overthink it? MVP in a nutshell.

Jimmy Butler is the other guy who comes to mind. Butler's team has actually done about as well when he's on the floor as Harden, so that's no small thing. But really the thing that gives Butler a serious argument in my mind is the possibly culture-changing influence he's had on the Wolves this year.

I think injuries matter. Who cares if they've won without him Curry has won 29 games. There's been tons of people that have won more games and contributed more to wins in total. In 78 Bill Walton won 48 games. The runner up in MVP, George Gervin, won 52. Even in 58 games there's a legit argument Walton lead his team to more wins than anyone else in the league over the whole 82 games. That argument isn't there for Curry.

But broken down in finer detail, raw +/-, Curry's already done more "winning" the entire league despite the missed time.

I do understand your argument, but know that my perspective is one where I look for reasons to ignore blips so as to settle on the actual top players.

I get that I just didn't think the Walton example stood up the scrutiny since even in 58 games Walton won more games than anyone else outside of Gervin because his competition wasn't too great. Curry actually has great competition this year IMO so he can't skate by like that for me.

[dhsilv2]

Just for fun checked BBR's MVP probabilities. Harden had a massive lead last I looked a week or 2 ago and Lebron a clear 2nd. Now Harden relatively close to Curry (about 43 percent chance to 28). He's been scorching hot at this point. Not even sure where my top 5 is right now. Westbrook approaching it too. Lebron falling, Curry flying up. Butler's missed a couple games so not really sure where to go there.

Injuries this year are really making the choices difficult along with a lot of turnover on teams that lead to slow starts (or in the rockets case..the opposite?).

Agreed, Harden was a clear cut 1 for me but just looked and Curry's last 15 games:
31.5/6.5/5.3 on 55/51/87 shooting splits! (80.4%TS) and over 30% Usage

Think you're including missed games in there....the numbers for 15 played games are non the less absurd. And he's doing it in 33 minutes a game.

[Outside]

Butler -- his basic stats of 21.7 pts, 5.4 reb, and 5.0 ast are well below other candidates, and he trails other candidates in BBRef advanced stats like ORtg, win shares, box plus/minus, and VORP. Much of his candidacy is based on turning Minnesota around and the improvement the Wolves have shown over last season, and he does deserve credit for that, but part of the reason that change is so dramatic is because they underperformed drastically last season (many people had them picked to be in the 4-8 range in the West last season). He's also not the only change from last season; Taj Gibson also deserves credit for injecting defense and toughness, and Jamal Crawford has added much-needed bench scoring.

Quick retort: Once Jimmy Butler put his foot on the gas pedal and said "This is my team", his numbers have been phenomenal. 24.2/5.2/5.3 with only 1.7 turnovers and 2.1 steals is nothing to scoff at. Considering he has a free throw rate of 46% in those games and is making his 3's at a decent clip (36%), he is an elite offensive and defensive presence. His on/off of +16.7 is comparable to any player in the NBA, and his on-court rating of +8.9 is impressive given the fact it is 1) Highest of the starters by a comfortable margin and 2) One of only 6 players on the team to have a positive net rating.

There is no point in using statistics like ORtg, Win Shares, and VORP because all of these are based upon box-score statistics which do not capture much of what Jimmy Butler is bringing to the table. They do a piss-poor job at capturing defense, and they do not capture what you do on offense without the ball (or with the ball if what you do doesn't show up on the stat sheet).

The things that ultimately stick out with Jimmy Butler are leadership and defense. Butler has been a better defensive player than every other player listed on most top 5 lists so far, and it isn't close.

I don't think you are making this mistake, but many people are looking at box-scores, determining their "best" players, and then watching them play. What should be happening is we are watching them play and utilizing the box-score as support to what we have seen, not the other way around.

Those stats do take team defensive ratings and offensive ratings into some account, as well as some just general team metrics. They're poor judges but they capture a bit more than you're giving credit for, all be it I'd agree Butler is likely underrated by them.

I'm not saying Butler has a poor case; I was merely responding to this:

If he ends the season having only played 57 games how can you rate him over guys like Giannis, Jimmy, and Westbrook that had to carry their teams all year long?

I have no problem with anyone putting Butler in their top 5 or even top 3. I just don't think that one flaw in the resume for Curry when the rest of his resume is so strong means that he's automatically behind guys leading lesser teams who have their own resume weaknesses. If Curry continues to play at this level the rest of the RS, that would be an all-time great RS despite the missed games.

Curry has missed 15 games so far. E-Balla threw out 57 games played as a hypothetical, which would mean missing another 10 games, but he'd miss that many games only with another injury, not by Kerr resting him. He's been a reliably durable player the past five seasons, missing a total of 16 games, which is significantly better than Butler and Westbrook, both of whom have missed 54 games over that span. Yet the perception exists that Curry isn't durable while Butler and Westbrook are iron men, which feeds into the scenario that it's likely Curry will miss 10 more games while Butler and Westbrook miss few or none.

Harden has missed seven games and is the frontrunner, so for Curry, it's really about missing eight more games than Harden. Eight games doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

[Missing Rings]

Quick retort: Once Jimmy Butler put his foot on the gas pedal and said "This is my team", his numbers have been phenomenal. 24.2/5.2/5.3 with only 1.7 turnovers and 2.1 steals is nothing to scoff at. Considering he has a free throw rate of 46% in those games and is making his 3's at a decent clip (36%), he is an elite offensive and defensive presence. His on/off of +16.7 is comparable to any player in the NBA, and his on-court rating of +8.9 is impressive given the fact it is 1) Highest of the starters by a comfortable margin and 2) One of only 6 players on the team to have a positive net rating.

There is no point in using statistics like ORtg, Win Shares, and VORP because all of these are based upon box-score statistics which do not capture much of what Jimmy Butler is bringing to the table. They do a piss-poor job at capturing defense, and they do not capture what you do on offense without the ball (or with the ball if what you do doesn't show up on the stat sheet).

The things that ultimately stick out with Jimmy Butler are leadership and defense. Butler has been a better defensive player than every other player listed on most top 5 lists so far, and it isn't close.

I don't think you are making this mistake, but many people are looking at box-scores, determining their "best" players, and then watching them play. What should be happening is we are watching them play and utilizing the box-score as support to what we have seen, not the other way around.

Those stats do take team defensive ratings and offensive ratings into some account, as well as some just general team metrics. They're poor judges but they capture a bit more than you're giving credit for, all be it I'd agree Butler is likely underrated by them.

I'm not saying Butler has a poor case; I was merely responding to this:

If he ends the season having only played 57 games how can you rate him over guys like Giannis, Jimmy, and Westbrook that had to carry their teams all year long?

I have no problem with anyone putting Butler in their top 5 or even top 3. I just don't think that one flaw in the resume for Curry when the rest of his resume is so strong means that he's automatically behind guys leading lesser teams who have their own resume weaknesses. If Curry continues to play at this level the rest of the RS, that would be an all-time great RS despite the missed games.

Curry has missed 15 games so far. E-Balla threw out 57 games played as a hypothetical, which would mean missing another 10 games, but he'd miss that many games only with another injury, not by Kerr resting him. He's been a reliably durable player the past five seasons, missing a total of 16 games, which is significantly better than Butler and Westbrook, both of whom have missed 54 games over that span. Yet the perception exists that Curry isn't durable while Butler and Westbrook are iron men, which feeds into the scenario that it's likely Curry will miss 10 more games while Butler and Westbrook miss few or none.

Harden has missed seven games and is the frontrunner, so for Curry, it's really about missing eight more games than Harden. Eight games doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

I am certainly in your boat here for the regular season. If a player can get his team to the post-season, that is what matters.

However, missing games in the post-season is a massive hit. For example, I am not sure I would have Curry in the top 5 for 2016 given his time missed in that post-season, even with his amazing regular season.

[dhsilv2]

Those stats do take team defensive ratings and offensive ratings into some account, as well as some just general team metrics. They're poor judges but they capture a bit more than you're giving credit for, all be it I'd agree Butler is likely underrated by them.

I'm not saying Butler has a poor case; I was merely responding to this:

If he ends the season having only played 57 games how can you rate him over guys like Giannis, Jimmy, and Westbrook that had to carry their teams all year long?

I have no problem with anyone putting Butler in their top 5 or even top 3. I just don't think that one flaw in the resume for Curry when the rest of his resume is so strong means that he's automatically behind guys leading lesser teams who have their own resume weaknesses. If Curry continues to play at this level the rest of the RS, that would be an all-time great RS despite the missed games.

Curry has missed 15 games so far. E-Balla threw out 57 games played as a hypothetical, which would mean missing another 10 games, but he'd miss that many games only with another injury, not by Kerr resting him. He's been a reliably durable player the past five seasons, missing a total of 16 games, which is significantly better than Butler and Westbrook, both of whom have missed 54 games over that span. Yet the perception exists that Curry isn't durable while Butler and Westbrook are iron men, which feeds into the scenario that it's likely Curry will miss 10 more games while Butler and Westbrook miss few or none.

Harden has missed seven games and is the frontrunner, so for Curry, it's really about missing eight more games than Harden. Eight games doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

I am certainly in your boat here for the regular season. If a player can get his team to the post-season, that is what matters.

However, missing games in the post-season is a massive hit. For example, I am not sure I would have Curry in the top 5 for 2016 given his time missed in that post-season, even with his amazing regular season.

That's just absurd... I mean if you took lebron over him fine, but to drop him beyond that is ridiculous.

[E-Balla]

Quick retort: Once Jimmy Butler put his foot on the gas pedal and said "This is my team", his numbers have been phenomenal. 24.2/5.2/5.3 with only 1.7 turnovers and 2.1 steals is nothing to scoff at. Considering he has a free throw rate of 46% in those games and is making his 3's at a decent clip (36%), he is an elite offensive and defensive presence. His on/off of +16.7 is comparable to any player in the NBA, and his on-court rating of +8.9 is impressive given the fact it is 1) Highest of the starters by a comfortable margin and 2) One of only 6 players on the team to have a positive net rating.

There is no point in using statistics like ORtg, Win Shares, and VORP because all of these are based upon box-score statistics which do not capture much of what Jimmy Butler is bringing to the table. They do a piss-poor job at capturing defense, and they do not capture what you do on offense without the ball (or with the ball if what you do doesn't show up on the stat sheet).

The things that ultimately stick out with Jimmy Butler are leadership and defense. Butler has been a better defensive player than every other player listed on most top 5 lists so far, and it isn't close.

I don't think you are making this mistake, but many people are looking at box-scores, determining their "best" players, and then watching them play. What should be happening is we are watching them play and utilizing the box-score as support to what we have seen, not the other way around.

Those stats do take team defensive ratings and offensive ratings into some account, as well as some just general team metrics. They're poor judges but they capture a bit more than you're giving credit for, all be it I'd agree Butler is likely underrated by them.

I'm not saying Butler has a poor case; I was merely responding to this:

If he ends the season having only played 57 games how can you rate him over guys like Giannis, Jimmy, and Westbrook that had to carry their teams all year long?

I have no problem with anyone putting Butler in their top 5 or even top 3. I just don't think that one flaw in the resume for Curry when the rest of his resume is so strong means that he's automatically behind guys leading lesser teams who have their own resume weaknesses. If Curry continues to play at this level the rest of the RS, that would be an all-time great RS despite the missed games.

Curry has missed 15 games so far. E-Balla threw out 57 games played as a hypothetical, which would mean missing another 10 games, but he'd miss that many games only with another injury, not by Kerr resting him. He's been a reliably durable player the past five seasons, missing a total of 16 games, which is significantly better than Butler and Westbrook, both of whom have missed 54 games over that span. Yet the perception exists that Curry isn't durable while Butler and Westbrook are iron men, which feeds into the scenario that it's likely Curry will miss 10 more games while Butler and Westbrook miss few or none.

Harden has missed seven games and is the frontrunner, so for Curry, it's really about missing eight more games than Harden. Eight games doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

I just said 57 because that's how many he's on pace to play. I get why you're assuming he finishes out the season healthy though.

[Missing Rings]

That's just absurd... I mean if you took lebron over him fine, but to drop him beyond that is ridiculous.

I rank my players with championship odds. Missing what amounts to an entire series in the post-season is massive.

[Outside]

Effectively they're the same thing. Curry plays 33 mpg to Butler's 37. The reason for bringing up the minutes gap is to say "Curry got hurt in short PT" which I think does matter.

I'll dock a guy who misses 15-20 RS games, but it's not disqualifying. This is POY including playoffs, and if Curry misses 20 RS games but plays at the level he's demonstrated in 62 RS games and has a stellar PS, I'd have no problem voting him for POY.

No one said its disqualifying but when discussing who's POY so far missing 30% of games is a major negative.

"Disqualifying" was a poor word choice on my part.

One issue I have is that you're projecting Curry missing 30% of games so far to Curry missing 30% of games over the entire RS, which would only happen due to another injury. Why are you assuming another injury for Curry and no one else?

I do agree missing RS games is a negative, but relative to Harden, Curry has missed only eight more games. If that stays the same, the negative hit for Curry relative to Harden would exist but wouldn't be huge, at least for me. If both Harden and Curry maintain this level of performance throughout the rest of the season and the difference in games played remains eight, they'd be a toss-up heading into the PS.

Giannis, Butler, and Westbrook deserve credit if they carry their teams as iron men in the RS, but it's not as if each doesn't have his own flaws in the RS resume.

Giannis -- the Bucks have underperformed as a team, currently 6th in the East and only four games over .500. For being the point forward of the future, he has low assist stats -- 4.7 APG and 23.7 AST%, nowhere near the top 20 in either category. His shooting percentages outside of three feet are abysmal -- 37.7 for 3-10 ft, 38.9 for 10-16 ft, 34.7 for 16-3pt, and 31.0 on threes.

.... Outside of the Bucks underperforming (which i would blame on Kidd because Giannis has been amazing) what out of all you said is a flaw in his case? This seems more like criticizing his play style and not level of play.

I agree regarding Kidd, but you don't see having really bad shooting percentages outside of three feet from the basket as a flaw? Or such a low assist percentage for someone with a 31.5 usage rate? There are 14 players who have played at least 30 games and have a 30% or higher usage rate. Of those 14, Giannis ranks 11th in assist rate, behind even Lou Williams and Devin Booker:

http://bkref.com/tiny/UNnL0

Butler -- his basic stats of 21.7 pts, 5.4 reb, and 5.0 ast are well below other candidates, and he trails other candidates in BBRef advanced stats like ORtg, win shares, box plus/minus, and VORP. Much of his candidacy is based on turning Minnesota around and the improvement the Wolves have shown over last season, and he does deserve credit for that, but part of the reason that change is so dramatic is because they underperformed drastically last season (many people had them picked to be in the 4-8 range in the West last season). He's also not the only change from last season; Taj Gibson also deserves credit for injecting defense and toughness, and Jamal Crawford has added much-needed bench scoring.

1. They didn't underperforming last season people just over hyped their young guys. Wiggins and Towns weren't that good.

2. Jamal Crawford is probably the worst player in the league over 20 mpg.

3. The team plays at a -7.7 level with Jimmy on the bench and a +8.9 level with him on the floor. They're 2-4 when he misses games losing by an average of 8.7 ppg.

4. His individual numbers are low because he wanted Wiggins and Towns to get involved. Once he said he was going to start scoring he immediately went from averaging 14 ppg before saying he was going to score to averaging 23 ppg. That's why the boxscore numbers don't matter to me and the impact does. Even when he was scoring 14 a game he had a +21 on/off and it was obvious he was stepping aside to let them run the offense while anchoring the D.

It wasn't my objective to say that Butler doesn't have a case, because he surely does. Not to get into a detailed debate, but I'll respond to your comments.

Point 1: Wiggins is even worse statistically this year. Towns was 25.1 pts, 12.3 reb, 2.7 ast, and 1.3 blk on 61.8 TS% -- how is that not good? Yeah, I know they're playing better defense now, but Thibs is the defensive guru who was supposed to make that happen but didn't, therefore leading them to an underachieving season.

Point 2: I agree that Jamal Crawford is far from great, but "worst player in the league over 20 mpg" is hyperbole bordering on the extreme. First off, he plays 18.9 MPG. I'm not a fan of PER, but it serves a purpose as a blunt tool in this case:

http://bkref.com/tiny/p7nT7

Of players who play at least 18.8 MPG, there are 109 with a worse PER than Crawford. He's the leading scorer off the bench for Minnesota, and Thibs apparently thinks he's better than last season's leading bench scorer, Shabazz Muhammad, who has had his minutes cut in half.

Point 3: yep, Jimmy is good and is their most impactful player. I never claimed he wasn't.

Point 4: this seems to stray into narrative, and while I agree with part of it, it's putting an overly positive spin on things. Butler's non-numbers impact is a significant part of his resume, but he needs more than this to put him ahead of Curry (28.1 pts, 5.1 reb, 6.5 ast, 1.7 stl, 68.8 TS%), who has narrative of his own showing his impact to be huge.

Westbrook -- the Thunder have been coming around, but they still don't look like the viable contenders in the West they were expected to be. Westbrook's brute force stats of points, rebounds, and assists are once again impressive, but his TS% of 51.9 is well below the league average of 55.6 and not even in the same area code as other candidates, most (all?) of whom are above 60 percent.

Westbrook has been a tale of 2 seasons so far. Still his team is 6th in ORTG and 4th in DRTG and they have a 114 ORTG when he's on the floor. Seems to me his bad efficiency isn't an issue when he's also elite at drawing in the defense and an elite passer. Also OKC is playing at a +7.8 level (2nd to Golden State) over the last 2 months and they're 22-8 since December (2nd only to Golden State). I don't know how you can say they don't look like viable contenders when they look like the best team in the league next to Golden State over the last 2 months in a season that's been 3.5 months so far.

51.1 TS% isn't an issue?

Those guys do deserve credit for leading their teams, but I still have them in the bottom tier of candidates, below the top tier of Harden and Curry and a middle tier of LeBron, DeRozan, and Irving.

Harden's on court rating is a +9.3. Jimmy's is a +8.9. Harden plays with Chris Paul, Trevor Ariza, Ryan Anderson, Clint Capela, and the beat bench in the league (Eric Gordon, PJ Tucker, Luc Richard, Nene, Gerald Green). Jimmy plays with Towns, Teague, Gibson, Jones, and everyone else is somewhere between bad (Wiggins) and terrible (Crawford). Something's not adding up here if you put Harden top tier and not Jimmy. What can explain the small gap in performance when there's such a large gap in supporting casts if Jimmy isn't outplaying Harden?

Derozan has a +7.1 on court rating (which is ine of the lowest on the team). Kyrie has a +7.1 on court rating too. Westbrook has a +7.7. How are they a tier above him?

Lebron? This guy has a negative net rating, his team plays better when he's not on the floor, and outside of that 18-1 stretch Cleveland has been terrible. How is he over guys that are winning?

Those are points in Butler's favor. I'm not saying that Butler doesn't have points in his favor. A question -- do you think Butler has any flaws in his resume?

If you think Butler is ahead of Harden, we'll just have to disagree.

I almost added a note about LeBron trending down. I'm fine with moving him down to the bottom tier. The difference between the middle and bottom guys is very small for me. FWIW, I don't have Westbrook above Butler as you indicated above. For now, I've got Harden in the lead, Curry in second, and you can put everyone else in a pack behind them. It's all just preliminary positioning.

[eminence]

That's just absurd... I mean if you took lebron over him fine, but to drop him beyond that is ridiculous.

I rank my players with championship odds. Missing what amounts to an entire series in the post-season is massive.

Varies a lot between rounds (a 1st round miss isn't actually a huge deal for most championship worthy teams), but agreeing that missed playoff time often gets underrated.

[dhsilv2]

That's just absurd... I mean if you took lebron over him fine, but to drop him beyond that is ridiculous.

I rank my players with championship odds. Missing what amounts to an entire series in the post-season is massive.

Getting the 1 seed more than makes up for that.

[Doctor MJ]

I think injuries matter. Who cares if they've won without him Curry has won 29 games. There's been tons of people that have won more games and contributed more to wins in total. In 78 Bill Walton won 48 games. The runner up in MVP, George Gervin, won 52. Even in 58 games there's a legit argument Walton lead his team to more wins than anyone else in the league over the whole 82 games. That argument isn't there for Curry.

But broken down in finer detail, raw +/-, Curry's already done more "winning" the entire league despite the missed time.

I do understand your argument, but know that my perspective is one where I look for reasons to ignore blips so as to settle on the actual top players.

I get that I just didn't think the Walton example stood up the scrutiny since even in 58 games Walton won more games than anyone else outside of Gervin because his competition wasn't too great. Curry actually has great competition this year IMO so he can't skate by like that for me.

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion and I don't think it unreasonable to side against Curry, but the way you bring the conversation back to wins from points makes me feel like my point was not made clear, so I'll try again.

Whether by wins or raw +/-, Curry's team is leading the league all while Curry appears to have a more clear impact effect than anyone else in the league by a wide margin. And in fact I bring up the raw +/- specifically to deal with your riposte alluding to the fact that GS wouldn't have the best record in the league if his team couldn't win a game without him.

To elaborate: It is reasonable to counter a "but they still have the best record in the league, so who cares that he missed time" with "well they wouldn't have had the best record if not for the teammates thriving without him, so you're basically crediting him for stuff they did without him".

However, wins are a clumsy, coarse metric compared to raw +/-. Not saying there isn't a ton of luck in raw +/-, just saying that if the only reason you are siding with other players is that you think they've contributed more to winning than Curry, but Curry has them beat in raw +/- and his team doesn't actually need any more wins than they already have, then what threshold exactly are you waiting for Curry to surpass before you stop quibbling about the details and put the obviously most impactful player atop your list?

Of course if you're not convinced Curry merits being talked about in such glowing terms that's different, but if your issue really is the missed time, I think you need to ask yourself what your threshold actually is.

As for tough competition, honestly I don't see it. LeBron's team has done better when he's off the court, Giannis hasn't actually proven himself on an elite team level, and Harden's way behind Curry in raw +/- precisely because he doesn't impact the game to anywhere near the extent that Curry does.

I mean, I'm not necessarily saying those guys aren't "MVP worthy", but none of this translate to impact with the ease Curry seems to right now.

I think Butler is the guy I see a real argument for, but that argument is based on intangible stuff really. His team is barely on pace for 50 wins and literally no one thinks he's seriously in the conversation for best player in the world.

[Doctor MJ]

However, missing games in the post-season is a massive hit. For example, I am not sure I would have Curry in the top 5 for 2016 given his time missed in that post-season, even with his amazing regular season.

Honestly I think you need to look yourself in the mirror when you say something like that, and ask yourself why anyone would find your rankings meaningful if your criteria is that rigid.

You're talking here about a player who is conversation for GOAT regular season that year and who played in all the game in the playoffs against real teams, and in your ranking scheme you're going to treat what he did that year as less impressive than 5 guys who for the most part aren't going to have their season remembered 25 years from now (LeBron being the exception of course). I think you need to ask yourself why you'd even bother making that list. It doesn't represent who the best players were, it doesn't represent cumulative value for the season, it doesn't represent historical noteworthiness, and it had it's ordering completely thrown off by a player missing sometime early in the playoffs against tin cans.

Why is this list worth reading? Why is it worth making?

Now all of this is in the realm of philosophy, and when i say that I mean that there's not one right answer. Me personally, I try to put sanity checks in there. If a guy misses time, but that missed time doesn't seriously effect the overall story of the season, then we're just not going to care about that missed time years down the road, so why am I letting it have a big influence on how I judge that season?

It's also worth noting in soccer we get to actually see who the players and coaches vote for, and who the journalists vote for. The players and coaches tend to focus on prior reputation and big stats. The journalists tend to look to give credit to those key to team success that year. Which is right?

Well, objectively speaking we can see that the journalists approach tends to result in certain players spiking into apparent "best in world" level for a season and then falling back down, all the while convincing no one they actually are the best in the world. That's a weakness in my book, and frankly it's related to the one I"m warning about here.

But on the other hand, players & coaches have their own issues. The scale of their problem tends to relate to the state of statistics. If stat are primitive, then players & coaches tend miss the nuance they'd catch with better stats. If stats are advanced, then players and coaches tend to be unable to understand them, and they have issues again. But if the stats are plentiful and understandable, I'd say the players & coaches tend to do a better job than the journalists.

For me with my analytic tendency, I tend to guard against journalist-type "forest for the trees" issues and I'd argue that many on the PC board should have similar concerns about their analysis.

By contrast, a more typical fan is basically a caricature of players & coaches. That fan not only misses the nuance of analytics, but also misses the nuance of "being there". Players and coaches have insight of direct experience that still counts for a lot, and which cannot be easily aped by fans (show me a fan yelling about "the eye test" and 9 times out of 10 I'll show you a fan who doesn't even know how to watch the game rigorously). To them I'd say they need get stat literate in a hurry.

[E-Balla]

I'll dock a guy who misses 15-20 RS games, but it's not disqualifying. This is POY including playoffs, and if Curry misses 20 RS games but plays at the level he's demonstrated in 62 RS games and has a stellar PS, I'd have no problem voting him for POY.

No one said its disqualifying but when discussing who's POY so far missing 30% of games is a major negative.

"Disqualifying" was a poor word choice on my part.

One issue I have is that you're projecting Curry missing 30% of games so far to Curry missing 30% of games over the entire RS, which would only happen due to another injury. Why are you assuming another injury for Curry and no one else?

I'm projecting everyone stays as healthy as they've been so far period. This isn't just for Curry. That's why I mentioned percentage of games missed and percentage of minutes played and not total.

I do agree missing RS games is a negative, but relative to Harden, Curry has missed only eight more games. If that stays the same, the negative hit for Curry relative to Harden would exist but wouldn't be huge, at least for me. If both Harden and Curry maintain this level of performance throughout the rest of the season and the difference in games played remains eight, they'd be a toss-up heading into the PS.

Well that's why once I thought about it I put Curry over Harden. Both guys have lost a lot of their POY consideration due to injury imo.

I agree regarding Kidd, but you don't see having really bad shooting percentages outside of three feet from the basket as a flaw? Or such a low assist percentage for someone with a 31.5 usage rate? There are 14 players who have played at least 30 games and have a 30% or higher usage rate. Of those 14, Giannis ranks 11th in assist rate, behind even Lou Williams and Devin Booker:

http://bkref.com/tiny/UNnL0

I mean Curry has flaws outside of his injury too. If you want to discuss them as players that's completely different. Its not like anyone is saying Giannis is better. Just saying Giannis hasn't missed 30% of his team's games so he has the edge because Curry is better than him but not better enough to make up for that.

Also are you criticizing a 7 footer for averaging 4.7 apg while making a comparison to a 6-3 guy averaging 6.5 apg? Think about that for a split second...

It wasn't my objective to say that Butler doesn't have a case, because he surely does. Not to get into a detailed debate, but I'll respond to your comments.

Point 1: Wiggins is even worse statistically this year. Towns was 25.1 pts, 12.3 reb, 2.7 ast, and 1.3 blk on 61.8 TS% -- how is that not good? Yeah, I know they're playing better defense now, but Thibs is the defensive guru who was supposed to make that happen but didn't, therefore leading them to an underachieving season.

Yes Wiggins is even worse... He wasn't good at Kansas, as a rookie, as a sophomore, last year, or now. He's a bad player. The levels of badness don't matter much. He's trash and always has been.

And Towns was the worst defensive player in basketball. You're too focused on the boxscore. Anyone that watched them 2 years ago knew Minnesota would be horrible defensively last year. Thibs is a coach not a genie he can't turn guys with no talent for defense and no defensive IQ into good defenders. He hasn't even done it this year what's really happened is Jones, Jimmy, and Gibson are good defenders and they've set the tone on that end while on the floor this year but when they step off the floor it's right back to crap. Remember they're still the 25th ranked defense. With Jimmy on the bench they give up a 118 DRTG. With him on the floor they have a 106.7 DRTG.

Point 2: I agree that Jamal Crawford is far from great, but "worst player in the league over 20 mpg" is hyperbole bordering on the extreme. First off, he plays 18.9 MPG. I'm not a fan of PER, but it serves a purpose as a blunt tool in this case:

http://bkref.com/tiny/p7nT7

Of players who play at least 18.8 MPG, there are 109 with a worse PER than Crawford. He's the leading scorer off the bench for Minnesota, and Thibs apparently thinks he's better than last season's leading bench scorer, Shabazz Muhammad, who has had his minutes cut in half.

Like you said PER means nothing. Watch the Wolves some time. He's horriblem when he gets out there no matter who's out with him the other team goes on a run. I decided to look it up and he actually ranks 489th in RAPM... Out of 491 players. The only guys under him are Kosta Koufos and Cristiano Felicio. And Shabazz is terrible. I just looked him up too and he's 485th in RAPM. Maybe you don't realize it but Minny is a legitimately terrible team. Yeah Crawford gets PT he's a proven player that's now awful while the other guys on the team have always been awful.

Point 3: yep, Jimmy is good and is their most impactful player. I never claimed he wasn't.

Point 4: this seems to stray into narrative, and while I agree with part of it, it's putting an overly positive spin on things. Butler's non-numbers impact is a significant part of his resume, but he needs more than this to put him ahead of Curry (28.1 pts, 5.1 reb, 6.5 ast, 1.7 stl, 68.8 TS%), who has narrative of his own showing his impact to be huge.

Not when Curry has missed 30% of the season he doesn't. And it's not narrative its what happened. You're way too focused on numbers and not what he did. Jimmy was playing great before the numbers and the second he wanted to he could turn it on and the numbers would be back because (like Curry) he's a superstar and that's what they do.

51.1 TS% isn't an issue?

No. TS% isn't a replacement for analyzing the game. Tyson Chandler ain't the GOAT.

Those are points in Butler's favor. I'm not saying that Butler doesn't have points in his favor. A question -- do you think Butler has any flaws in his resume?

If you think Butler is ahead of Harden, we'll just have to disagree.

I almost added a note about LeBron trending down. I'm fine with moving him down to the bottom tier. The difference between the middle and bottom guys is very small for me. FWIW, I don't have Westbrook above Butler as you indicated above. For now, I've got Harden in the lead, Curry in second, and you can put everyone else in a pack behind them. It's all just preliminary positioning.

Butler has one flaw in his resume and its that he was the 30th pick and wasn't ever supposed to ever one of the 3 best players in basketball so tons of people continue to ignore pretty obvious evidence he is.

[Missing Rings]

You're talking here about a player who is conversation for GOAT regular season that year and who played in all the game in the playoffs against real teams, and in your ranking scheme you're going to treat what he did that year as less impressive than 5 guys who for the most part aren't going to have their season remembered 25 years from now (LeBron being the exception of course). I think you need to ask yourself why you'd even bother making that list. It doesn't represent who the best players were, it doesn't represent cumulative value for the season, it doesn't represent historical noteworthiness, and it had it's ordering completely thrown off by a player missing sometime early in the playoffs against tin cans.

Why is this list worth reading? Why is it worth making?

Now all of this is in the realm of philosophy, and when i say that I mean that there's not one right answer. Me personally, I try to put sanity checks in there. If a guy misses time, but that missed time doesn't seriously effect the overall story of the season, then we're just not going to care about that missed time years down the road, so why am I letting it have a big influence on how I judge that season?

It's also worth noting in soccer we get to actually see who the players and coaches vote for, and who the journalists vote for. The players and coaches tend to focus on prior reputation and big stats. The journalists tend to look to give credit to those key to team success that year. Which is right?

Well, objectively speaking we can see that the journalists approach tends to result in certain players spiking into apparent "best in world" level for a season and then falling back down, all the while convincing no one they actually are the best in the world. That's a weakness in my book, and frankly it's related to the one I"m warning about here.

But on the other hand, players & coaches have their own issues. The scale of their problem tends to relate to the state of statistics. If stat are primitive, then players & coaches tend miss the nuance they'd catch with better stats. If stats are advanced, then players and coaches tend to be unable to understand them, and they have issues again. But if the stats are plentiful and understandable, I'd say the players & coaches tend to do a better job than the journalists.

For me with my analytic tendency, I tend to guard against journalist-type "forest for the trees" issues and I'd argue that many on the PC board should have similar concerns about their analysis.

By contrast, a more typical fan is basically a caricature of players & coaches. That fan not only misses the nuance of analytics, but also misses the nuance of "being there". Players and coaches have insight of direct experience that still counts for a lot, and which cannot be easily aped by fans (show me a fan yelling about "the eye test" and 9 times out of 10 I'll show you a fan who doesn't even know how to watch the game rigorously). To them I'd say they need get stat literate in a hurry.

The Issue I have with "Player of the Year" rankings is trying to weigh missed time and how important it is. Then looking at the context of the missed time and the season as a whole.

You are right in a sense that Steph Curry had arguably the GOAT Regular Season during 2016. His ability to make shots within the offense, and more importantly, make his teammates better was something that is coined "generational".

dhsilv2 makes a great point about Steph Curry putting his team in a position where Curry can miss games in the post-season by claiming the #1 seed. There needs to be value in that, but then how much do we value a player like 2007 Dirk Nowitzki who dominates the regular season (albeit not as much as Curry) and is a 1st round exit despite the #1 seed.

It was complete hyperbole on my part claiming Steph Curry was outside the top 5. He was probably the best player for 80+ games that season but was upended by a GOAT candidate in the midst of his prime. However, I normally don't like "ranking" players or making lists. There is great discussion on this forum that is often materialized through a ranking.

[bondom34]

I think this whole convo goes back to an individual measure. Some people will put a ton more weight on postseason than RS, some the inverse. I think there's a balance there that everyone who votes every year strikes within their mind on what to do. Personally I value the 82 games over the smaller PO sample.

[E-Balla]

But broken down in finer detail, raw +/-, Curry's already done more "winning" the entire league despite the missed time.

I do understand your argument, but know that my perspective is one where I look for reasons to ignore blips so as to settle on the actual top players.

I get that I just didn't think the Walton example stood up the scrutiny since even in 58 games Walton won more games than anyone else outside of Gervin because his competition wasn't too great. Curry actually has great competition this year IMO so he can't skate by like that for me.

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion and I don't think it unreasonable to side against Curry, but the way you bring the conversation back to wins from points makes me feel like my point was not made clear, so I'll try again.

Whether by wins or raw +/-, Curry's team is leading the league all while Curry appears to have a more clear impact effect than anyone else in the league by a wide margin. And in fact I bring up the raw +/- specifically to deal with your riposte alluding to the fact that GS wouldn't have the best record in the league if his team couldn't win a game without him.

To elaborate: It is reasonable to counter a "but they still have the best record in the league, so who cares that he missed time" with "well they wouldn't have had the best record if not for the teammates thriving without him, so you're basically crediting him for stuff they did without him".

However, wins are a clumsy, coarse metric compared to raw +/-. Not saying there isn't a ton of luck in raw +/-, just saying that if the only reason you are siding with other players is that you think they've contributed more to winning than Curry, but Curry has them beat in raw +/- and his team doesn't actually need any more wins than they already have, then what threshold exactly are you waiting for Curry to surpass before you stop quibbling about the details and put the obviously most impactful player atop your list?

Curry beating them in raw +/- just means he's outscored opponents more not that he's outscored opponents in more games which is what really matters. Running up the score in 30 games but losing the other 52 will leave you with a 30-52 record and a great raw +/-. You can take that +/- to the lottery if you want.

Of course if you're not convinced Curry merits being talked about in such glowing terms that's different, but if your issue really is the missed time, I think you need to ask yourself what your threshold actually is.

As for tough competition, honestly I don't see it. LeBron's team has done better when he's off the court, Giannis hasn't actually proven himself on an elite team level, and Harden's way behind Curry in raw +/- precisely because he doesn't impact the game to anywhere near the extent that Curry does.

I mean, I'm not necessarily saying those guys aren't "MVP worthy", but none of this translate to impact with the ease Curry seems to right now.

I think Butler is the guy I see a real argument for, but that argument is based on intangible stuff really. His team is barely on pace for 50 wins and literally no one thinks he's seriously in the conversation for best player in the world.

Just as much in the conversation as anyone not named Lebron James if you ask me and Lebron's looking like he lost a step. Remember I had him 4th in my POY voting right under Curry last year and I have him 1st so far this year. I don't think it's absurd to say he's the best basketball player on the planet if Lebron doesn't play like his usual in the postseason.

[eminence]

I get that I just didn't think the Walton example stood up the scrutiny since even in 58 games Walton won more games than anyone else outside of Gervin because his competition wasn't too great. Curry actually has great competition this year IMO so he can't skate by like that for me.

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion and I don't think it unreasonable to side against Curry, but the way you bring the conversation back to wins from points makes me feel like my point was not made clear, so I'll try again.

Whether by wins or raw +/-, Curry's team is leading the league all while Curry appears to have a more clear impact effect than anyone else in the league by a wide margin. And in fact I bring up the raw +/- specifically to deal with your riposte alluding to the fact that GS wouldn't have the best record in the league if his team couldn't win a game without him.

To elaborate: It is reasonable to counter a "but they still have the best record in the league, so who cares that he missed time" with "well they wouldn't have had the best record if not for the teammates thriving without him, so you're basically crediting him for stuff they did without him".

However, wins are a clumsy, coarse metric compared to raw +/-. Not saying there isn't a ton of luck in raw +/-, just saying that if the only reason you are siding with other players is that you think they've contributed more to winning than Curry, but Curry has them beat in raw +/- and his team doesn't actually need any more wins than they already have, then what threshold exactly are you waiting for Curry to surpass before you stop quibbling about the details and put the obviously most impactful player atop your list?

Curry beating them in raw +/- just means he's outscored opponents more not that he's outscored opponents in more games which is what really matters. Running up the score in 30 games but losing the other 52 will leave you with a 30-52 record and a great raw +/-. You can take that +/- to the lottery if you want.

Of course if you're not convinced Curry merits being talked about in such glowing terms that's different, but if your issue really is the missed time, I think you need to ask yourself what your threshold actually is.

As for tough competition, honestly I don't see it. LeBron's team has done better when he's off the court, Giannis hasn't actually proven himself on an elite team level, and Harden's way behind Curry in raw +/- precisely because he doesn't impact the game to anywhere near the extent that Curry does.

I mean, I'm not necessarily saying those guys aren't "MVP worthy", but none of this translate to impact with the ease Curry seems to right now.

I think Butler is the guy I see a real argument for, but that argument is based on intangible stuff really. His team is barely on pace for 50 wins and literally no one thinks he's seriously in the conversation for best player in the world.

Just as much in the conversation as anyone not named Lebron James if you ask me and Lebron's looking like he lost a step. Remember I had him 4th in my POY voting right under Curry last year and I have him 1st so far this year. I don't think it's absurd to say he's the best basketball player on the planet if Lebron doesn't play like his usual in the postseason.

A) That +/- point is dumb. Sure it's theoretically possible, but that's not how the real world works.

B) You didn't vote.

[E-Balla]

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion and I don't think it unreasonable to side against Curry, but the way you bring the conversation back to wins from points makes me feel like my point was not made clear, so I'll try again.

Whether by wins or raw +/-, Curry's team is leading the league all while Curry appears to have a more clear impact effect than anyone else in the league by a wide margin. And in fact I bring up the raw +/- specifically to deal with your riposte alluding to the fact that GS wouldn't have the best record in the league if his team couldn't win a game without him.

To elaborate: It is reasonable to counter a "but they still have the best record in the league, so who cares that he missed time" with "well they wouldn't have had the best record if not for the teammates thriving without him, so you're basically crediting him for stuff they did without him".

However, wins are a clumsy, coarse metric compared to raw +/-. Not saying there isn't a ton of luck in raw +/-, just saying that if the only reason you are siding with other players is that you think they've contributed more to winning than Curry, but Curry has them beat in raw +/- and his team doesn't actually need any more wins than they already have, then what threshold exactly are you waiting for Curry to surpass before you stop quibbling about the details and put the obviously most impactful player atop your list?

Curry beating them in raw +/- just means he's outscored opponents more not that he's outscored opponents in more games which is what really matters. Running up the score in 30 games but losing the other 52 will leave you with a 30-52 record and a great raw +/-. You can take that +/- to the lottery if you want.

Of course if you're not convinced Curry merits being talked about in such glowing terms that's different, but if your issue really is the missed time, I think you need to ask yourself what your threshold actually is.

As for tough competition, honestly I don't see it. LeBron's team has done better when he's off the court, Giannis hasn't actually proven himself on an elite team level, and Harden's way behind Curry in raw +/- precisely because he doesn't impact the game to anywhere near the extent that Curry does.

I mean, I'm not necessarily saying those guys aren't "MVP worthy", but none of this translate to impact with the ease Curry seems to right now.

I think Butler is the guy I see a real argument for, but that argument is based on intangible stuff really. His team is barely on pace for 50 wins and literally no one thinks he's seriously in the conversation for best player in the world.

Just as much in the conversation as anyone not named Lebron James if you ask me and Lebron's looking like he lost a step. Remember I had him 4th in my POY voting right under Curry last year and I have him 1st so far this year. I don't think it's absurd to say he's the best basketball player on the planet if Lebron doesn't play like his usual in the postseason.

A) That +/- point is dumb. Sure it's theoretically possible, but that's not how the real world works.

B) You didn't vote.

A. The 2014 Timberwolves would disagree. So would the 2000 Pacers. It's not uncommon a team/player looks amazing by +/- because they drive up the score in wins but at the same time they don't win enough. Let's say I was guaranteed to win 80% of the games player A played and only 65% of the games player B played. If my team was .300 without them player A missing 30% of the season goes 53.3-28.7. Player B playing the full season has the same exact record. How can you say player A was player of the year over player B when they added the same amount of wins to the team? And if we bring that to the playoffs and player A misses 30% of the games? It's over.

B. I participate in the POY thread every year. I'm doing it right now. My bad I used the word "voting" I should've said I had him 4th in my POY list but I assumed no one would get anal about it.