2018-19 Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[Texas Chuck]

Same way Curry outplays most players? Ran around a bunch and watched as the Raptors favored following him over challenging wide open looks.

This has diminishing returns as the team around him weakens. His gravity remains very real, but it requires guys to make open shots. If the other team knows those guys can't make enough shots then the value the attention he draws goes down. And it's absolutely lethal with Durant and Klay available.

Meanwhile Kawhi does less for his teammates offensively than Curry. A lot less. But his ability to create good looks for himself against any defense makes his value hold more steady than Curry's.

I know it's sacrilege here, but the Warriors as constructed might well have done better with Curry out hurt and Durant playing.

[eminence]

Same way Curry outplays most players? Ran around a bunch and watched as the Raptors favored following him over challenging wide open looks.

This has diminishing returns as the team around him weakens. His gravity remains very real, but it requires guys to make open shots. If the other team knows those guys can't make enough shots then the value the attention he draws goes down. And it's absolutely lethal with Durant and Klay available.

Meanwhile Kawhi does less for his teammates offensively than Curry. A lot less. But his ability to create good looks for himself against any defense makes his value hold more steady than Curry's.

I know it's sacrilege here, but the Warriors as constructed might well have done better with Curry out hurt and Durant playing.

Evidence for diminishing returns compared to isolation bucket getters? Teammates are less likely to make the shots as they get worse of course, but if an isolation scorer type was in that place they themselves would be less likely to make their own buckets as more attention was given to them.

[Texas Chuck]

Evidence for diminishing returns compared to isolation bucket getters? Teammates are less likely to make the shots as they get worse of course, but if an isolation scorer type was in that place they themselves would be less likely to make their own buckets as more attention was given to them.

Sure but at some point you are better off with the iso scorer fighting extra attention than having your gravity guy draw extra attention that nobody can take advantage of. Maybe with Klay it never got to that point, but maybe it did?

[eminence]

Evidence for diminishing returns compared to isolation bucket getters? Teammates are less likely to make the shots as they get worse of course, but if an isolation scorer type was in that place they themselves would be less likely to make their own buckets as more attention was given to them.

Sure but at some point you are better off with the iso scorer fighting extra attention than having your gravity guy draw extra attention that nobody can take advantage of.

Why would I just assume that's true?

[DatAsh]

Curry, Harden and Giannis all showed that defensive schemes over the course of a series can heavily lower their offensive impact. I already kinda knew this for Curry and Harden(as it seems to happen every year in the playoffs), but this was my first time really seeing it for Giannis(maybe I just haven't paid enough attention to him). Kawhi's offense seemed by far the most resilient to playoff adjustments.

Having said that, I think Curry and Harden's regular season offensive impact is GOAT level, so even a big drop off from that still keeps their offense above Kawhi's for me. I'm pretty low on Kawhi's defense this year. I see him as a slight positive(maybe +1 to +1.5 at most), and I see Giannis as at least 2-3x more valuable on that end.

I'm honestly really torn. I think Curry, Harden, Kawhi, and Giannis all have a legitimate argument for #1 for me. I look forward to reading more arguments.

[freethedevil]

More thoughts on things:

- I was starting to lean toward Joel Embiid in my 5 spot (after fighting against it in previous discussion), but I realized that it didn't really make sense to me to drop Durant below Embiid based on injury when Durant played so much more, and even played more in the playoffs. This is starting to make my POY ballot look like:

Uh, isn't that just because he got eliminated? Assuming they switch teams that doesn't mean health would affect him

[freethedevil]

ElGee's list



Idk if follks have actually watched the video. The list above is his list of best players in the league. When adjusted for injury / season circumstance his list is

1. Curry
2. Giannis
3. AD
4. Kawhi
5. Harden
6. LeBron
7. Jokic
8. Embiid
9. PG
10. Lillard

Durant falls off because of the season-ending injury.

curry and giannis are tied for first in his video after adjusting for injury, don't disrespect da (future)king of the east

[DatAsh]

I've never voted in this before, so I have a question.

Do y'all usually vote based on who you think the best player was(ie who increases championship odds the most), or do you vote based on who you think had the most impact?

For me, Kawhi and Draymond's rankings heavily depend on that question.

[freethedevil]

So, I'm inclined to agree with ElGee's assessment of Curry as the best in the game right now, and yet it also feels weird to think of him as my POY this year. Giannis feels more like he earned it for the season. Interested in others takes on this.

Also definitely interested on thoughts relating to Kawhi. How do you see his impact on defense now?

He has them tied due to injury. I'll say this though, in thevideo, partially elmcgee's reasoning for curry at #1 is that he's done this for many seasons. Mcgee's metrics actually seem to put giannis ahead though he questions giannis's scalability with a costar. I would have liked to see taylor touch on how scalable curry's defence is

[freethedevil]

Same way Curry outplays most players? Ran around a bunch and watched as the Raptors favored following him over challenging wide open looks.

This has diminishing returns as the team around him weakens. His gravity remains very real, but it requires guys to make open shots. If the other team knows those guys can't make enough shots then the value the attention he draws goes down. And it's absolutely lethal with Durant and Klay available.

Meanwhile Kawhi does less for his teammates offensively than Curry. A lot less. But his ability to create good looks for himself against any defense makes his value hold more steady than Curry's.

I know it's sacrilege here, but the Warriors as constructed might well have done better with Curry out hurt and Durant playing.

It's sacrilige because it's baseless. Curry is by far the best 'create your own shot" player in the league which is why in the finals despite nothaving the luxury of playing with the multiple playmakers kawhi did, curry put up similar scoring numbers. Teams double curry not durant, and it's not because they want curry creating his own shot.

[freethedevil]

Before getting Kawhi, the Raptors were pretty much a meme team, getting a lot of RS wins before getting daddied by Lebron in the playoffs. Rockets of the East, only not as good.

Downplaying Kawhi's role in their transformation just makes no sense, he's clearly the engine of this championship. Even after Kawhi joined, most people remained low on the Raptors: according to RGM, the Bucks were going to smash them in the CF, then the Warriors were going to dominate them even without KD. I don't understand this resistance to giving him credit.

The bucks were carried to 7 the playoffs with giannis last season, and now they've gone to nearly beating the champs.

Toronto "meme team" raptors has made a conference final and several second round apps while winning near 60 games. They have 5 players in the top 30 of rapm. Kahwi had a very very good supporting cast that perfectly covered for his weaknesses.

[DatAsh]

I think the guy who may actually have the best argument over Durant is Draymond Green, but it's generally acknowledged that Green coasted a lot of the season so it feels weird to give him the nod based on how good he looked when he turned on overdrive after Durant's injury.

Yeah Draymond is tough. The biggest questions for me in regards to him would be:

1. Did the coasting enable him to play at the level he did when he turned it on?
2. How much do I penalize him if the answer to 1 is yes? Kawhi had load management because Nurse rightfully realized they would be fine in the RS doing so and he wanted him to be the best he could be come playoffs. If Draymond has that luxury should I penalize him for taking advantage of it when it clearly makes the most sense for the good of the team?
3. Did Draymond's "coastin" cause Durant and Klay to do more than they would have--in part possibly leaning towards the injuries?

My best guess answers:

1. Yeah probably a little bit, but I believe in Draymond come playoff time, period. My default expectation until shown otherwise is he's going to be great in the playoffs.
2. I wouldn't penalize him IRL-it's the right move. Should it impact POY? Yeah to a degree, but not a big one for me
3. Impossible to know, so I wouldn't factor it in.


I don't do a POY top 5, but Draymond would either be in or right on the outside I think. I'd have a hard time putting 2 Warriors ahead of him for sure.

As someone that's very into fitness and the science of muscle recovery, I would say the answer to your first question is clearly...no. CNS recovery happens fairly quickly(less than a week). Resting more in February has no effect on your performance in May/June(if anything, resting more is a negative), unless you think these guys are chronically overtraining, which I definitely don't think is true.

I think regular season resting is more important for preventing injury than it is for improving post season performance. I honestly don't think it improves post season performance at all if the injury situation is the same; if anything it's a slight negative.

Draymond is a different situation than Kawhi, though. Draymond was fat in the regular season.

[Doctor MJ]

More thoughts on things:

- I was starting to lean toward Joel Embiid in my 5 spot (after fighting against it in previous discussion), but I realized that it didn't really make sense to me to drop Durant below Embiid based on injury when Durant played so much more, and even played more in the playoffs. This is starting to make my POY ballot look like:

Uh, isn't that just because he got eliminated? Assuming they switch teams that doesn't mean health would affect him

Yes, it is because he got eliminated. The fact remains I find it pretty silly for the guy who played less to be given bonus points for not getting injured in general, and particularly so when we're talking about Embiid.

In general I prefer an approach where I don't overly jumble up the order of players based on things that seem random. If you think Durant is better than Embiid, I find it countermeaningful to insist on ranking Embiid ahead of him based on injury when Embiid is the one who played less. If you think Embiid is just better, well, that's another matter.

[DatAsh]

I think the guy who may actually have the best argument over Durant is Draymond Green, but it's generally acknowledged that Green coasted a lot of the season so it feels weird to give him the nod based on how good he looked when he turned on overdrive after Durant's injury.

Yeah Draymond is tough. The biggest questions for me in regards to him would be:

1. Did the coasting enable him to play at the level he did when he turned it on?
2. How much do I penalize him if the answer to 1 is yes? Kawhi had load management because Nurse rightfully realized they would be fine in the RS doing so and he wanted him to be the best he could be come playoffs. If Draymond has that luxury should I penalize him for taking advantage of it when it clearly makes the most sense for the good of the team?
3. Did Draymond's "coastin" cause Durant and Klay to do more than they would have--in part possibly leaning towards the injuries?

My best guess answers:

1. Yeah probably a little bit, but I believe in Draymond come playoff time, period. My default expectation until shown otherwise is he's going to be great in the playoffs.
2. I wouldn't penalize him IRL-it's the right move. Should it impact POY? Yeah to a degree, but not a big one for me
3. Impossible to know, so I wouldn't factor it in.


I don't do a POY top 5, but Draymond would either be in or right on the outside I think. I'd have a hard time putting 2 Warriors ahead of him for sure.

Also while I'm at it:

Giannis is 2nd behind Curry, he had a +765.
Toronto has 3 guys with scores higher than Dray, none of them are Kawhi.
Kawhi's total was 512.

I don't really put much stock in raw on/off, but even in RPM, with its box score prior, Green, Lowry, Siakam, and Gasol all are better than Kawhi. As someone who put's a lot of stock in impact data, it's worth considering.

[Doctor MJ]

I've never voted in this before, so I have a question.

Do y'all usually vote based on who you think the best player was(ie who increases championship odds the most), or do you vote based on who you think had the most impact?

For me, Kawhi and Draymond's rankings heavily depend on that question.

I defined the criteria so I'll answer.

You have the ability to apply your own philosophy to who was most impressive in this season. The hard and fast rule is that it needs to be based on what the player did rather than what he might have done in another setting.

Going back to "best" and "most impact", I tend to use +/- style impact as my starting place and then I adjust it based on what seems important. A player who has strong +/- because of unusual roster fit might be a bit suspect in my book. A player more able to contribute to a wide variety of talented rosters in a large way is going to go further for me than one diminishes his teammates. Stuff like that.

[freethedevil]

More thoughts on things:

- I was starting to lean toward Joel Embiid in my 5 spot (after fighting against it in previous discussion), but I realized that it didn't really make sense to me to drop Durant below Embiid based on injury when Durant played so much more, and even played more in the playoffs. This is starting to make my POY ballot look like:

Uh, isn't that just because he got eliminated? Assuming they switch teams that doesn't mean health would affect him

Yes, it is because he got eliminated. The fact remains I find it pretty silly for the guy who played less to be given bonus points for not getting injured in general, and particularly so when we're talking about Embiid.

In general I prefer an approach where I don't overly jumble up the order of players based on things that seem random. If you think Durant is better than Embiid, I find it countermeaningful to insist on ranking Embiid ahead of him based on injury when Embiid is the one who played less. If you think Embiid is just better, well, that's another matter.

Fair. You said giannis "earned" poy more, could you elaborate?

[Doctor MJ]

So, I'm inclined to agree with ElGee's assessment of Curry as the best in the game right now, and yet it also feels weird to think of him as my POY this year. Giannis feels more like he earned it for the season. Interested in others takes on this.

Also definitely interested on thoughts relating to Kawhi. How do you see his impact on defense now?

He has them tied due to injury. I'll say this though, in thevideo, partially elmcgee's reasoning for curry at #1 is that he's done this for many seasons. Mcgee's metrics actually seem to put giannis ahead though he questions giannis's scalability with a costar. I would have liked to see taylor touch on how scalable curry's defence is

Well when we talk about scalability we're typically concerned with how a player's primacy can diminish his teammates or vice versa. That makes it more of an offense thing than a defense thing, because it's only on offense that you get to choose who you run your team through by placing the ball in their hands.

Curry's going to be doing roughly the same thing on defense no matter the context so in that sense, it's not really a part of the portability/scalability discussion.

I think what you're maybe getting at though is the idea that in theory you might be able to single Curry out defensively to the point where he has profound negative defensive impact if the opponent's offense was strong enough 1-5. Perhaps if there were a Super NBA where talent was concentrated enough, Curry would end up having far less impact than he does now.

I think it's a worthwhile thing to ponder, but in practice Curry's been the foundation of a team that could have won 5 straight titles if the ball had bounced differently. This makes it hard for me to worry too much about a Super NBA based scaling issue.

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah Draymond is tough. The biggest questions for me in regards to him would be:

1. Did the coasting enable him to play at the level he did when he turned it on?
2. How much do I penalize him if the answer to 1 is yes? Kawhi had load management because Nurse rightfully realized they would be fine in the RS doing so and he wanted him to be the best he could be come playoffs. If Draymond has that luxury should I penalize him for taking advantage of it when it clearly makes the most sense for the good of the team?
3. Did Draymond's "coastin" cause Durant and Klay to do more than they would have--in part possibly leaning towards the injuries?

My best guess answers:

1. Yeah probably a little bit, but I believe in Draymond come playoff time, period. My default expectation until shown otherwise is he's going to be great in the playoffs.
2. I wouldn't penalize him IRL-it's the right move. Should it impact POY? Yeah to a degree, but not a big one for me
3. Impossible to know, so I wouldn't factor it in.


I don't do a POY top 5, but Draymond would either be in or right on the outside I think. I'd have a hard time putting 2 Warriors ahead of him for sure.

Also while I'm at it:

Giannis is 2nd behind Curry, he had a +765.
Toronto has 3 guys with scores higher than Dray, none of them are Kawhi.
Kawhi's total was 512.

I don't really put much stock in raw on/off, but even in RPM, with its box score prior, Green, Lowry, Siakam, and Gasol all are better than Kawhi. As someone who put's a lot of stock in impact data, it's worth considering.

I want to emphasize I don't put a lot of stock in it either when considering player scouting. But when you're considering who had the greater season between 2 teammates, and the one everyone considers is better also had considerably higher raw +/-, it's hard for me to elevate the other guy over him because of injury.

[Doctor MJ]

Uh, isn't that just because he got eliminated? Assuming they switch teams that doesn't mean health would affect him

Yes, it is because he got eliminated. The fact remains I find it pretty silly for the guy who played less to be given bonus points for not getting injured in general, and particularly so when we're talking about Embiid.

In general I prefer an approach where I don't overly jumble up the order of players based on things that seem random. If you think Durant is better than Embiid, I find it countermeaningful to insist on ranking Embiid ahead of him based on injury when Embiid is the one who played less. If you think Embiid is just better, well, that's another matter.

Fair. You said giannis "earned" poy more, could you elaborate?

Speaking generally, I felt like Giannis was the clear cut MVP. I respect what Harden did and thought him a reasonable MVP choice in a vacuum, but Giannis led the better team using value adds that more closely resemble what you have to do to win a title. You add in that everyone would draft Giannis over Harden knowing what we know now because of his two-way impact and I just don't see it as a hard call to make.

From there to me it's a question of having to surpass Giannis in year-long achievement to take the top spot. Now, I'm not opposed to in effect putting a super-heavy weight behind a playoff series, but sample size is small and there can be many confounding variables. If I'm going to let one series sway me, it has to say something really major to me.

In the end, or at least to this present moment, I don't feel like anyone did enough to usurp Giannis. I think Kawhi had a better team and a better coach behind him, and so his team winning the series cannot be attributed simply to him being a better player.

Curry is in a similar boat with regards to Giannis. I wouldn't have a problem putting Curry ahead of Giannis, but he had to do something in the playoffs that compelled me to raise him over Giannis. Curry played great and all, but I don't really feel like he did enough to wrestle the top spot away from Giannis.

[freethedevil]

So, I'm inclined to agree with ElGee's assessment of Curry as the best in
I think it's a worthwhile thing to ponder, but in practice Curry's been the foundation of a team that could have won 5 straight titles if the ball had bounced differently. This makes it hard for me to worry too much about a Super NBA based scaling issue.

Well let's be fair here, scalability aisde, he's been the offensive foundation for this team. The defensive foundation has been draymond green whose ranked as top 25 in each of the last 5 playoffs and a one of a kind defender. I don't know that you could afford to run things small as much as kerr does offensively if you didn't have a draymond green defensively.

These last 3 seasons, the hamptons 5 outscores has outscored opponents by 23 points per 100 poss. Just Curry+Green with smals has outscored opponent by 22 points per 100 possesion. Conceding that portability isn't a thing defensively, the warriors ability to run the small ball lineups curry excels in offensively is heavily dependent on green's defensive presence. And that doesn't even take into account green is one of the best passers in the league.

We rave about how good curry is without offensive weapons like durant and klay, but what happens if you take out draymond green?

I recall that el mcgee wasn't that impressed with 2017 lebron carrying an offence that had a higher o rating than the warriors, largely because he thought that was only possible due to the team's defensive failings.

And this I think, aside from his metrics, might be giannis's strongest qualitative argument as poy. For all of his holes offensively, Giannis is the bucks primary playmaker, scorer and is their defensive anchor, And in 2019 the bucks have been elite offensively historically great defensively, and posted an all time top 30 srs in the regular season. In the playoffs, while giannis's limitations as a playmaker were exposed, he still was the focal point, the engine and the anchor for a team that had a, per el mcgee, "razor thin series" vs the champs.

I don't think there's really anyone else in the league who does so much for his team. And, given how dominant the bucks looked untill nurse's adjustments in game 3 pioneering a new scheme with a defence el mcgee ranked #5 all time among playoff teams, I'm not convinced the warriors could have handled them, even at full strength.