Texas Chuck wrote:I don't see how you could have Gobert ahead of Green in the RS and then change your mind to Draymond now. No logic to that whatsoever. Saying well I think Draymond would have fared better in this same matchup is literally just giving him credit for your own assumptions rather than any actual performance.
But I've seen how Giannis falls behind players who did nothing in the playoffs after clearly having a far superior regular season so my guess is we will see a number of posters knee-jerk away from him.
So, most broadly, my head's spinning right now and I think we're all catching up to the new normal in basketball.
Many were questioning whether the Bubble needed an asterisk, based on the logic that it would stick out like a sore thumb compared to other NBA season, and I think we know now that the Bubble isn't the outlier, it's the turning point. Literally, every year from here on out is likely to make the Bubble look "normal" in comparison, because guys are just shooting the ball way too well and it looks like this is hear to stay.
To your point about "no logic", well, here's the thing:
If you view POY type awards as a literal race where guys just increase their total accomplishment as they play, then yes, literally, it should be impossible for a poor performance in the playoffs to make a guy drop below someone who is already eliminated.
On the other hand, if you think about it more in terms of have accomplishment-worthy a guy's play is in the playoffs, then a guy "getting exposed" in the playoffs frankly should be able to drop him below another guy whose assessment remains in equilibrium.
I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with DPOY but from a POY perspective:
I had Gobert ranked #2 after the RS. The vast majority of people didn't. The big reason for the difference, aside from those who just don't notice defense, was that people were knocking Gobert for being a weaker playoff presence and I wasn't. And I wasn't, because the playoffs hadn't happened yet, and I have no reason in the POY to fudge my regular season assessments the way those thinking in terms of the RS MVP do on the regular.
But now we're here, and while I think it's wrong to act as if Gobert was "the problem" here, the fact remains that if opponents are going to shoot 3's like this, a player like Gobert is less valuable than in a world where people are trying only to get as close to the rim as possible.
So Gobert vs Curry, whose play this year seems like it would be more valuable in the playoffs to me? Curry. Should I then have Gobert ahead of Curry in my awards because Curry's weak supporting cast prevented him from playing playoff ball? Ehhh....
Not sure.
Last note: A lesson I learned for myself during my time running weekly MVP Watch columns is that I tended to make myself a prisoner of the moment. Guys that went up or down each week, it was because something happened that week. There was no room for holistic re-assessment of the situation. Ever since then, I like to avoid prematurely ranking guys whose seasons are still in flux.
While I do come up with an MVP list toward the end of the regular season, because that award is such a significant talking point, I explicitly try not to be tied down by that list when considering the POY.
All this to say that if in the end I feel like there are 5 guys who were largely healthy this year and who played in a way that I feel made them better able to lead a team to a championship, then Gobert probably won't be in my Top 5.
As I say all of that, as discouraging as this was for the Jazz, I do think they could have won a championship with their team fully healthy, so I'm not going to be fundamentalist here and say Gobert can't win, because I think he can. It's just going to be harder for him now than it would have been in other eras.
