2021-22 NBA MVP Discussion (Pt. 1)

[Hussien Fatal]

Remember when Jokic already won MVP? Yeah, his team shared the 3rd best record in the west, and he won the award easily, receiving 91 out 101 first place votes.

When you make arguments so confidently, at least check to see whether recent history backs your claims up.

I agree he definitely can win it, but last year was weird where in the East you had 1 seed and 2 seed not have an eligible player for the award due to injuries. In the West, the 1 and 2 seed didn't have a dominant offensive player - Gobert and Paul dont put up the stats.

Not saying it is the determining factor, but it will be different this year if Embiid or Giannis pull their team to the 1-seed. It will be hard to give it to Jokic over Embiid in that scenario if the numbers are close.

Theoretically Jokic can finish with a better record than both of them, but a lower seed due to the top-heavy West. They're 27-17 when Jokic plays despite having a tough schedule to start the year. I imagine that having an easy 2nd half to the year will benefit his spot in the standings.

Sixers are 27-11 when Embiid plays.

Joel’s win percentage is 71%
Jokic win percentage is 61%

Joel is the MVP.

[Cubbies2120]

I agree he definitely can win it, but last year was weird where in the East you had 1 seed and 2 seed not have an eligible player for the award due to injuries. In the West, the 1 and 2 seed didn't have a dominant offensive player - Gobert and Paul dont put up the stats.

Not saying it is the determining factor, but it will be different this year if Embiid or Giannis pull their team to the 1-seed. It will be hard to give it to Jokic over Embiid in that scenario if the numbers are close.

Theoretically Jokic can finish with a better record than both of them, but a lower seed due to the top-heavy West. They're 27-17 when Jokic plays despite having a tough schedule to start the year. I imagine that having an easy 2nd half to the year will benefit his spot in the standings.

Sixers are 27-11 when Embiid plays.

Joel’s win percentage is 71%
Jokic win percentage is 61%

Joel is the MVP.

The Sixers have gone 4-8 with no Embiid, and in some of those losses there's other big pieces missing as well. They just beat the streaking Grizzlies last night, with Drummond dropping 16/23/5/3/2 on 72% shooting.

The Nuggets are 1-4, which is a worse winning % than the bottom team in the NBA right now.

[Infinite Llamas]

I agree he definitely can win it, but last year was weird where in the East you had 1 seed and 2 seed not have an eligible player for the award due to injuries. In the West, the 1 and 2 seed didn't have a dominant offensive player - Gobert and Paul dont put up the stats.

Not saying it is the determining factor, but it will be different this year if Embiid or Giannis pull their team to the 1-seed. It will be hard to give it to Jokic over Embiid in that scenario if the numbers are close.

Theoretically Jokic can finish with a better record than both of them, but a lower seed due to the top-heavy West. They're 27-17 when Jokic plays despite having a tough schedule to start the year. I imagine that having an easy 2nd half to the year will benefit his spot in the standings.

Sixers are 27-11 when Embiid plays.

Joel’s win percentage is 71%
Jokic win percentage is 61%

Joel is the MVP.

Philly win percentage when Joel doesn’t play is 33%
Denver win percentage when Jokic doesn’t play is 16%

Jokic is the MVP

[Doctor MJ]

Well it’s actually Synonymous with the greatest scorers of all time. Here are the top 7 in points per minute all time.

1.Joel Embiid
2.MJ 10 scoring titles
3.Gervin 4 scoring titles
4.KD 4 scoring titles
5.Harden 3 scoring titles
6.Lebron 1 scoring title
7.steph 2 scoring titles

So as you can see only the best scorers of all time are tops in points per minute.

Don't confuse the map for the territory.

Lol lamest response ever lol
So after Joel leads the League in scoring this year and wins mvp will he be in the territory?

Okay so you should understand that what I'm talking about is a well-established fallacy. You could boil it down to "A is a C, be is a C, therefore A and B are the same", but let me try to be more helpful than that:

A map is a representation of a territory, not the territory itself, and when we confuse the two, we end up drawing conclusions about the territory that are true of the map.

When talking about basketball player comparisons, the "territory" is what a player actually does on the court. Not just "score", but how the guy gets in the position to shoot, what it takes for his teammates to get him the ball, what shot technique he uses once he gets the ball, etc. It's about basketball, and you can't expect to truly understand what's going on unless you think through the actual basketball play that's going on.

By contrast, the stats we keep and the accolades we award are "maps". They are constructs that we create outside of the actual play of basketball to describe what the player actually did. They are useful, but they are not complete.

This lack of complete certainty in understanding is something that every single one of us has to deal with, so I'm not saying it just affects you...but I said what I said because you're insisting on focusing on your particular map as if it's the entire picture when it most definitely is not.

You might think this holds equally true to me, and in another conversation with another person it indeed might, but in this conversation I'm the one saying "You're not factoring in all the significant context" to you, because you're insisting on a very specific lens without justifying it other than to say "Well, my lens says these other players were the best, and they were the best, so my lens must be correct".

[WarriorGM]

Because he is having a subpar season by his standards while Jokic and Embiid are simultaneously play out of their absolute minds

Subpar season by Steph's standards is still better than MVP Nash. It only goes to show that Steph should have been winning more MVPs in previous years.

I don't agree with this but that's not really relevant. Steph is competing against other players in 2022. What year should he have won it that he didn't? Pretty much every MVP since Steph won his last one has been very well deserved.

2017. Unsurprisingly the MVP for that year has looked like a mistake to others.

Come on, really?
2020-2021 Donovan Mitchell almost had the exact same numbers (more efficient) than Curry this season and he didn't even got a single vote. The Jazz also had the best record in the league.

What numbers would those be? Mitchell was also leading the league in plus-minus?

I’ll just say that as a BIG pro-Steph guy, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Steph in his slump is better than Nash in MVP form.

But I did not say Steph in his slump. I said Steph in a subpar season. This one in particular. Do you still vehemently disagree?

[Dutchball97]

Curry was 6th in MVP voting in 2017, which might've even been generous since he was 8th in WS and 7th in VORP while playing on the most stacked team the NBA has ever seen.

[WarriorGM]

Curry was 6th in MVP voting in 2017, which might've even been generous since he was 8th in WS and 7th in VORP while playing on the most stacked team the NBA has ever seen.

So? 67 wins. Durant out to injury and the Warriors still stomped all over the other main MVP candidates in 13-0 run at the end of the season including a back-to-back in a Rockets-Spurs-Rockets stretch on the opposing teams' home courts.

Either you value wins or you don't. What Curry has shown as starkly as any player has is what goes into winning isn't the stuff people are commonly looking at.

[jokeboy86]

Bucks 1.5 games back. Giannis still in it.

[Mickey8]

I agree he definitely can win it, but last year was weird where in the East you had 1 seed and 2 seed not have an eligible player for the award due to injuries. In the West, the 1 and 2 seed didn't have a dominant offensive player - Gobert and Paul dont put up the stats.

Not saying it is the determining factor, but it will be different this year if Embiid or Giannis pull their team to the 1-seed. It will be hard to give it to Jokic over Embiid in that scenario if the numbers are close.

Theoretically Jokic can finish with a better record than both of them, but a lower seed due to the top-heavy West. They're 27-17 when Jokic plays despite having a tough schedule to start the year. I imagine that having an easy 2nd half to the year will benefit his spot in the standings.

Sixers are 27-11 when Embiid plays.

Joel’s win percentage is 71%
Jokic win percentage is 61%

Joel is the MVP.

Embiid is only missing Simmons , while Jokic is missing Murray,Porter and Dozier for the season , plus players were missing games
Morris,Barton,Green etc. Currently Embiid have much better team .

[Ron Swanson]

I mean, saying Curry "leads the league in plus-minus" isn't even true. He's the best amongst the MVP candidates in ON-court net-rating by a hair (+12.8), but Jokic is running away with total on/off plus-minus (+22.2). George Hill actually leads the league in ON-court net-rating (+13.6) and Gobert is right there (+12.2 ON, +14.4 on/off) along with having way better box metrics outside of scoring volume. If you guys are gonna keep touting the one stat that's even keeping Curry relevant in this discussion, you can't misrepresent the actual numbers.

Jokic

Giannis
Embiid

Gobert

*everyone else*

[Mickey8]

Theoretically Jokic can finish with a better record than both of them, but a lower seed due to the top-heavy West. They're 27-17 when Jokic plays despite having a tough schedule to start the year. I imagine that having an easy 2nd half to the year will benefit his spot in the standings.

Sixers are 27-11 when Embiid plays.

Joel’s win percentage is 71%
Jokic win percentage is 61%

Joel is the MVP.

The Sixers have gone 4-8 with no Embiid, and in some of those losses there's other big pieces missing as well. They just beat the streaking Grizzlies last night, with Drummond dropping 16/23/5/3/2 on 72% shooting.

The Nuggets are 1-4, which is a worse winning % than the bottom team in the NBA right now.

Its not only the record, the way they lost those games, all of them were blow outs , just an ugly basketball.

[Doctor MJ]

I’ll just say that as a BIG pro-Steph guy, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Steph in his slump is better than Nash in MVP form.

But I did not say Steph in his slump. I said Steph in a subpar season. This one in particular. Do you still vehemently disagree?

I think Steph before the slump was better than Nash and after was worse.

I'm not going to say you're crazy for thinking the former still outweighs the latter, but the slump has gone on a long time and shouldn't be dismissed lightly when evaluating the year as a whole.

[Doctor MJ]

I mean, saying Curry "leads the league in plus-minus" isn't even true. He's the best amongst the MVP candidates in ON-court net-rating by a hair (+12.8), but Jokic is running away with total on/off plus-minus (+22.2). George Hill actually leads the league in ON-court net-rating (+13.6) and Gobert is right there (+12.2 ON, +14.4 on/off) along with having way better box metrics outside of scoring volume. If you guys are gonna keep touting the one stat that's even keeping Curry relevant in this discussion, you can't misrepresent the actual numbers.

People aren't misrepresenting the numbers. People are quoting the actual +/- numbers and you're bringing up other related stats. Fine to bring up the other stats to get a better overall perspective, but you are clearly confused about what these numbers mean.

If you want the actual +/- numbers in an easy to read place, it's right on nba.com:

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional/?PerMode=Totals&sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=-1

You'll see Curry has an absolutely massive lead on the rest of the league.

As I say all of this, Jokic is my MVP pick and you'll see he manages to get 3rd in the entire league despite his team's lesser record, which is incredibly impressive.

[Ron Swanson]

Fair enough. This all seems like semantics though, because I can't remember the last time raw plus-minus was used over Per-100 in an actual, serious MVP discussion. And that's coming from someone who even has his own issues with using lineup data of any kind as gospel. I'm not going to completely disregard it, but look no further than last year (Gobert, Mike Conley, Joe Ingles, and Royce O'neal are #1-4 in the entire league...) to illustrate how much (or in this case, little) stock we should put into it.

[harlem_ball]

If Jokic gets the Nugs in the top 3 then he repeats in my mind. No question.

They have to win 55+ though.

[falcolombardi]

Fair enough. This all seems like semantics though, because I can't remember the last time raw plus-minus was used over Per-100 in an actual, serious MVP discussion. And that's coming from someone who even has his own issues with using lineup data of any kind as gospel. I'm not going to completely disregard it, but look no further than last year (Gobert, Mike Conley, Joe Ingles, and Royce O'neal are #1-4 in the entire league...) to illustrate how much (or in this case, little) stock we should put into it.

that shows that utah lineups were the best in the league regular season wise, which we already knew from their win record

if anythingh it would have been a great element for a gobert mvp case

[Cubbies2120]

Has any MVP ever missed 25% of his teams games? Coulda sworn that the precedent for full seasons has already been set - not sure anyone has ever won MVP while playing less than 70 games in an 82 game season. Embiid is on pace to miss 20 games (again) this year.

[eyeatoma]

Has any MVP ever missed 25% of his teams games? Coulda sworn that the precedent for full seasons has already been set - not sure anyone has ever won MVP while playing less than 70 games in an 82 game season. Embiid is on pace to miss 20 games (again) this year.

No, he's not. He's missed 3 games due to Injury and rest, and missed the rest due to COVID. Probably want to mention that technicality.

[Cubbies2120]

Has any MVP ever missed 25% of his teams games? Coulda sworn that the precedent for full seasons has already been set - not sure anyone has ever won MVP while playing less than 70 games in an 82 game season. Embiid is on pace to miss 20 games (again) this year.

No, he's not. He's missed 3 games due to Injury and rest, and missed the rest due to COVID. Probably want to mention that technicality.

He missed 20 full days due to Covid recovery at the start of the season? That seems like an awfully long time to recover (compared to other NBA players), does he have underlying physical issues that extended that recovery period?

In any case, he will not be reaching 70 games played unless he somehow plays 32 straight (has he ever done that in his career?), so based on previous winners, it would be hard to justify giving him the award. And that's with 70 games played, the further we get from that, the harder it becomes to justify.

[eyeatoma]

Has any MVP ever missed 25% of his teams games? Coulda sworn that the precedent for full seasons has already been set - not sure anyone has ever won MVP while playing less than 70 games in an 82 game season. Embiid is on pace to miss 20 games (again) this year.

No, he's not. He's missed 3 games due to Injury and rest, and missed the rest due to COVID. Probably want to mention that technicality.

He missed 20 full days due to Covid recovery at the start of the season? That seems like an awfully long time to recover (compared to other NBA players), does he have underlying physical issues that extended that recovery period?

In any case, he will not be reaching 70 games played unless he somehow plays 32 straight (has he ever done that in his career?), so based on previous winners, it would be hard to justify giving him the award. And that's with 70 games played, the further we get from that, the harder it becomes to justify.

LMAO, are you serious right now? Some of the healthiest people on the planet, have had Covid and it took them a very long time to recover. Now I know you're trolling.

Guess what, the media votes for him, and not a single one has mentioned the lack of games played as being an issue so far this season. In fact, the most recent articles, and betting sites, have Embiid as the favorite. So far all of your BS about missed games, there doesnt' seem to be much being mentioned by the media about it, because they know that almost every player outside of Jokic and Curry have been affected by Covid, so to count that as some sort of a penality would be incredibly unfair.