Jokic is 3rd this season in wins among MVP candidates

[Duke4life831]

this playoffs is proving Embiid deserved it over Jokic, especially if they beat Miami

but Jokic was all time great this season too

It doesnt prove anything.

These playoffs Joel vs Jokic:
Embiid: 25/11/2 on 62 TS%
Jokic: 31/13/6 on 64 TS%

Teammate comparison:
Philly:
Maxey: 22/3/4 on 65 TS%
Harden: 20/6/9 on 58 TS%
Tobias: 17/8/3 on 61 TS%

Denver:
Morris: 14/2/5 on 62 TS%
Barton: 14/5/3 on 50 TS%
Gordon: 14/7/2 on 52 TS%

I think that is quite the difference when it comes to teammate production and I think that plays a pretty big part in success in the playoffs. Also another thing to consider is, one guy played GS in the 1st round and the other played TOR who only had FVV for 3.5 games. I have a feeling if we were to switch Jokic and Embiid prior to the playoffs, Jokic would still be playing and Embiid wouldnt be.

[NO-KG-AI]

There was a lot of discussion on RG about winning. Which player won more games? So I decided to look for it on nba.com. I used two criteria. 1st is ppg>22 to single out players who are generally considered top of the league. The other criteria is a little harder to understand for some people. A little bit advanced. It says "for player X to be rewarded with winning game, he must first participate in the game". Sorry if this is a little hard for some to understand. Here is the list of players and wins by their teams in games they played.

1. Devin Booker 56
2. Jayson Tatum 49
3. Nikola Jokic 46
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo 45
5. Joel Embiid 45
6. Stephen Curry 45
7. Karl-Anthony Towns 44
8. Luka Doncic 44
9. DeMar DeRozan 43
10. Jaylen Brown 43

Discuss

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional/?sort=W&dir=-1&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&CF=PTS*GE*22

I think Jokic won fair and square and he's a generational offensive weapon but this is a bad argument

Both the bucks and the sixers ended with a higher srs than Denver, mostly because the eastern conference this years was better.

Jokic also played more game than Giannis and Embiid, which means his wining percentage is worse, even if he won more games.


Jokic has like every advanced metric to defend his case anyways, i don't get whythe need to use stuff like this

The PPG qualifier sucks, but it's not a bad view.

The big thing is that winning percentage might actually be a better measure of who is a better player, but raw win totals is a better one on who is more valuable, because being the reason your team wins more games is the most valuable thing you can do in the sport.

The problem is trying to assign how much credit each player gets for each win. Booker/Tatum have more raw wins, but basically everyone agrees they don't do as heavy a lifting job as the 3 bigs do.

[BelgradeNugget]

winning is part but not the whole criteria for mvp and i think it's purposely vague in order to incite discussion
so basically your point is pointless

so it's like this....if playerX has outstanding or even unique stats that makes his team a 45win where elsewise they would be a 25win team...why is he not more deserving that playerY who has very good stats but because his team is more well rounded with better talent his team is a 60win team. at what point do you not consider being everything to a team is not as good as being part on a "better" team. or to put it another way,,,does playerX on a crappy team have to be so superstarish that he make a cellar team into a contender? let me tell you how many times that has happened - off the top of my head TWICE with kareem and bird.

the paradigm for your assertion of course is westbrook who averaged a triple double and got flack for it.
there are several criteria and winning is just a tie breaker WHEN ALL ELSE IS EQUAL

i mean what is the diff twixt the two. well,,,,one has better teammates. so tell me why having better teammates becomes any kind of defining criteria for mvp. if that's the case i will posit that dray should have won mvp a few times already

We had 45 pages of MVP discussion. As we all know Jokic had historically great season stat wise. Argument against him was stats are not everything, Winning is more important. Now we know that only 2 MVP candidates had more wins then him. Now, winning is not everything. What are these other criteria he doesn't check?

Something about Westbrook. He had absolutely amazing season when he won MVP. Argument against him occurred later. He was stat-padding rebounds, whole team boxed-out for him. His rebounds were uncontested. He didn't challenge shots, let players he guarded take wide open shots to collect rebound. He was jelling at teammates to shoot so he can have assists.
Jokic does nothing like that. He lead the league in RS in challenged shots. Top in the league in box-outs. Top in the league in contested rebounds. He never stat pad points or assists, goes for the best play. That is the difference between Westbrook and Jokic although Westbrook definitely had amazing MVP season.

then you didn't read beal who said, and i paraphrase, "i thought rw was padding his rebounds but i was wrong".
and on the matter of padding a guard's rebounds. THAT SHOULD BE DE RIGUEUR for all guards because the ball moves faster upcourt before the defense sets....instead of wasting precious 2 seconds of the rebounder looking for his pg to hand the ball off to.

to wit: hellz bellz i think all pg's should average double figures in boards...especially a guy like lonzo who the bulls should be clearing out for 12 > 15 rebounds. the fact is westbrook DOES work hard for his boards

Westbrook works hard for O boards. I agree it is good when guard grabs a board but he should never leave his player for wide open shots like Westbrook used to do to grab board. And don't forget I said "He had absolutely amazing season when he won MVP"

[BelgradeNugget]

There was a lot of discussion on RG about winning. Which player won more games? So I decided to look for it on nba.com. I used two criteria. 1st is ppg>22 to single out players who are generally considered top of the league. The other criteria is a little harder to understand for some people. A little bit advanced. It says "for player X to be rewarded with winning game, he must first participate in the game". Sorry if this is a little hard for some to understand. Here is the list of players and wins by their teams in games they played.

1. Devin Booker 56
2. Jayson Tatum 49
3. Nikola Jokic 46
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo 45
5. Joel Embiid 45
6. Stephen Curry 45
7. Karl-Anthony Towns 44
8. Luka Doncic 44
9. DeMar DeRozan 43
10. Jaylen Brown 43

Discuss

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional/?sort=W&dir=-1&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&CF=PTS*GE*22

I think Jokic won fair and square and he's a generational offensive weapon but this is a bad argument

Both the bucks and the sixers ended with a higher srs than Denver, mostly because the eastern conference this years was better.

Jokic also played more game than Giannis and Embiid, which means his wining percentage is worse, even if he won more games.


Jokic has like every advanced metric to defend his case anyways, i don't get whythe need to use stuff like this

The PPG qualifier sucks, but it's not a bad view.

The big thing is that winning percentage might actually be a better measure of who is a better player, but raw win totals is a better one on who is more valuable, because being the reason your team wins more games is the most valuable thing you can do in the sport.

The problem is trying to assign how much credit each player gets for each win. Booker/Tatum have more raw wins, but basically everyone agrees they don't do as heavy a lifting job as the 3 bigs do.

So now we are going into advanced stats after all like win shares

[Murray_17]

The PPG qualifier sucks, but it's not a bad view.

The big thing is that winning percentage might actually be a better measure of who is a better player, but raw win totals is a better one on who is more valuable, because being the reason your team wins more games is the most valuable thing you can do in the sport.

The problem is trying to assign how much credit each player gets for each win. Booker/Tatum have more raw wins, but basically everyone agrees they don't do as heavy a lifting job as the 3 bigs do.

I would agree with this if the difference in Raw wins between the 3 guys was 10 or 15 games, but when is just one the problem is that the % becomes a much better indicator because of variance issues, specially considering that Jokic played 6 games more than Embiid and 7 more than Giannis.

[Cubbies2120]

yes lets use per game stats for everything except for winning percent. Then we go to total wins!

winning 1 more game on a much worse percent because Embiid had Covid is nothing to brag about

Gotcha - so just to get you on record, what arbitrary number of games should a player need to participate in?

Lets say Embiid went 15-0, and was injured for every other game, is he the regular season MVP of an 82 game season?

What about 20-2?

Just curious

If he wasn't out with Covid, who is to say he wouldn't have gotten another injury? This was literally his most injury-free year of his career, and he still missed 14 games, got to the playoffs, and his body isn't holding up again.

What a ridiculous argument going to the maximum extreme immediately. I simply stated a fact that with 6 more games played he has 1 win. You guys are all about efficiency right? Except for when it works against Jokic, then we use totals. Embiid and Giannis had higher win percents in a comparable amount of games played.

Lets not go to the extreme then - what about if he played 40 games? What is your arbitrary cutoff?

Forgive me for thinking that Embiid wouldn't have made a difference in 35 point losses against Memphis/Utah (who beat him by 22 when he did play).

Also pretty sure the Vegas folks (remember, half the season these were the authorities on the MVP race!) say Embiid swings games by 6 points, (Jokic 7 points). Only one of the losses was by < 6 points (Indiana). They probably win that one with him!

We just don't know, do we? While ironman, fat, out of shape Jokic managed to miss only 8 games in 2 years, Embiid missed 35 games during that timespan. And that was EXTREMELY GOOD for his career - the least he has ever missed in that timeframe!

We can speculate how Embiid would do over an 82 game season all we want, the fact of the matter is he has never been able to play a full season, and nothing we've seen suggests his body can handle that.

[Duke4life831]

There was a lot of discussion on RG about winning. Which player won more games? So I decided to look for it on nba.com. I used two criteria. 1st is ppg>22 to single out players who are generally considered top of the league. The other criteria is a little harder to understand for some people. A little bit advanced. It says "for player X to be rewarded with winning game, he must first participate in the game". Sorry if this is a little hard for some to understand. Here is the list of players and wins by their teams in games they played.

1. Devin Booker 56
2. Jayson Tatum 49
3. Nikola Jokic 46
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo 45
5. Joel Embiid 45
6. Stephen Curry 45
7. Karl-Anthony Towns 44
8. Luka Doncic 44
9. DeMar DeRozan 43
10. Jaylen Brown 43

Discuss

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional/?sort=W&dir=-1&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&CF=PTS*GE*22

I think Jokic won fair and square and he's a generational offensive weapon but this is a bad argument

Both the bucks and the sixers ended with a higher srs than Denver, mostly because the eastern conference this years was better.

Jokic also played more game than Giannis and Embiid, which means his wining percentage is worse, even if he won more games.


Jokic has like every advanced metric to defend his case anyways, i don't get whythe need to use stuff like this

Because its a counter to the arguments that Philly and MIL won more games this season. When it comes to the MVP conversation, why would Philly and Milwaukee having 51 wins vs Denver's 48, be more meaningful than Jokic playing in 46 wins compared to Embiid and Giannis playing in 45 wins.

I agree its not Jokic's strongest argument on why he deserved MVP, but I think its a legit counter to the argument of team records (which has been used a lot). I also get the counter to this would be winning %, but I think you could just counter that with, availability is valuable in the regular season. I would say Jokic's availability + his impact stats makeup for any difference when it comes to winning %.

Again by no means do I think this should be a primary argument for Jokic deserving the MVP, but ya I do think its a solid counter to the team win argument from the other side.

[Capn'O]

True, we shouldn't even have playoffs. Too much statistical variance. Let's just add up the weighted average of those stats of the rotation players on each team and give the trophy to the team with the highest number.

There are two accolades for the playoffs that apply to this concern: The FMVP and the Larry O'Brien trophy.

For the RS MVP Jokic is absolutely a deserving winner both in terms of how watching the game you see that the Nuggets are pretty good with him on the court and absolute dog poo without him on the court. Also, by the numbers which represent that.

Though, frankly, if it were up to me, I'd give it to Giannis every year.

I personally disagree on your premise of what the MVP should be. I think that we should adapt to things such as playoff expectations when possible. I think that you should ask yourself which version of a player this year would you rather have your team in a playoff series when answering the question. I think, hypothetically, if a player sits out the last 5-10 games of the year because it will add no value to their postseason standings, and still had an outstanding season, then that, for the most part, should not be counted against them. I think a player like Gobert should get less credit for DPOY rankings because his defensive impact is not translatable to the playoffs when certain traits are valued higher. I don't think we need to go overboard with that but I think it is the voter's responsibility to take some of those factors into consideration.

I also don't even think that is that controversial of an opinion and many people would agree with me that some kind of playoff forecasting is important, due to the significance that is placed on the MVP award and how little significance is given to the regular season in relation to the playoffs.

If you ask me, they probably should even think of a way to consider playoff performance as part of the MVP voting, however that's a discussion for another time.

And furthermore, even if you disagree with everything I just said, acting like we should take the highest single-number advanced stats as the representation for who should be MVP every year is a terrible process imo.

Regardless, none of the above was a pitch for Embiid or Jokic for MVP and are two points I would stand by regardless of the candidates or year being discussed. Thinking about MVP the way you laid out above is how fraud MVPs like Westbrook his triple double year happens.

It's not my premise. It's the league's premise and MVP has always been determined this way.

The thing is that Jokic kicks ass and takes names in the playoffs too. His lack of a team is exposed moreso than his own play. Granted, it would help if he were a better defender but he just hasn't had the horses alongside him in recent years to put a lot of stock into team playoff performance. Which, if you accounted for, Giannis would win this year as his Bucks absolutely collapse without him.

[Murray_17]

Because its a counter to the arguments that Philly and MIL won more games this season. When it comes to the MVP conversation, why would Philly and Milwaukee having 51 wins vs Denver's 48, be more meaningful than Jokic playing in 46 wins compared to Embiid and Giannis playing in 45 wins.

I agree its not Jokic's strongest argument on why he deserved MVP, but I think its a legit counter to the argument of team records (which has been used a lot). I also get the counter to this would be winning %, but I think you could just counter that with, availability is valuable in the regular season. I would say Jokic's availability + his impact stats makeup for any difference when it comes to winning %.

Again by no means do I think this should be a primary argument for Jokic deserving the MVP, but ya I do think its a solid counter to the team win argument from the other side.

All of this is true, but again sixers and bucks had a highers srs on the season than the nuggets and the difference between the 3 guys is just one win. Jokic and the Nuggets probably benefited of playing teams like the Kings more...

The counter for the win argument is just the composition of both teams, this was a throw away season for Denver and it started as such for the sixers too. Jokic was amazing and he by himself carved a better record than teams like the wolves who should be better.

Contextually i think that works better than this.

[HardenToSixers]

The best ability is availability.

Be available and you might win.

Right guy won.

Jokic is available to order a pizza right now that's for sure

Again zero relevance to this conversation. Also the only way someone would make this argument is if they remove all context all together.

just as "availability" in this year's MVP discussion had zero relevance

[HardenToSixers]

There are two accolades for the playoffs that apply to this concern: The FMVP and the Larry O'Brien trophy.

For the RS MVP Jokic is absolutely a deserving winner both in terms of how watching the game you see that the Nuggets are pretty good with him on the court and absolute dog poo without him on the court. Also, by the numbers which represent that.

Though, frankly, if it were up to me, I'd give it to Giannis every year.

I personally disagree on your premise of what the MVP should be. I think that we should adapt to things such as playoff expectations when possible. I think that you should ask yourself which version of a player this year would you rather have your team in a playoff series when answering the question. I think, hypothetically, if a player sits out the last 5-10 games of the year because it will add no value to their postseason standings, and still had an outstanding season, then that, for the most part, should not be counted against them. I think a player like Gobert should get less credit for DPOY rankings because his defensive impact is not translatable to the playoffs when certain traits are valued higher. I don't think we need to go overboard with that but I think it is the voter's responsibility to take some of those factors into consideration.

I also don't even think that is that controversial of an opinion and many people would agree with me that some kind of playoff forecasting is important, due to the significance that is placed on the MVP award and how little significance is given to the regular season in relation to the playoffs.

If you ask me, they probably should even think of a way to consider playoff performance as part of the MVP voting, however that's a discussion for another time.

And furthermore, even if you disagree with everything I just said, acting like we should take the highest single-number advanced stats as the representation for who should be MVP every year is a terrible process imo.

Regardless, none of the above was a pitch for Embiid or Jokic for MVP and are two points I would stand by regardless of the candidates or year being discussed. Thinking about MVP the way you laid out above is how fraud MVPs like Westbrook his triple double year happens.

It's not my premise. It's the league's premise and MVP has always been determined this way.

The thing is that Jokic kicks ass and takes names in the playoffs too. His lack of a team is exposed moreso than his own play. Granted, it would help if he were a better defender but he just hasn't had the horses alongside him in recent years to put a lot of stock into team playoff performance. Which, if you accounted for, Giannis would win this year as his Bucks absolutely collapse without him.

Whether the criteria I mentioned are included by voters or not and/or should be included is not clear cut as you made it out to be. However, if your stance is that regular season MVPs should always be given to the regular season leader in WS/48, VORP, BPM and PER, you are entitled to your opinion. This is a silly thought process and one that GMs would be laughed out of a front office for using as a measure for player impact, in a trade, for example. But again, rely on those single-number, contextless advanced stats all you want. More concerned with Joel hopefully getting the finals MVP. Peace.

[PennSports]

Gotcha - so just to get you on record, what arbitrary number of games should a player need to participate in?

Lets say Embiid went 15-0, and was injured for every other game, is he the regular season MVP of an 82 game season?

What about 20-2?

Just curious

If he wasn't out with Covid, who is to say he wouldn't have gotten another injury? This was literally his most injury-free year of his career, and he still missed 14 games, got to the playoffs, and his body isn't holding up again.

What a ridiculous argument going to the maximum extreme immediately. I simply stated a fact that with 6 more games played he has 1 win. You guys are all about efficiency right? Except for when it works against Jokic, then we use totals. Embiid and Giannis had higher win percents in a comparable amount of games played.

Lets not go to the extreme then - what about if he played 40 games? What is your arbitrary cutoff?

Forgive me for thinking that Embiid wouldn't have made a difference in 35 point losses against Memphis/Utah (who beat him by 22 when he did play).

Also pretty sure the Vegas folks (remember, half the season these were the authorities on the MVP race!) say Embiid swings games by 6 points, (Jokic 7 points). Only one of the losses was by < 6 points (Indiana). They probably win that one with him!

We just don't know, do we? While ironman, fat, out of shape Jokic managed to miss only 8 games in 2 years, Embiid missed 35 games during that timespan. And that was EXTREMELY GOOD for his career - the least he has ever missed in that timeframe!

We can speculate how Embiid would do over an 82 game season all we want, the fact of the matter is he has never been able to play a full season, and nothing we've seen suggests his body can handle that.

i dont have a cutoff, you are the one that brought this whole argument up about number of games played so that is your business and the reason i asked you. Not coming back with a concrete answer and going to yet again another extreme (half the season) is silly. We don't need to talk of hypotheticals that chop off 60 to 30 games. We have a real life example in front of us. Jokic played 6 more games, so quit with the Embiid injury theatrics and if you ever find the nirvana that answers that question for you let me know.

[Capn'O]

if your stance is that regular season MVPs should always be given to the regular season leader in WS/48, VORP, BPM and PER, you are entitled to your opinion.

It is not. His league leading WS does lend credence that he contributes tremendously to team success, however.

[Cubbies2120]

Jokic is available to order a pizza right now that's for sure

Again zero relevance to this conversation. Also the only way someone would make this argument is if they remove all context all together.

just as "availability" in this year's MVP discussion had zero relevance

It definitely had some relevance, unless you think it’s a complete coincidence that it has been 44 years since the last MVP missed more than 11 games?

What arbitrary number of games do you think a player has to miss before it has relevance, out of curiosity? More than 14 I’m guessing? There has to be a number right?

And remember to keep it simple, it should be a rigid number, not something like “Well it depends on a complex formula”, because we shouldn’t be allowed to use complicated formulas to determine things as of this year.

[AussieCeltic]

I really wish we could display posters IQ tests or even their age. I think there is a clear and distinguishable difference in the arguments for Jokic v Embiid. One has a lot of thought and the reason, the other is “tHe SiXeRs WoN mOrE gAmEs”

[Capn'O]

I really wish we could display posters IQ tests or even their age. I think there is a clear and distinguishable difference in the arguments for Jokic v Embiid. One has a lot of thought and the reason, the other is “tHe SiXeRs WoN mOrE gAmEs”

The argument for Embiid is rational. He's a great defender in addition to being a great post player who can space the game. His stats this year were gaudy and he's a player that a game shifts to control when he's in the game. I prefer him as a player. But any argument that a player was "robbed" of the award is ludicrous. As you say, there really isn't a measure to argue that Jokic didn't deserve the award, including watching the man play.

[AussieCeltic]

I really wish we could display posters IQ tests or even their age. I think there is a clear and distinguishable difference in the arguments for Jokic v Embiid. One has a lot of thought and the reason, the other is “tHe SiXeRs WoN mOrE gAmEs”

The argument for Embiid is rational. He's a great defender in addition to being a great post player who can space the game. His stats this year were gaudy. I prefer him as a player. But any argument that a player was "robbed" of the award is ludicrous. As you say, there really isn't a measure to argue that Jokic didn't deserve the award.

I agree. He’s a great player and I would have no problem if he or Giannis won. It just amazes me that people can’t think rationally and give credit to what Jokic did and their arguments are only team wins, race, playoffs or “he won last year”. That just doesn’t cut it.

[BelgradeNugget]

I really wish we could display posters IQ tests or even their age. I think there is a clear and distinguishable difference in the arguments for Jokic v Embiid. One has a lot of thought and the reason, the other is “tHe SiXeRs WoN mOrE gAmEs”

The argument for Embiid is rational. He's a great defender in addition to being a great post player who can space the game. His stats this year were gaudy. I prefer him as a player. But any argument that a player was "robbed" of the award is ludicrous. As you say, there really isn't a measure to argue that Jokic didn't deserve the award.

I agree. He’s a great player and I would have no problem if he or Giannis won. It just amazes me that people can’t think rationally and give credit to what Jokic did and their arguments are only team wins, race, playoffs or “he won last year”. That just doesn’t cut it.

You got it all

[GreatWhiteStiff]

There was a lot of discussion on RG about winning. Which player won more games? So I decided to look for it on nba.com. I used two criteria. 1st is ppg>22 to single out players who are generally considered top of the league. The other criteria is a little harder to understand for some people. A little bit advanced. It says "for player X to be rewarded with winning game, he must first participate in the game". Sorry if this is a little hard for some to understand. Here is the list of players and wins by their teams in games they played.

1. Devin Booker 56
2. Jayson Tatum 49
3. Nikola Jokic 46
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo 45
5. Joel Embiid 45
6. Stephen Curry 45
7. Karl-Anthony Towns 44
8. Luka Doncic 44
9. DeMar DeRozan 43
10. Jaylen Brown 43

Discuss

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional/?sort=W&dir=-1&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&CF=PTS*GE*22

That is **** hilarious. Jokic for the win. >Embiid >Curry >AlphabetMan

Of course Booker and Tatum are absolute tops haha.

[DrCoach]

One point that people arent bringing up is that Jokic had a better season this year than last seasons MVP