2021-22 RealGM All-Season Awards - Discussion Thread

[Doctor MJ]

Butler is going to make it really hard for people to leave him off their ballots if he keeps playing like this. Between the top 3 MVP candidates and the 4 remaining best players on the conference finals teams there will be 2 very hard cuts to make.

Butler is definitely in the category of guys who can jump up to the #1 spot in my ballot, but may end up missing my ballot altogether because he wasn't anywhere near it at the end of the regular season and didn't quite achieve enough in the playoffs to make me ignore that.

If Butler leads Miami to the finals seems a guarantee he'll make my ballot, but as is, he hasn't clinched it yet, and he won't necessarily get in there even if he's arguably the best player in the ECF.

[dontcalltimeout]

How are people dealing with players playing through injury? I'm thinking of Embiid who looked nowhere near as effective when he came back as he did in the regular season?

Tatum is really making a case for himself because of two-way impact. He ran out of gas in the second half last night, but he has an ability to be a terror on both ends in a way that's really rare.

Butler has been arguable the best player in the playoffs. I think everyone is waiting for him to cool off or hit a wall, but if Miami makes the finals I think he has to be heavily considered.

Doncic is a tough one to evaluate. The plus-minus numbers don't suggest he's doing anything special and I think Dallas is winning mostly with defense. I see Doncic as doing high-level floor raising but his abilities to make the right play enough and threaten the defense with his own scoring have proven to be a really resilient and useful playoff skills. My instinct is that Golden State will be able to adjust and handle Dallas a bit better than Phoenix, but if they don't...

Curry has been a little underwhelming this post-season, though his gravity has still been there. He's still drawing multiple defenders, getting face-guarded and denied far from the hoop, etc. Though he's played well on defense, he's also been sloppy with the ball. Tentatively, I have him third, but now would be a good time for him to elevate.

I have Antetokounmpo and Jokic first and second in some order, and I don't think that is likely to change.

[Doctor MJ]

How are people dealing with players playing through injury? I'm thinking of Embiid who looked nowhere near as effective when he came back as he did in the regular season?

In general, I try to avoid lowering a guy on my ballot for play in a particular playoff round relative to guys who didn't even get to that playoff round. So for example, if you had Embiid over Jokic in the regular season, I think there's a good case to be made for him have the edge now.

It's different if you see something in the playoffs that makes you re-evaluate that player fundamentally and you see him as worse than you did before.

For myself, I had Embiid in 5th after the regular season, and so even without him falling in my estimation as a result of the playoffs, it won't be hard for him to fall off my ballot.

[Texas Chuck]

Doncic is a tough one to evaluate. The plus-minus numbers don't suggest he's doing anything special and I think Dallas is winning mostly with defense. I see Doncic as doing high-level floor raising but his abilities to make the right play enough and threaten the defense with his own scoring have proven to be a really resilient and useful playoff skills. .

So in full disclosure I'm not a slave to plus/minus at all. And I'm a Mavs fan, so biased.

Do you see this as similar to say AI in 2001? Or maybe Derrick Rose in 2011? Where the defense is driving much of the success but it only works because they have these high volume offensive guys just good enough to provide support to the defense?

I mean I think Luka is a better offensive player than both of those guys, but for those who think the plus/minus is telling us that Luka doesn't have the lift his reputation suggests, this should be a parallel no?

[Doctor MJ]

Doncic is a tough one to evaluate. The plus-minus numbers don't suggest he's doing anything special and I think Dallas is winning mostly with defense. I see Doncic as doing high-level floor raising but his abilities to make the right play enough and threaten the defense with his own scoring have proven to be a really resilient and useful playoff skills. My instinct is that Golden State will be able to adjust and handle Dallas a bit better than Phoenix, but if they don't...

To be clear:

The regular season +/- for Luka is what's so pedestrian, not the playoffs, and this is something I've been harping on as a possibility since before the playoffs.

Best way I can characterize it is that it's not so much that Luka's not doing anything special in the regular season, but that he's mixing that special with tons of waste. Then the playoffs come, he's plays more, he plays more focused, and tries harder on defense, and all of sudden his +/- numbers look quite good. If others disagree with the assessment - like Chuck who knows the Mavs far better than me - they can chime in, but it doesn't surprise me at all that his +/- looks like a star's +/- in the playoffs. I'm only surprised at the regular season because I don't think we've ever seen a star blow off regular season impact like this before so consistently at a young age.

For me evaluating him on a POY then, he's definitely in that category of "If you beat enough other teams playing that real basketball in the playoffs, you're going to jump up rapidly." If he leads Dallas past all comers like he's been playing, I expect him to be my #1.

[Texas Chuck]

[like Chuck who knows the Mavs far better than me - they can chime in, but it doesn't surprise me at all that his +/- looks like a star's +/- in the playoffs. I'm only surprised at the regular season because I don't think we've ever seen a star blow off regular season impact like this before so consistently at a young age.

Doc, my take is, and I don't want to be insulting here, but that's an absurd description of what Luka is doing.

I mean how do you even blow off "impact"? You would have to be blowing off the games, and he's way too competitive to be doing that.

Now, some of your ideas as to why his impact isn't as high as it could/should be I think are potentially quite valid. His defensive effort wanes a lot, he wastes a lot of time and energy on the refs, he can be careless with the ball, and lazy with his shot selection.

But not because he's just blowing off games. He's still young, he clearly has extreme self-belief, and he has some bad habits he really needs to tighten up. But bad habits, and areas that need improvement does not equal blowing off games. And let's be honest, the organization hasn't held him very accountable because in 2022 you are recruiting your own stars every single day. Kidd called him out publicly in the Suns series and good on him for it. And Luka took it well. But that's no surprise because Luka always takes accountability. And regardless of what he truly believes, publicly he always credits every win to the team and blames every loss on himself.

[dontcalltimeout]

Doncic is a tough one to evaluate. The plus-minus numbers don't suggest he's doing anything special and I think Dallas is winning mostly with defense. I see Doncic as doing high-level floor raising but his abilities to make the right play enough and threaten the defense with his own scoring have proven to be a really resilient and useful playoff skills. .

So in full disclosure I'm not a slave to plus/minus at all. And I'm a Mavs fan, so biased.

Do you see this as similar to say AI in 2001? Or maybe Derrick Rose in 2011? Where the defense is driving much of the success but it only works because they have these high volume offensive guys just good enough to provide support to the defense?

I mean I think Luka is a better offensive player than both of those guys, but for those who think the plus/minus is telling us that Luka doesn't have the lift his reputation suggests, this should be a parallel no?

I agree that Luka is a better offensive player, though he's a worse defender than Rose. I think what's different in that comparison is that the supporting case in Dallas is unique. A lot of them are probably even more limited than the 2011 Bulls guys, but they excel in their roles on defense and in their ability to hit open threes. (For the record, I think highly of a lot of those guys - DFS, Kleber, Bullock). So, Dallas doesn't have the offensive ceiling that the Rose and AI teams had.

So, then why the lukewarm plus-minus numbers? As a Mavs fan you probably have better theories, but: I think that Brunson and Dinwiddie are really good at picking up the load when Luka is out in the regular season (and against Utah). I think the team gets more involved when Luka is out which helps them survive on offense, and the defense gets better.

Now, Luka's on-off looks a lot better this year in the playoffs. I think we can argue that the things he does cannot be replaced in the playoffs like it can in the regular season. But I also think Dallas played two teams that were rigid in their approaches and couldn't or wouldn't adjust, which is why i'm curious to see if GS can come up with some answers.

[falcolombardi]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

sometines ultra great pmus minus metrics get diminished (chris paul) but with others (luka) weaker plus minus metrics are used as the main evidence of a issie with his impact

it feels like it doesnt get applied equally with all cases, sometimes great plus minus metrics dont mean a player is that greay, others weak plus minus metrics are indisputable evidence a player is not thay great

[dontcalltimeout]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

Different people use plus-minus metrics differently.

Different people apply context differently.

[Texas Chuck]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

Different people use plus-minus metrics differently.

Different people apply context differently.

We've had some of the same posters though use +/- "against" Luka because his numbers are poor. And then hand wave away how great Paul's +/- numbers have been.

I think that's what he's getting at.

I mean I know the explanation. Those posters have reached their conclusion on players based on whatever and are now finding a way to explain their views to themselves and to the rest of us. They aren't trying to be inconsistent and don't ever realize they are doing in most cases I would imagine. But it does get frustrating when we see it seemingly as the basis of most importance for some players and then totally insignificant for others.

But we all have inconsistencies like this. It's one of the reasons I try and be as open as I can with my biases and its one of the reasons you essentially never see me make a stats based case for any player. Part of that of course is this is a game with 10 players on the court, endless player combinations, and I just don't believe we are as good at isolating individual impact in the more advanced +/- stats as their creators think. And as hidden as some of their formulas are, and the fact that more than one of them has admitted to changing their formula because they didn't like the results.... And of course raw +/- is just data. So it is useful. But it also lacks context. And again, we see it get twisted to suit purposes far too often for my liking.

I try and focus on what happens when a player is on the court. I do not have his team being effective or tragic without him as a reflection on him as much as it is a reflection on the GM and how they constructed a roster, and on a coach and how they manage rotations and minutes without the star.

[tsherkin]

I try and focus on what happens when a player is on the court. I do not have his team being effective or tragic without him as a reflection on him as much as it is a reflection on the GM and how they constructed a roster, and on a coach and how they manage rotations and minutes without the star.

And we do work with some implicit myths and biases as a collective a lot of the time. There's this notion that lifting a bad team to mediocre/decent level is more impressive than bolstering a good team into a contender, and stuff like that, yeah? A lot of like "hurr, solo dude do all in team sport, good!" type of stuff. And okay, I'm being a little subjective about that particular brand, but it illustrates the notion that you outlined rather nicely: we do all come to things with a different view on what matters and what is good and what is the end goal past winning the title in the first place, right? And we kind of all need to, as well, so we have these diverse opinions to create some of then more interesting discussions that we do end up seeing.

[Doctor MJ]

[like Chuck who knows the Mavs far better than me - they can chime in, but it doesn't surprise me at all that his +/- looks like a star's +/- in the playoffs. I'm only surprised at the regular season because I don't think we've ever seen a star blow off regular season impact like this before so consistently at a young age.

Doc, my take is, and I don't want to be insulting here, but that's an absurd description of what Luka is doing.

I mean how do you even blow off "impact"? You would have to be blowing off the games, and he's way too competitive to be doing that.

Now, some of your ideas as to why his impact isn't as high as it could/should be I think are potentially quite valid. His defensive effort wanes a lot, he wastes a lot of time and energy on the refs, he can be careless with the ball, and lazy with his shot selection.

But not because he's just blowing off games. He's still young, he clearly has extreme self-belief, and he has some bad habits he really needs to tighten up. But bad habits, and areas that need improvement does not equal blowing off games. And let's be honest, the organization hasn't held him very accountable because in 2022 you are recruiting your own stars every single day. Kidd called him out publicly in the Suns series and good on him for it. And Luka took it well. But that's no surprise because Luka always takes accountability. And regardless of what he truly believes, publicly he always credits every win to the team and blames every loss on himself.

Appreciate the response, here's my question then:

Are you surprised that he's gone from being +0.2 On/Off in the regular season to +18.2 in the playoffs?

I ask because if he's not blowing off the regular season, I don't see why you'd expect something like this...but I was warning people about this specific type of thing for months.

Re: bad habits does not mean blowing off games. It does if you're capable of turning off those bad habits whenever you want.

Re: organization hasn't held him very accountable. I don't see how that's a defense. Feels more like an explanation for how he was able to blow things off.

Last thing I want to emphasize here - because people have this impression I hate Luka - the reality is that legacies are made in the playoffs, so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Luka locking in for in the playoffs. He can absolutely become GOAT like this if he's good enough.

I just argue vehemently against confusing this with being a regular season MVP.

Here's another question to consider:

I've noted that Luka's now been in the league 4 years without leading his team in +/-.

Dirk led his Mavs in +/- 14 times.

Do you think Luka is likely to match that?

I've seen enough to say it's basically a given that he won't. He may well end up way ahead of Dirk on my GOAT list, but it's hard for me to fathom him being the consistent regular season value-guy that Dirk was, because if he were, I think we'd have seen something different by now.

[dontcalltimeout]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

Different people use plus-minus metrics differently.

Different people apply context differently.

We've had some of the same posters though use +/- "against" Luka because his numbers are poor. And then hand wave away how great Paul's +/- numbers have been.

I think that's what he's getting at.

I mean I know the explanation. Those posters have reached their conclusion on players based on whatever and are now finding a way to explain their views to themselves and to the rest of us. They aren't trying to be inconsistent and don't ever realize they are doing in most cases I would imagine. But it does get frustrating when we see it seemingly as the basis of most importance for some players and then totally insignificant for others.

But we all have inconsistencies like this. It's one of the reasons I try and be as open as I can with my biases and its one of the reasons you essentially never see me make a stats based case for any player. Part of that of course is this is a game with 10 players on the court, endless player combinations, and I just don't believe we are as good at isolating individual impact in the more advanced +/- stats as their creators think. And as hidden as some of their formulas are, and the fact that more than one of them has admitted to changing their formula because they didn't like the results.... And of course raw +/- is just data. So it is useful. But it also lacks context. And again, we see it get twisted to suit purposes far too often for my liking.

I try and focus on what happens when a player is on the court. I do not have his team being effective or tragic without him as a reflection on him as much as it is a reflection on the GM and how they constructed a roster, and on a coach and how they manage rotations and minutes without the star.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I think a lot of times contradictory opinions are ascribed to a group when they actually just belong to different people articulating them at different times.

For example, I haven't written anything about Chris Paul recently, and I also wasn't saying that Luka's lower-than-expected plus-minus means his impact is suspect? But it does mean there is something to suss out. Especially when I'm comparing him to players that have some strong indicators that he lacks (in the regular season). Personally, at least, I'm thinking about where Luka lands in the top ten or top five players in the league, not like whether he's top 50.

The way I see it, in basketball raw plus-minus just says whether and by how much a team outscored the other team when a player was on the court. It doesn't tell us what that player's role was. It is left to us to figure out how much is correlation and how much is causation. I'm much more comfortable using three-year or even five-year studies that feature players in different contexts; I believe a robust sample can indicate how well a player excelled in his role. For me that's not where analysis ends though, but it can be a good place to start.

[Doctor MJ]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

sometines ultra great pmus minus metrics get diminished (chris paul) but with others (luka) weaker plus minus metrics are used as the main evidence of a issie with his impact

it feels like it doesnt get applied equally with all cases, sometimes great plus minus metrics dont mean a player is that greay, others weak plus minus metrics are indisputable evidence a player is not thay great

Confusion is understandable in part because different people use the data differently.

Speaking just for myself:

The issue with Paul's +/- data isn't that it's not meaningful but that people at times take it as if that's the end of the story - whether because that's their own process, or because they are straw-manning someone like myself. You can have great cumulative +/- data and still prove less effective over the course of a series, and this is what I see from Paul wherever I look at the series where - when I watched - I thought "Wow, seems like the other team figured out Paul".

None of that means Paul isn't an elite player, but when we're doing comparisons between players, generally we're talking about relatively subtle differences and dwelling on them above all the things that are just plain awesome on both sides of the comparison.

With Luka, what I've been pointing out is the mediocre regular season impact when folks are focusing on regular season awards, while I'll emphasizing that I'm not skeptical of him in the playoffs.

So in a real way, what we're seeing here is two players with opposite problems which can both be detected using the same type of data.

[tsherkin]

I've noted that Luka's now been in the league 4 years without leading his team in +/-.

Dirk led his Mavs in +/- 14 times.

Do you think Luka is likely to match that?

I've seen enough to say it's basically a given that he won't. He may well end up way ahead of Dirk on my GOAT list, but it's hard for me to fathom him being the consistent regular season value-guy that Dirk was, because if he were, I think we'd have seen something different by now.

We'll have to see what he does with his turnovers and his relative scoring efficiency. Dirk was a low-turnover guy and elite in scoring efficiency, which definitely helped. Obviously, this is a simplistic look at it, but those are major points of inefficacy for him, particularly in the RS. 15.1% TOV and 101 TS+ there (57.3% TS). 13.8% TOV and 58.4% TS in the playoffs. He's a .156 WS/48 in the RS and .154 WS/48 in the playoffs... but .206 this postseason (and over 3 fewer games than he's previously played in the playoffs, at that). So, just some food for thought. Granted, +/- in all its permutations is more complicated than just raw turnovers and TS% and so forth, but they are notable contrasts between him and Dirk.

Fun times, though. An intriguing discussion to have, and then there's the whole "he's over 40% USG in the playoffs, so that TOV% means a little less than it might."

[Texas Chuck]

Appreciate the response, here's my question then:

Are you surprised that he's gone from being +0.2 On/Off in the regular season to +18.2 in the playoffs?

I ask because if he's not blowing off the regular season, I don't see why you'd expect something like this...but I was warning people about this specific type of thing for months.

Re: bad habits does not mean blowing off games. It does if you're capable of turning off those bad habits whenever you want.

Re: organization hasn't held him very accountable. I don't see how that's a defense. Feels more like an explanation for how he was able to blow things off.

Last thing I want to emphasize here - because people have this impression I hate Luka - the reality is that legacies are made in the playoffs, so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Luka locking in for in the playoffs. He can absolutely become GOAT like this if he's good enough.

I just argue vehemently against confusing this with being a regular season MVP.

Here's another question to consider:

I've noted that Luka's now been in the league 4 years without leading his team in +/-.

Dirk led his Mavs in +/- 14 times.

Do you think Luka is likely to match that?

I've seen enough to say it's basically a given that he won't. He may well end up way ahead of Dirk on my GOAT list, but it's hard for me to fathom him being the consistent regular season value-guy that Dirk was, because if he were, I think we'd have seen something different by now.

I think we need to start here: I am not arguing Luka should be MVP. He shouldn't. I think he's way better than those who look at his roughly even =/- and say Jayson Tatum's incredible +/- and conclude that its insulting to even mention Luka in Tatum's class. I clearly think his regular season impact is higher than you do as well. But that's fine.

So please don't think of this as my Luka defense for POY. He's in the discussion for the ballot for me, but I had 2 guys in serious consideration for the top spot in Jokic and Giannis and nobody's playoffs has changed that for me yet.

But I do disagree that Luka played "poorly" in the RS because his playoff +/- looks so much better than his RS +/-. I think that's too simplistic.

So yeah the organization not holding him accountable enough isn't meant as a defense, but an explanation for why some of the bad habits aren't ironed out yet. I have it as a clear negative for both Luka and the organization and I hope the new regime feels secure enough to challenge him more.


And finally I can't answer the Dirk question. I think Dirk is a hard mountain to match. But I also don't care who leads the team in +/- as long as they are successful.

[tsherkin]

And finally I can't answer the Dirk question. I think Dirk is a hard mountain to match. But I also don't care who leads the team in +/- as long as they are successful.

It's what you might term a "First World problem" to have to choose between those two, lol.

[sp6r=underrated]

i am always a bit confused how plus-minus metrics are used

sometines ultra great pmus minus metrics get diminished (chris paul) but with others (luka) weaker plus minus metrics are used as the main evidence of a issie with his impact

it feels like it doesnt get applied equally with all cases, sometimes great plus minus metrics dont mean a player is that greay, others weak plus minus metrics are indisputable evidence a player is not thay great

My hesitancy with plus/minus is that we need an enormous sample size and I think even full 4 rounds of PS data isn't sufficient. If a player's box score stats look very similar in the RS & PS but I see a large difference in +/- I think there is a good chance we're looking at noise.

[eminence]

I mean, I feel like we know the highly probable answer on if Luka will match Dirks plus/minus run. It's no. Who else has 10+ season team leads? Likely LeBron, maybe Duncan/KG? The list is certainly not a long one.

I am also not much into a PO run +/- data, but there's at least some evidence Luka is bringing it more in the PO and is also fairly strongly evidenced in the box-score.

[Doctor MJ]

Appreciate the response, here's my question then:

Are you surprised that he's gone from being +0.2 On/Off in the regular season to +18.2 in the playoffs?

I ask because if he's not blowing off the regular season, I don't see why you'd expect something like this...but I was warning people about this specific type of thing for months.

Re: bad habits does not mean blowing off games. It does if you're capable of turning off those bad habits whenever you want.

Re: organization hasn't held him very accountable. I don't see how that's a defense. Feels more like an explanation for how he was able to blow things off.

Last thing I want to emphasize here - because people have this impression I hate Luka - the reality is that legacies are made in the playoffs, so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Luka locking in for in the playoffs. He can absolutely become GOAT like this if he's good enough.

I just argue vehemently against confusing this with being a regular season MVP.

Here's another question to consider:

I've noted that Luka's now been in the league 4 years without leading his team in +/-.

Dirk led his Mavs in +/- 14 times.

Do you think Luka is likely to match that?

I've seen enough to say it's basically a given that he won't. He may well end up way ahead of Dirk on my GOAT list, but it's hard for me to fathom him being the consistent regular season value-guy that Dirk was, because if he were, I think we'd have seen something different by now.

I think we need to start here: I am not arguing Luka should be MVP. He shouldn't. I think he's way better than those who look at his roughly even =/- and say Jayson Tatum's incredible +/- and conclude that its insulting to even mention Luka in Tatum's class. I clearly think his regular season impact is higher than you do as well. But that's fine.

So please don't think of this as my Luka defense for POY. He's in the discussion for the ballot for me, but I had 2 guys in serious consideration for the top spot in Jokic and Giannis and nobody's playoffs has changed that for me yet.

But I do disagree that Luka played "poorly" in the RS because his playoff +/- looks so much better than his RS +/-. I think that's too simplistic.

So yeah the organization not holding him accountable enough isn't meant as a defense, but an explanation for why some of the bad habits aren't ironed out yet. I have it as a clear negative for both Luka and the organization and I hope the new regime feels secure enough to challenge him more.


And finally I can't answer the Dirk question. I think Dirk is a hard mountain to match. But I also don't care who leads the team in +/- as long as they are successful.

So I think the key thing for me is this:

I'm not assuming you care, but I am asking you what your explanation is for what's causing the data to look like it does.

I kinda feel like you might say "I don't care so it's not important to me to explain it", in which case we're at an impasse, but to be clear:

I think it's fine for anyone to say that from a POY or broader legacy consideration not to care about regular season stuff in comparison to the post-season stuff, I just think that discrepant data gives us questions to chew on.

Either it's a coincidence that Luka's numbers seem to look a lot better in the playoffs despite tougher competition, or it isn't.

Perhaps it is coincidence, but if it isn't, then what do we think is causing the discrepancy?