NBA MVP Discussion Thread 2023-24 (Part 3: Son of Daughter of MVP thread)

[CD_41]

Double post.

[dygaction]

There are 9 teams in the league who are .600 or better.

6 of the 9 teams have 2 all stars.

The exceptions are Thunder (33-15), Nuggets (33-16), Cavs (30-16).

In the poll Jokic is leading, SGA is second. Mitchell (eastern conference player of the month) isn't even one of the 16 players listed.

I'm not saying he's leading the MVP race, but he should be a heck of a lot higher than he is. Not only is he one of the few without an all star teammate, the cavs have had the most starter games missed with injuries.

Starter games missed by teams over .600 (Clippers and Knicks might not be completely accurate because of their trades, I used the teams current depth charts)
Cavs 56
Sixers 45
Knicks 35
Celtics 25
Nuggets 24
Timberwolves 15
Clippers 21
Bucks 11
Thunder 9

Mitchell is the primary reason they are right there with the top teams despite all of the starter games missed.

jalen williams, murray and allen deserve to be all-star for team record

instead we have play-in teams or even lottery teams in all-star

all star players should be those that fans want to see. Would you be super upset if Wenbanyama makes it next season with 25/12/4b but team even out of play-in?

[CD_41]

There are 9 teams in the league who are .600 or better.

6 of the 9 teams have 2 all stars.

The exceptions are Thunder (33-15), Nuggets (33-16), Cavs (30-16).

In the poll Jokic is leading, SGA is second. Mitchell (eastern conference player of the month) isn't even one of the 16 players listed.

I'm not saying he's leading the MVP race, but he should be a heck of a lot higher than he is. Not only is he one of the few without an all star teammate, the cavs have had the most starter games missed with injuries.

Starter games missed by teams over .600 (Clippers and Knicks might not be completely accurate because of their trades, I used the teams current depth charts)
Cavs 56
Sixers 45
Knicks 35
Celtics 25
Nuggets 24
Timberwolves 15
Clippers 21
Bucks 11
Thunder 9

Mitchell is the primary reason they are right there with the top teams despite all of the starter games missed.

jalen williams, murray and allen deserve to be all-star for team record

instead we have play-in teams or even lottery teams in all-star

You must really be 12-14 years old.
You don't seem to have any grasp on how to balance team record and individual performance.

If player A has 16-5-5 statline and his team is 40-12 he should be an Allstar over player B who has a 17-6-6 statline, but whose teams is 12-40.

BUT if player C (Anthony Davis, your lottery guy) has a 25-12-4 statline and his team is 25-25 he will be an Allstar over player D (Jalen Williams) who has a 19-4-5 statline even though his team is 33-15.

You know why? Because Davis has a much higher impact on winning and also less good players around him than Williams, who contributes less in comparison and plays also on a more stacked OKC team.

Let's break it down for you, so you'll understand this:

My friends and I sell candy in our hometown but we don't sell that much candy. But, me personally, I'm crazy good at selling candy. Everyone buys from me, like 95% of the time.
You and your friends are also selling candy, and you guys sell a solid amount of candy. But you are just an ok candy salesman.

Now, there is a big party where the best people for selling candy are crowned. And guess what, they pick me over you!

What I´m trying to say is: We get that than you're an OKC fan.
But take your fan glasses off from time to time and see the world as it is.

[Doctor MJ]

Iconic and ironic the same poster that idolize KG and give him a pass double the amount 12 years on a team where the roster's been in as much turmoil as any team in the league.

But the point is that with Garnett demonstrated ample evidence of this sort of impact - and in fact the bad situation was used as a reason to downplay the impact based on the assumption that playing with worse players should make it easier to separate from them.

If you think folks are mindlessly holding it against Luka that there's been turnover and turmoil, you've got to understand that we have data to account for all of these things and we're bringing this up precisely because after we do this Luka still doesn't look anywhere near as good as his reputation.

I'm also going to quote myself from the PC board "New Engelmann" thread which has career rankings for every player in the +/- era over their entire career by RAPM. Not to take the explicit ranking that seriously but this is what I said in terms of Luka being ranked 95th:

-Doncic, honestly, this is going to sound damning with feint praise, but making the Top 100 on this list, and doing so having to rely on your own shoulders as the foundation for your team's context, is a pretty significant accomplishment by general standards. Doing so while still being under 25 in a sport where heady players can peak at 30+? All the more so.

So yeah, making that Top 100 is absolutely not nothing, but it's just not the same as what we see from certain other guys - most notably Jokic who takes the #1 spot on the list with LeBron at #2.

The +/-, like any other stats, has its context and not a one for all solution. For example, Jokic has the best +/- by far as the Nuggets have the best starting lineup. If somehow they pull out a trade, Jamal Murray + KCP + Reggie Jackson for Embiid + filler. Now you play Embiid off the bench sub Jokic, both of them would have much worse +/-. This was the terrible roster construction of Mavs, logging more on backcourt and having terrible and injury prone front court.
Also I and my college 4 roommates can drag LeBron/MJ/Jokic to negative +/- on a 8-player rotation, all three of them regardless coaching or timing.

There is a reasons season after season Luka was predicted MVP favorite, because people know him as that level of a player. The companies set the lines with real $.

The PC board "New Engelmann" thread you cited is confusing, but when I see Jokic/James/CP3/KG at 1/2/3/4, I know it will be popular for that board, maybe rightfully so. 95 for Luka might be difficult to interpret as his 24. However, with Wade at 107, Kobe at 112, and Dwight 134, far behind Hornacek at 20, Caruso at 33, and Towns at 36, I can only envy the courage of the OP and posters for further discussions without worrying its validity or usefulness.

Your Embiid point is a good one, but the question then becomes:

Who was Doncic's Embiid? I'd imagine you're likely to say Brunson & Kyrie given the backcourt reference, but of course, Doncic has the body of a power forward. The idea that Doncic has been easier to replace not because they got someone who is roughly the same size as him but because the Mavs known for their bad decisions in these years still managed to largely replace Doncic with much smaller men raises the question of how exactly Doncic is contributing value.

Then there's the matter the matter that the algorithm has gotten to see these players on other teams. When Brunson does great in New York, that retroactively helps Doncic in these algorithms, and similarly Kyrie already being Kyrie before he came to Dallas should help Doncic as well relative to what we'd expect simply by looking at raw +/-.

And then there's the matter that you're bringing up Embiid who is a top tier MVP candidate when healthy, while Doncic is being compared with guys never considered MVP caliber players. So if these other guys are keeping Doncic from looking like a value over replacement, it's because he's not actually much better than those guys, and to be an MVP level guy, you should be.

Re: reason Luka was predicted MVP favorite season after season. Yes, because he put up big production numbers in his 2nd year, which made people expect that with further leaps he'd be able to lift his teams to a top seed without much of a stretch. And he has ended up not a major MVP candidate in any of those years because this hasn't been true.

I understand you see this as him playing like an MVP level player but getting unlucky with team.
I see him as a guy who utterly hogs the ball and ensures that he's always going to get huge production numbers regardless of whether they represent a massive value-add compared to other approaches the team could use.

Re: New Engelmann,,,without worrying about validity or usefulness. Okay, so we're getting condescending are we?

Look, I'm keeping the data analysis as simple as I can so that as many people can understand it as possible - what you might call "dumbing things down" - though it's not intended to be disrespectful. I use the simplest stuff I can until that's insufficient. I'd recommend anyone else do the same thing if their goal is to communicate effectively.

Of course the problem with that is that some people want to score rhetorical points off the simplified version rather than pushing the conversation toward respectful nuance...and so here we are.

Want me to get into more detail about the Englemann stat? Literally, just go over to the thread on the PC board where I've already made such posts.

Want to just keep strawmanning people who disagree with you about the guy who plays for your team? Well, then don't change a thing.

[losmi]

Iconic and ironic the same poster that idolize KG and give him a pass double the amount 12 years on a team where the roster's been in as much turmoil as any team in the league.

But the point is that with Garnett demonstrated ample evidence of this sort of impact - and in fact the bad situation was used as a reason to downplay the impact based on the assumption that playing with worse players should make it easier to separate from them.

If you think folks are mindlessly holding it against Luka that there's been turnover and turmoil, you've got to understand that we have data to account for all of these things and we're bringing this up precisely because after we do this Luka still doesn't look anywhere near as good as his reputation.

I'm also going to quote myself from the PC board "New Engelmann" thread which has career rankings for every player in the +/- era over their entire career by RAPM. Not to take the explicit ranking that seriously but this is what I said in terms of Luka being ranked 95th:

-Doncic, honestly, this is going to sound damning with feint praise, but making the Top 100 on this list, and doing so having to rely on your own shoulders as the foundation for your team's context, is a pretty significant accomplishment by general standards. Doing so while still being under 25 in a sport where heady players can peak at 30+? All the more so.

So yeah, making that Top 100 is absolutely not nothing, but it's just not the same as what we see from certain other guys - most notably Jokic who takes the #1 spot on the list with LeBron at #2.

I just wonder why Nba champions is not crowned after RS? The best +/- should win it all. And it would be a lot more logical to crowned the team with +/- than using + /- for measuring impact of a single player.

But I have to admit it's absolutely stupid using time for talking about stat nobody cares about outside few nerds here. Luka is still making first All Nba team every year and if miracle happens and Kyrie starts playing, there is outside chance for Mavs to finish high enough for Luka having a chance for MVP. And you can be sure not a single voter will look at +/-.

I've seen +/- in quite a few of articles where voters elaborate on their decisions. Here's one for example:

https://sports.yahoo.com/2022-23-nba-end-season-150825771.html

It's a widely used stat, I'm not sure what made you thinking that data that measures on-court impact is some nerdy stat.

[Bob8]

But the point is that with Garnett demonstrated ample evidence of this sort of impact - and in fact the bad situation was used as a reason to downplay the impact based on the assumption that playing with worse players should make it easier to separate from them.

If you think folks are mindlessly holding it against Luka that there's been turnover and turmoil, you've got to understand that we have data to account for all of these things and we're bringing this up precisely because after we do this Luka still doesn't look anywhere near as good as his reputation.

I'm also going to quote myself from the PC board "New Engelmann" thread which has career rankings for every player in the +/- era over their entire career by RAPM. Not to take the explicit ranking that seriously but this is what I said in terms of Luka being ranked 95th:



So yeah, making that Top 100 is absolutely not nothing, but it's just not the same as what we see from certain other guys - most notably Jokic who takes the #1 spot on the list with LeBron at #2.

I just wonder why Nba champions is not crowned after RS? The best +/- should win it all. And it would be a lot more logical to crowned the team with +/- than using + /- for measuring impact of a single player.

But I have to admit it's absolutely stupid using time for talking about stat nobody cares about outside few nerds here. Luka is still making first All Nba team every year and if miracle happens and Kyrie starts playing, there is outside chance for Mavs to finish high enough for Luka having a chance for MVP. And you can be sure not a single voter will look at +/-.

I've seen +/- in quite a few of articles where voters elaborate on their decisions. Here's one for example:

https://sports.yahoo.com/2022-23-nba-end-season-150825771.html

It's a widely used stat, I'm not sure what made you thinking that data that measures on-court impact is some nerdy stat.

Luka being voted 4x in a row in first All Nba team.

[dygaction]

But the point is that with Garnett demonstrated ample evidence of this sort of impact - and in fact the bad situation was used as a reason to downplay the impact based on the assumption that playing with worse players should make it easier to separate from them.

If you think folks are mindlessly holding it against Luka that there's been turnover and turmoil, you've got to understand that we have data to account for all of these things and we're bringing this up precisely because after we do this Luka still doesn't look anywhere near as good as his reputation.

I'm also going to quote myself from the PC board "New Engelmann" thread which has career rankings for every player in the +/- era over their entire career by RAPM. Not to take the explicit ranking that seriously but this is what I said in terms of Luka being ranked 95th:



So yeah, making that Top 100 is absolutely not nothing, but it's just not the same as what we see from certain other guys - most notably Jokic who takes the #1 spot on the list with LeBron at #2.

The +/-, like any other stats, has its context and not a one for all solution. For example, Jokic has the best +/- by far as the Nuggets have the best starting lineup. If somehow they pull out a trade, Jamal Murray + KCP + Reggie Jackson for Embiid + filler. Now you play Embiid off the bench sub Jokic, both of them would have much worse +/-. This was the terrible roster construction of Mavs, logging more on backcourt and having terrible and injury prone front court.
Also I and my college 4 roommates can drag LeBron/MJ/Jokic to negative +/- on a 8-player rotation, all three of them regardless coaching or timing.

There is a reasons season after season Luka was predicted MVP favorite, because people know him as that level of a player. The companies set the lines with real $.

The PC board "New Engelmann" thread you cited is confusing, but when I see Jokic/James/CP3/KG at 1/2/3/4, I know it will be popular for that board, maybe rightfully so. 95 for Luka might be difficult to interpret as his 24. However, with Wade at 107, Kobe at 112, and Dwight 134, far behind Hornacek at 20, Caruso at 33, and Towns at 36, I can only envy the courage of the OP and posters for further discussions without worrying its validity or usefulness.

Your Embiid point is a good one, but the question then becomes:

Who was Doncic's Embiid? I'd imagine you're likely to say Brunson & Kyrie given the backcourt reference, but of course, Doncic has the body of a power forward. The idea that Doncic has been easier to replace not because they got someone who is roughly the same size as him but because the Mavs known for their bad decisions in these years still managed to largely replace Doncic with much smaller men raises the question of how exactly Doncic is contributing value.

Then there's the matter the matter that the algorithm has gotten to see these players on other teams. When Brunson does great in New York, that retroactively helps Doncic in these algorithms, and similarly Kyrie already being Kyrie before he came to Dallas should help Doncic as well relative to what we'd expect simply by looking at raw +/-.

And then there's the matter that you're bringing up Embiid who is a top tier MVP candidate when healthy, while Doncic is being compared with guys never considered MVP caliber players. So if these other guys are keeping Doncic from looking like a value over replacement, it's because he's not actually much better than those guys, and to be an MVP level guy, you should be.

Re: reason Luka was predicted MVP favorite season after season. Yes, because he put up big production numbers in his 2nd year, which made people expect that with further leaps he'd be able to lift his teams to a top seed without much of a stretch. And he has ended up not a major MVP candidate in any of those years because this hasn't been true.

I understand you see this as him playing like an MVP level player but getting unlucky with team.
I see him as a guy who utterly hogs the ball and ensures that he's always going to get huge production numbers regardless of whether they represent a massive value-add compared to other approaches the team could use.

Re: New Engelmann,,,without worrying about validity or usefulness. Okay, so we're getting condescending are we?

Look, I'm keeping the data analysis as simple as I can so that as many people can understand it as possible - what you might call "dumbing things down" - though it's not intended to be disrespectful. I use the simplest stuff I can until that's insufficient. I'd recommend anyone else do the same thing if their goal is to communicate effectively.

Of course the problem with that is that some people want to score rhetorical points off the simplified version rather than pushing the conversation toward respectful nuance...and so here we are.

Want me to get into more detail about the Englemann stat? Literally, just go over to the thread on the PC board where I've already made such posts.

Want to just keep strawmanning people who disagree with you about the guy who plays for your team? Well, then don't change a thing.

At the end of the day it is all about people find things to support their belief. The high usage thing can be considered as cause or as effect. Some people blamed him for hogging the 73 points at >90TS% and help worrying who would want to play with him.

No offense on the New Engelmann, but when I see Kobe and Wade are behind, I don't know whether it really matters where Luka ends up.

[QPR]

If they stay on this course he should have a chance to win it, for a guy who's 6ft, it's quite AMAZING, what he's doing.

The Knicks are certainly hot right now. They still have a worse record than OKC, Denver and Milwaukee though, and it's not like those teams are going to fall away.

What is Brunson's narrative other than being an underdog and likeable?

He's value to the team, if they have one of the top 4 records, in the league, should he not get considered?

I don't think he should be considered over the top three, no. I just don't see any argument that doesn't draw on recency bias and likeability.

[Bob8]

But the point is that with Garnett demonstrated ample evidence of this sort of impact - and in fact the bad situation was used as a reason to downplay the impact based on the assumption that playing with worse players should make it easier to separate from them.

If you think folks are mindlessly holding it against Luka that there's been turnover and turmoil, you've got to understand that we have data to account for all of these things and we're bringing this up precisely because after we do this Luka still doesn't look anywhere near as good as his reputation.

I'm also going to quote myself from the PC board "New Engelmann" thread which has career rankings for every player in the +/- era over their entire career by RAPM. Not to take the explicit ranking that seriously but this is what I said in terms of Luka being ranked 95th:



So yeah, making that Top 100 is absolutely not nothing, but it's just not the same as what we see from certain other guys - most notably Jokic who takes the #1 spot on the list with LeBron at #2.

The +/-, like any other stats, has its context and not a one for all solution. For example, Jokic has the best +/- by far as the Nuggets have the best starting lineup. If somehow they pull out a trade, Jamal Murray + KCP + Reggie Jackson for Embiid + filler. Now you play Embiid off the bench sub Jokic, both of them would have much worse +/-. This was the terrible roster construction of Mavs, logging more on backcourt and having terrible and injury prone front court.
Also I and my college 4 roommates can drag LeBron/MJ/Jokic to negative +/- on a 8-player rotation, all three of them regardless coaching or timing.

There is a reasons season after season Luka was predicted MVP favorite, because people know him as that level of a player. The companies set the lines with real $.

The PC board "New Engelmann" thread you cited is confusing, but when I see Jokic/James/CP3/KG at 1/2/3/4, I know it will be popular for that board, maybe rightfully so. 95 for Luka might be difficult to interpret as his 24. However, with Wade at 107, Kobe at 112, and Dwight 134, far behind Hornacek at 20, Caruso at 33, and Towns at 36, I can only envy the courage of the OP and posters for further discussions without worrying its validity or usefulness.

Your Embiid point is a good one, but the question then becomes:

Who was Doncic's Embiid? I'd imagine you're likely to say Brunson & Kyrie given the backcourt reference, but of course, Doncic has the body of a power forward. The idea that Doncic has been easier to replace not because they got someone who is roughly the same size as him but because the Mavs known for their bad decisions in these years still managed to largely replace Doncic with much smaller men raises the question of how exactly Doncic is contributing value.

Then there's the matter the matter that the algorithm has gotten to see these players on other teams. When Brunson does great in New York, that retroactively helps Doncic in these algorithms, and similarly Kyrie already being Kyrie before he came to Dallas should help Doncic as well relative to what we'd expect simply by looking at raw +/-.

And then there's the matter that you're bringing up Embiid who is a top tier MVP candidate when healthy, while Doncic is being compared with guys never considered MVP caliber players. So if these other guys are keeping Doncic from looking like a value over replacement, it's because he's not actually much better than those guys, and to be an MVP level guy, you should be.

Re: reason Luka was predicted MVP favorite season after season. Yes, because he put up big production numbers in his 2nd year, which made people expect that with further leaps he'd be able to lift his teams to a top seed without much of a stretch. And he has ended up not a major MVP candidate in any of those years because this hasn't been true.

I understand you see this as him playing like an MVP level player but getting unlucky with team.
I see him as a guy who utterly hogs the ball and ensures that he's always going to get huge production numbers regardless of whether they represent a massive value-add compared to other approaches the team could use.

Re: New Engelmann,,,without worrying about validity or usefulness. Okay, so we're getting condescending are we?

Look, I'm keeping the data analysis as simple as I can so that as many people can understand it as possible - what you might call "dumbing things down" - though it's not intended to be disrespectful. I use the simplest stuff I can until that's insufficient. I'd recommend anyone else do the same thing if their goal is to communicate effectively.

Of course the problem with that is that some people want to score rhetorical points off the simplified version rather than pushing the conversation toward respectful nuance...and so here we are.

Want me to get into more detail about the Englemann stat? Literally, just go over to the thread on the PC board where I've already made such posts.

Want to just keep strawmanning people who disagree with you about the guy who plays for your team? Well, then don't change a thing.

Tell me, if Luka wins Nba ring with those pedestrian +/- data, would you reconsider what you're talking about or you will say that Dwight Powell with a lot better +/- and 4/4 counting stats is the reason for Mavs winning?

[Doctor MJ]

At the end of the day it is all about people find things to support their belief. The high usage thing can be considered as cause or as effect. Some people blamed him for hogging the 73 points at >90TS% and help worrying who would want to play with him.

No offense on the New Engelmann, but when I see Kobe and Wade are behind, I don't know whether it really matters where Luka ends up.

A good analyst is always trying to use data to draw conclusions rather than use data to support their beliefs.

Re: high usage can be considered a cause or an effect. It's a choice on Luka's part that he makes with how he plays. It's not like he's been playing his entire NBA career under the thumb of some coach he follows without question - Luka has dictated how the Mavs play basically since he began much like LeBron did. It is what it is, it's just that we never got the same signs of monstrous impact for Luka that we got from LeBron.

Re: when I see Kobe and Wade... I mean, it's pretty simple. It's effectively a career average metric, and these are guys who had some ugly years at the end of their career that weigh them down. Other players with long careers tend to not get hurt as bad because they adjust they're more able/willing to adjust how they play when their skills decline. With Wade he was only ever really great a driving to the hoop, and that doesn't age well. With Kobe he was obsessed with being a shooter of extremely hard shots, and that doesn't age well.

To be clear I'm not looking to suggest these guys should be judged primarily off a coarse metric like this, but in terms of the whole "I look at the metric, I don't like what I see with Player X, so I ignore it", you miss out when you do that. This metric is not the be-all end-all of anything, but it's pretty dang easy to predict how players will look by it ahead of time if you know what you're doing, let alone think through why a player ranks where he does after you've already seen the data.

[Doctor MJ]

Tell me, if Luka wins Nba ring with those pedestrian +/- data, would you reconsider what you're talking about or you will say that Dwight Powell with a lot better +/- and 4/4 counting stats is the reason for Mavs winning?

I've literally said repeatedly in this conversation that I think Luka's scoring resilience in the playoffs has the potential to allow him to become the most effective playoff performer in the league even if he can never show great 82-game impact, and that if this occurs the regular season +/- will simply be an interesting quirk that tells us something about the nature of RS vs PS in the NBA, and not anything that will meaningfully knock his legacy. So, I literally wouldn't necessarily need to reconsider anything.

I have to say I think it's telling that I've you haven't noticed me say these things previously. You're clearly trying to categorize me as a biased hater rather than understand me as someone who evaluates impact through analytical tools even when they take me places that can lead me to ridicule.

Also to be clear: When I look to discuss a player holistically, there's more going on than impact, and more going on that neatly fits in statistical tools. But when we judge a player's actual value-add over the course of a season, once we get past small sample size, I believe it's up to us to figure out why what we expect to have happened with the player's team isn't what actually happened without resorting simply to excuses.

After Luka's 2nd year, I was right there with everyone else thinking it likely that Luka would be a strong MVP candidate in his 3rd year. I was not remotely skeptical of him. But time went on, and the data told the story it told, so now it's not so much a question for me of how Luka's getting unlucky, but why his style of play doesn't seem to translate to regular season impact very well despite the fact that he's an exceptionally talented basketball player. And since I like being in conversations about regular season awards, and most folks still like to judge these awards using big production numbers, it puts me in the position of devil's advocate in a thread like this.

[Exp0sed]

The odds speak against this, buddy.

Right now, the Thunder ARE 2 seeds in front of the Nuggets and Jokic is still in front of SGA on all major betting sites.
Again, this is not my personal opinion. This is just what probably will happen.
I get that you wat your boy SGA to wn the trophy, but you're not realistic about this.

He will either need a big difference in seeding/wins OR push his stats even more while maintaining his stats.
That is how voters do this.

Young guys get their props later than they should, hence the odds

Especially when up against incumbants and perennial MVP candidates (not to mention past champions and MVPs in their prime, like Giannis and Jokic)

There's a media\marketing issue as well
A casual fan might barely know who SGA even is, after he'll show out in the playoffs and replicate the production next rs - he'll have a much better chance to actually win it

To be clear i'm not saying that it's right or that the way it should be - just saying that it is.

SGA will need to create a bit of extra seperation, it's certaibly very plausible, especiialy if the Thunder do finish clearly ahead as a team. It's very possible for him to win a-la D-rose, but Rose was obviously a blue chip prospect and more of a houeshold name

i think that's what the odds reflect
All else being equal he should be in a slight lead rn but..not all else is equal

Sent from my SM-A115F using RealGM mobile app

[Bob8]

Tell me, if Luka wins Nba ring with those pedestrian +/- data, would you reconsider what you're talking about or you will say that Dwight Powell with a lot better +/- and 4/4 counting stats is the reason for Mavs winning?

I've literally said repeatedly in this conversation that I think Luka's scoring resilience in the playoffs has the potential to allow him to become the most effective playoff performer in the league even if he can never show great 82-game impact, and that if this occurs the regular season +/- will simply be an interesting quirk that tells us something about the nature of RS vs PS in the NBA, and not anything that will meaningfully knock his legacy. So, I literally wouldn't necessarily need to reconsider anything.

I have to say I think it's telling that I've you haven't noticed me say these things previously. You're clearly trying to categorize me as a biased hater rather than understand me as someone who evaluates impact through analytical tools even when they take me places that can lead me to ridicule.

Also to be clear: When I look to discuss a player holistically, there's more going on than impact, and more going on that neatly fits in statistical tools. But when we judge a player's actual value-add over the course of a season, once we get past small sample size, I believe it's up to us to figure out why what we expect to have happened with the player's team isn't what actually happened without resorting simply to excuses.

After Luka's 2nd year, I was right there with everyone else thinking it likely that Luka would be a strong MVP candidate in his 3rd year. I was not remotely skeptical of him. But time went on, and the data told the story it told, so now it's not so much a question for me of how Luka's getting unlucky, but why his style of play doesn't seem to translate to regular season impact very well despite the fact that he's an exceptionally talented basketball player. And since I like being in conversations about regular season awards, and most folks still like to judge these awards using big production numbers, it puts me in the position of devil's advocate in a thread like this.

I'm not saying that Luka is unlucky, I'm saying that your tool, which might be accurate in most cases, isn't accurate in this specific case.

The differenced between Luka and others candidates I see, because I have watched majority of his games and I know all his teammates very well, is clear and it's about team construction.

To have great +/- you need very good lineup, you play with and to have great on/off, your replacement should be a lot worse than you, because he will play more time against second units than star player and he won't be defended as a star player is.

So what is specifics of all Luka's teams.

- very average/bad starters and second best player playing in his position. Coach always try to have at least 1 of Luka/Brunson/Kyrie on the court. So Brunson/Kyrie are his replacement. Who's replacing Jokic, who's replacing Embiid, who's replacing Giannis, who's replacing SGA? Nobodies.

Average/bad starting unit makes Luka's +/- average no matter how good he plays, which we could easily see in his 73/10/7, TS 90% game and being replaced with second best player, who plays against second unit means he can't have those atmospheric on/off like Jokic, who in reality doesn't have a replacement because there simply isn't any C in Denver, who can do anything similar like him.

And then we came to the most important part, you don't know much about, because you don't watch him playing, D on him.

Luka is far the most doubled and trapped player in the league, best defender basically coming and going out same like him and playing every possible D on him. So when his replacement comes in, he's not defended anything similar to him. I don't even remember Brunson being doubled, the same goes with Kyrie. They are still great players, but defended totally differently and playing against lesser competition.

I'm absolutely sure that Luka's numbers would have been totally different, if Mavs instead of Brunson/Kyrie would have second best player as a true/defensive big and few good wings, because those players would complement Luka much better in O and D than basically similar players like Brunson/Kyrie. His +/- would skyrocketed because Mavs would have won more and easily and his on/off numbers would go up, because he wouldn't be replaced by second best player of the team. More or less the same story how SGA suddenly became +/- monster by getting great big to play with him.

My problem with you is on the other level too. You're acting like only +/- should matter, when deciding about who's MVP. It can matter for you, but maybe someone else can have a little more broad picture, especially if he watches vast majority of Mavs games. In the end +/- should result in what is going on the court. I would say that watching games should give you a lot of informations about a player. So if someone is watching 80 games and other only few, who should you trust more? I guess your answer is, the one who's checking +/-.

And there's another problem. If you're sure that +/- works accurately, and everything is in those numbers. Why even bring counting numbers and efficiency? Just rank players by +/-. Numbers are supposedly right and telling everything aren't they? Or you're saying that you need first to identify, who star is by counting stats and then run +/- analysis, to not have problems with players like Dwight Powell, who basically destroys any kind of credibility of those stats? If you really believe in +/- you should put Powell as far more important player for Mavs than Luka. So is he more impactful player?

My 5 cents on the future. Someone will put right players around Luka and this debate about his +/- will look stupid, like many things in life, when you look at them back in time.

[Archx]

I've literally said repeatedly in this conversation that I think Luka's scoring resilience in the playoffs has the potential to allow him to become the most effective playoff performer in the league even if he can never show great 82-game impact, and that if this occurs the regular season +/- will simply be an interesting quirk that tells us something about the nature of RS vs PS in the NBA, and not anything that will meaningfully knock his legacy. So, I literally wouldn't necessarily need to reconsider anything.

I think the reason why his playoff On/Off compared to regular season are so different is because Mavs have had insane injury problems over the past few years and their roster almost never looks complete. In playoffs it changes a bit because best players mostly play together more often. He's had +32 On/Off vs LAC in that 7 game series and they still lost. This season, before new year Luka was sitting at -3.4 On/Off, only 3 games later he was at +3.3. Literally 2 games ago he was at +0.2 now he's at +2.3.

These up and downs are related to their lineup combinations and Mavs fans know this. There has been a discussion on their reddit site and they were posting some incredible stats Luka was producing, including playing defense AND points created or scored for the team. If the team was healthy and Mavs actually had a coach who would know how to tie all the dots together, this team could have been much more dangerous. They were 9-3 at the start of the season and Luka had close to +10 On/Off then injuries started, starting players missing games and everything went downhill, including their overall record.

+/- stats never show individual impact because you have guys like Exum who were sitting at +14 On/Off for entire year when he was healthy and i would never say he's the guy you build your team around. Luka has always been at least top 3 or 5 in other advance metrics in the NBA, only On/Off has been an outlier. His raw stats and like i said, other impact metrics are really good.

Right now i think Mavs have a similar issue again. They are simply a walking hospital team. Half of the main guys are again questionable for upcoming Bucks game.

[HotRocks34]

Jokic is back on top at NBA.com now.

SGA 2, Embiid 3.

[Special_Puppy]

I've literally said repeatedly in this conversation that I think Luka's scoring resilience in the playoffs has the potential to allow him to become the most effective playoff performer in the league even if he can never show great 82-game impact, and that if this occurs the regular season +/- will simply be an interesting quirk that tells us something about the nature of RS vs PS in the NBA, and not anything that will meaningfully knock his legacy. So, I literally wouldn't necessarily need to reconsider anything.

I think the reason why his playoff On/Off compared to regular season are so different is because Mavs have had insane injury problems over the past few years and their roster almost never looks complete. In playoffs it changes a bit because best players mostly play together more often. He's had +32 On/Off vs LAC in that 7 game series and they still lost. This season, before new year Luka was sitting at -3.4 On/Off, only 3 games later he was at +3.3. Literally 2 games ago he was at +0.2 now he's at +2.3.

These up and downs are related to their lineup combinations and Mavs fans know this. There has been a discussion on their reddit site and they were posting some incredible stats Luka was producing, including playing defense AND points created or scored for the team. If the team was healthy and Mavs actually had a coach who would know how to tie all the dots together, this team could have been much more dangerous. They were 9-3 at the start of the season and Luka had close to +10 On/Off then injuries started, starting players missing games and everything went downhill, including their overall record.

+/- stats never show individual impact because you have guys like Exum who were sitting at +14 On/Off for entire year when he was healthy and i would never say he's the guy you build your team around. Luka has always been at least top 3 or 5 in other advance metrics in the NBA, only On/Off has been an outlier. His raw stats and like i said, other impact metrics are really good.

Right now i think Mavs have a similar issue again. They are simply a walking hospital team. Half of the main guys are again questionable for upcoming Bucks game.

More sophisticated stuff like RAPM also shows Luka with mediocre impact though

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mhwOLqPu2F9026EQiVxFPIN1t9RGafGpl-dokaIsm9c/edit#gid=923517192

[Chokic]

The mvp criteria is inconsistent and all over the place. If the thunder finish with the best record in the league and sga is the catalyst as the best player how is he not the mvp? They gave rose the mvp 2011 Nash 05 and 06.

[Wolfgang630]

The mvp criteria is inconsistent and all over the place. If the thunder finish with the best record in the league and sga is the catalyst as the best player how is he not the mvp? They gave rose the mvp 2011 Nash 05 and 06.

If they finish first he’ll win it. Calm down

[LeBronSpaghetti]

21pts 20 reb 10ast through three quarters for Jokic tonight

[Jaqua92]

Read on Twitter

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Best player on the planet. Healthy or unhealthy field, it doesn't matter.

Give him the MVP.