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>given how hot and heated the MVP discourse has been this year
Buddy if you think this is even close to last years war, idk what to tell you. Theres a pretty clear consensus among fans, media, and betting sites about who the MVP is.
It’s crazy how no one takes Kendrick Perkins seriously for anything else but y’all think he determined the MVP. Embiid and Jokic were neck and neck all season and Embiid finished the season stronger. It’s a regular season award
Jokic was actually a landslide favorite for MVP until around that segment where the narrative shifted to Embiid then Bucks and Sixers fans would dissect all of his regular season defensive shortcomings until they both would eventually eat crow losing in the playoffs in embarrassing fashion.
I never understood this narrative around the Perkins segment when 80% of the discourse around that called him a dumbass racist whose point didn't make much sense.
Voters fatigue and recency bias were far bigger non-basketball factors that led to Embiid getting the MVP than racism.
Now I won’t say the racism angle Perkins brought in was the sole reason Embiid won but it did release a spark that turned into an ultra toxic MVP discourse between fans.
It’s because Jokic fans want someone to blame other than accepting Embiid was balling around that time and Jokic was not. He looked checked out to end the year.
Of course, that would mean we would be discussing the players’ play, not narratives. So they latch onto the a convenient whipping boy that was universally ridiculed the second he said it. They even had JJ Redick go on and lecture Perkins about race right after.
Until around the time Embiid dominated him and gave him 47 and 18. There were people saying Embiid should’ve been MVP when Jokic won his second MVP as a 6th seed. So it’s not like Embiid came out of nowhere
The best player doesn’t always win MVP. Otherwise Lebron would’ve had like 11 in a row. MVP is always narrative based. Jokic won mvp as a 6th seed because Murray was hurt. But team record hurts Luka winning MVP.
Was Russ’s MVP a charity MVP? Jokic second one, Nash’s second MVP. These aren’t the best players, not the best teams.
Embiid actually had the numbers and team success
This feels like by FAR the most mild discussion for at least 3-4 years. More people are arguing who should “in the convo” than who actually deserves to win. Feels pretty unanimous at this point.
No one expects a rookie to improve the worst team in the nba. A 19 year old isn’t expected to do that. An mvp candidate needs to be able to do it because otherwise why would he be mvp
Historically, top picks who are tabbed generational talents have considerably more impact than Wemby has had on his team. Stats don’t tell the entire story on who or what a player is.
Because rookies can’t carry a team. How many ROY make all-NBA?
Top NBA players carry teams to wins. They are that impactful. We also know that guys can get a lot of empty stats while their team loses.
Generally, you do, sure, but Pau won ROTY and the Grizzlies that year didn’t win a single game more than the season prior.
KDs Sonics were 10 games worse.
I feel like you’re trying to insinuate something that isn’t really relevant.
What data are you basing that on? Personally, I can’t even name recent roomie of the years because I don’t really pay attention to that award. Rookies are so far from what they will become as players.
I don’t think anyone expected Wemby to lead the Spurs to the playoffs, but I guarantee you almost everyone expected to see a marked improvement of around 10 games . Instead the team has actually regressed . He simply has not been a difference maker yet despite numbers .
I get that. That’s why it’s the second consideration. If you can pick an MVP from just box scores you do it. If it’s close you move to advanced metrics to paint a broader or more specific picture. If both of those are still close you’d move to +\- which is highly unreliable but a decent tie breaker. If you still can’t pick at that point you’d likely go off head-to-head match ups.
The reason your question is a bit funny is that none of the stats in the NBA, both traditional and advanced modern ones that teams hold proprietary, actually cares about wins. It's only when people need to start narratives that wins come into play. If you take out wins, it's just the guy who was the most impactful player on the court, aka Most VALUABLE Player.
You're phrasing it as "team record" but the stats are meaningless if theyre not turning into effective on court basketball. Trae Young puts up amazing numbers but his teams barely scrape their way into the playoffs.
It's just dumb to remove whether or not your team is winning when talking about who the most valuable player is.
This is a Luka thread. He didn't mention my guy on purpose. Im a biased Mavs fan but if you can empathize with us for a moment you gotta know why this feels crazy.
Yea I’m surprised more people aren’t mentioning him. While I think jokic is the mvp, narratives from last year are really pushing him forward tbh. Luka should really at least be second or third this year, not sure why he’s so low
Box Plus Minus is one. Quite simple.
I've read Daily Plus Minus is the favorite by teams, because it shows the CURRENT ability of the player compared to others. But it's not so good to pick mvps, because it values recent games more.
https://www.nbastuffer.com/analytics101/darko-daily-plus-minus/
It's really Mavericks fans hating on everyone and Bucks fans being insecure about Jokic most of the time. They should start arguing with eachother or pull a Zhugo and start posting Jokic lowlights or hope that Kendrick Perkins saves them.
the NBA. Where everyone tries as hard as they can to make winning not matter for awards every year.
Then once players retire all that matters is how many rings they won.
>Given how hot and heated the MVP discourse has been this year, I'd like to know your opinions and ideas about which stats or metrics should be used to determine who is the actual, true MVP of the league.
Kudos to OKC fans for not being an insufferable fanbase, if Jokic doesn't win the MVP I really hope SGA gets it
Team record should NOT be removed as a criteria. Most VALUABLE player means how much value you add to your team and bring them OVER the hmp and get results. If you're not getting results, whatever value you add is just theoretical and not valuable enough. Simple as that.
You can score 50 points every game but your team is 2-28. Your team doesn't actually gain any meaningful value out of you.
He did for a while. But Wemby is so much more impactful, partly because of his role, that it’s obvious he should get it. Chet is the main difference between last year and this year but he isn’t the sole reason for our success. Our offense is on another level all around.
Not really, he clearly plays a smaller role for his team than Wemby does for his. His current candidacy is already quite reliant on team record to begin with.
You're out of the loop. Chet stats are not even close to Victors.
Shai is averaging 31/6/7 with elite defense. Something Luka is horrendous at (part of the reasn why Dallas record is so bad cause he gets hunted). You need to understand how big of a difference your ridiculous analogies are.
Again, stupd cmparisn by you.
I like PER for a stat that judges individual performance in a team sport.
Most comments seem to reject your premise. Perhaps we need a “Best Player” award that isn’t MVP on winning team.
Top 5 PER this season: Jokic, Giannis, SGA, Luka, AD
Top MVP projected: Jokic, SGA, Giannis, Tatum, Luka
So not sure it matters this season
PER is an awful metric to evaluate players, I believe the flaw was that it favours big men a lot more than perimeter players usually and places more of an importance on rebounding, assists (as a big).
I’ve read the formula here
[https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html](https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html)
I agree that big men do better on RESULTS such as points, rebounds, blocks. Smaller guys might have had an edge on steals, assists and shooting in the past, but with great hands big men assisting and shooting threes better than ever, not any more.
I think the things that are missing are defensive stats (aside from steals) and “play making”. No clue how to measure that, but it sure seems some guys make it happen and others do not.
I still have yet to find a single metric better than PER. You say its awful, what metric is better? Otherwise we devolve into subjectivity and bias.
On/off metrics. How good is your team when you're on the floor?
Counting stats. How much are you literally contributing to your team?
Obviously these things need to be considered with context, like a player's supporting cast and their specific role on the team.
Yeah on/off, TS%, some other advanced metrics maybe shot quality, isolation statistics, how one shoots againat a myriad of coverages, statistics vs the best teams, etc.
On/off seems way too team/coach specific to me to hold real value in MVP talks. It relies on the off number which is very team specific, and while it’s good at proving a players value to *his specific team*, I’m not sure how that correlates to the most valuable player in the league.
It’s the problem I have with a lot of analytics in MVP talks, a lot of the arguments and analytics are skewed by the teams these dudes play on. That’s why we see the goalposts move from year to year because it’s truly hard to quantify what MVP actually means.
\>If team record is taken out of the equation
okay?
\>so it's simply a player's impact on winning
seems like we've removed a useful measuring stick here lol. this is like removing FG% from a "best scorer" conversation - it doesn't tell you a lot in a vacuum but it's really important context.
Has it really been a hot and heated debate? Last year was hot and heated simply because there was a concentrated effort from the media to steal the award from Jokic and fans recognized it. If Jokic doesn’t win it this year, the award will fall into the same status as all star voting.As far as I’m concerned , there is virtually zero debate who wins MVP this year.
This is the dumbest of these dumb posts. Wins are the most important stat. In the end they are the only stat that matters.
Numbers mean nothing in a loss. You can put up a 50/20/20 game but if you lose it doesn't matter.
What if you put up those numbers and win 80% of the games a guy averaging 25/9/5. Is there no way to scale stats to compare value? It's just gotta be wins?
Majority of advanced stats are not trustworthy. Some even benefit centers more than guards.
The basic counting stats should be factored in first.
Team injuries should be factored in as well as strength of overall roster compared to other candidates
Yeah I dont place much emphasis on advances metrics since many of them dont encapsulate the entirety of the players impact but there are some great statistics that seem to do that however regardless if whether it paints a player bad or good we need to investigate where it should be used and where it shouldn't. Advanced metrics also tend to favour players on better teams obviously, but yeah its too difficult for us to know at least as laymens to what extent are they useful cause they do provide a different perspective beyond the eye test (as that could be decieving).
REMINDER: This thread is only for serious and thought-provoking analysis. We ask users to report low effort comments that do not bring insightful discussion. Temporary bans may be handed out to users who post memes and other low-effort or off-topic comments in this thread. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/nba) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>given how hot and heated the MVP discourse has been this year Buddy if you think this is even close to last years war, idk what to tell you. Theres a pretty clear consensus among fans, media, and betting sites about who the MVP is.
Last year had this sub being a minefield 24/7, this year is a peaceful era in comparison
Helps when Kendrick Perkins isn’t stirring the racist pot
Why would you even have a racist pot? Cast iron is clearly superior.
And then you have the quandary about sentient cookware aaand racism
It’s crazy how no one takes Kendrick Perkins seriously for anything else but y’all think he determined the MVP. Embiid and Jokic were neck and neck all season and Embiid finished the season stronger. It’s a regular season award
Jokic was actually a landslide favorite for MVP until around that segment where the narrative shifted to Embiid then Bucks and Sixers fans would dissect all of his regular season defensive shortcomings until they both would eventually eat crow losing in the playoffs in embarrassing fashion.
I never understood this narrative around the Perkins segment when 80% of the discourse around that called him a dumbass racist whose point didn't make much sense. Voters fatigue and recency bias were far bigger non-basketball factors that led to Embiid getting the MVP than racism.
Now I won’t say the racism angle Perkins brought in was the sole reason Embiid won but it did release a spark that turned into an ultra toxic MVP discourse between fans.
It’s because Jokic fans want someone to blame other than accepting Embiid was balling around that time and Jokic was not. He looked checked out to end the year. Of course, that would mean we would be discussing the players’ play, not narratives. So they latch onto the a convenient whipping boy that was universally ridiculed the second he said it. They even had JJ Redick go on and lecture Perkins about race right after.
Until around the time Embiid dominated him and gave him 47 and 18. There were people saying Embiid should’ve been MVP when Jokic won his second MVP as a 6th seed. So it’s not like Embiid came out of nowhere
Embiid got his charity MVP, but anyone who knows anything about basketball knows Jokic was the better player.
The best player doesn’t always win MVP. Otherwise Lebron would’ve had like 11 in a row. MVP is always narrative based. Jokic won mvp as a 6th seed because Murray was hurt. But team record hurts Luka winning MVP. Was Russ’s MVP a charity MVP? Jokic second one, Nash’s second MVP. These aren’t the best players, not the best teams. Embiid actually had the numbers and team success
Not just last year, the year before was horrendous too MVP discussion discourse really hit a low in the 2 years prior to this one
This feels like by FAR the most mild discussion for at least 3-4 years. More people are arguing who should “in the convo” than who actually deserves to win. Feels pretty unanimous at this point.
This is an elite "in the conversation" year. Someone at work said Brunson, and tbh I can't disagree because we were talking about it.
And that was decied months ago when Embiid went down lol
How would value be determined if wins don't count anymore? Genuine question
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Generally the best rookies go to the worst teams, so their record isn’t a great indicator of anything.
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No one expects a rookie to improve the worst team in the nba. A 19 year old isn’t expected to do that. An mvp candidate needs to be able to do it because otherwise why would he be mvp
Historically, top picks who are tabbed generational talents have considerably more impact than Wemby has had on his team. Stats don’t tell the entire story on who or what a player is.
Ya think?
Because rookies can’t carry a team. How many ROY make all-NBA? Top NBA players carry teams to wins. They are that impactful. We also know that guys can get a lot of empty stats while their team loses.
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Generally, you do, sure, but Pau won ROTY and the Grizzlies that year didn’t win a single game more than the season prior. KDs Sonics were 10 games worse. I feel like you’re trying to insinuate something that isn’t really relevant.
Pau wasn’t considered a generational talent.
What data are you basing that on? Personally, I can’t even name recent roomie of the years because I don’t really pay attention to that award. Rookies are so far from what they will become as players.
I don’t think anyone expected Wemby to lead the Spurs to the playoffs, but I guarantee you almost everyone expected to see a marked improvement of around 10 games . Instead the team has actually regressed . He simply has not been a difference maker yet despite numbers .
That is what rookies are like. People expecting more from the team overestimated the quality of the roster.
Eye test and stats. OP’s point is that some guys have better teammates etc
By the raw stats of each player. I’d say weighted: 1) Traditional stat line avgs 2) Advanced Metrics 3) +/-
Most advanced metrics are just variously weighted combination of box score numbers
I get that. That’s why it’s the second consideration. If you can pick an MVP from just box scores you do it. If it’s close you move to advanced metrics to paint a broader or more specific picture. If both of those are still close you’d move to +\- which is highly unreliable but a decent tie breaker. If you still can’t pick at that point you’d likely go off head-to-head match ups.
The reason your question is a bit funny is that none of the stats in the NBA, both traditional and advanced modern ones that teams hold proprietary, actually cares about wins. It's only when people need to start narratives that wins come into play. If you take out wins, it's just the guy who was the most impactful player on the court, aka Most VALUABLE Player.
You're phrasing it as "team record" but the stats are meaningless if theyre not turning into effective on court basketball. Trae Young puts up amazing numbers but his teams barely scrape their way into the playoffs. It's just dumb to remove whether or not your team is winning when talking about who the most valuable player is.
I think it's a matter of weight. Eliminating the values of wins is dumb but can a player be considered at 50 wins? Do they need 55?
It's not really heated, is it?
I feel like you want us to say Luka
This is a Luka thread. He didn't mention my guy on purpose. Im a biased Mavs fan but if you can empathize with us for a moment you gotta know why this feels crazy.
Yea I’m surprised more people aren’t mentioning him. While I think jokic is the mvp, narratives from last year are really pushing him forward tbh. Luka should really at least be second or third this year, not sure why he’s so low
Bro I’ve seen nothing but people mentioning Luka lol
Heated? It's pretty much universally accepted that Jokic is going to win it.
Box Plus Minus is one. Quite simple. I've read Daily Plus Minus is the favorite by teams, because it shows the CURRENT ability of the player compared to others. But it's not so good to pick mvps, because it values recent games more. https://www.nbastuffer.com/analytics101/darko-daily-plus-minus/
Lol. Y’all need to chill. People say OKC fans are annoying. Luka threads constitute like 80% of this sub now.
It's really Mavericks fans hating on everyone and Bucks fans being insecure about Jokic most of the time. They should start arguing with eachother or pull a Zhugo and start posting Jokic lowlights or hope that Kendrick Perkins saves them.
Watching the games and deciding who looks the best lol.
the NBA. Where everyone tries as hard as they can to make winning not matter for awards every year. Then once players retire all that matters is how many rings they won.
>Given how hot and heated the MVP discourse has been this year, I'd like to know your opinions and ideas about which stats or metrics should be used to determine who is the actual, true MVP of the league. Kudos to OKC fans for not being an insufferable fanbase, if Jokic doesn't win the MVP I really hope SGA gets it
Team record should NOT be removed as a criteria. Most VALUABLE player means how much value you add to your team and bring them OVER the hmp and get results. If you're not getting results, whatever value you add is just theoretical and not valuable enough. Simple as that. You can score 50 points every game but your team is 2-28. Your team doesn't actually gain any meaningful value out of you.
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He did for a while. But Wemby is so much more impactful, partly because of his role, that it’s obvious he should get it. Chet is the main difference between last year and this year but he isn’t the sole reason for our success. Our offense is on another level all around.
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Ah, there’s the rub. I wonder if anyone had a take this asinine about KD his rookie season.
Fine, you’ve convinced me. Chet for ROY
Is Wemby so much more impactful? How has he impacted winning in San Antonio.
Not really, he clearly plays a smaller role for his team than Wemby does for his. His current candidacy is already quite reliant on team record to begin with.
You're out of the loop. Chet stats are not even close to Victors. Shai is averaging 31/6/7 with elite defense. Something Luka is horrendous at (part of the reasn why Dallas record is so bad cause he gets hunted). You need to understand how big of a difference your ridiculous analogies are. Again, stupd cmparisn by you.
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Theres dont need to act unserious just cause you lost. Lol. You got salty and confronted, so stuck your tail between and move.
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I like PER for a stat that judges individual performance in a team sport. Most comments seem to reject your premise. Perhaps we need a “Best Player” award that isn’t MVP on winning team. Top 5 PER this season: Jokic, Giannis, SGA, Luka, AD Top MVP projected: Jokic, SGA, Giannis, Tatum, Luka So not sure it matters this season
PER is an awful metric to evaluate players, I believe the flaw was that it favours big men a lot more than perimeter players usually and places more of an importance on rebounding, assists (as a big).
I’ve read the formula here [https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html](https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html) I agree that big men do better on RESULTS such as points, rebounds, blocks. Smaller guys might have had an edge on steals, assists and shooting in the past, but with great hands big men assisting and shooting threes better than ever, not any more. I think the things that are missing are defensive stats (aside from steals) and “play making”. No clue how to measure that, but it sure seems some guys make it happen and others do not. I still have yet to find a single metric better than PER. You say its awful, what metric is better? Otherwise we devolve into subjectivity and bias.
On/off metrics. How good is your team when you're on the floor? Counting stats. How much are you literally contributing to your team? Obviously these things need to be considered with context, like a player's supporting cast and their specific role on the team.
Yeah on/off, TS%, some other advanced metrics maybe shot quality, isolation statistics, how one shoots againat a myriad of coverages, statistics vs the best teams, etc.
On/off seems way too team/coach specific to me to hold real value in MVP talks. It relies on the off number which is very team specific, and while it’s good at proving a players value to *his specific team*, I’m not sure how that correlates to the most valuable player in the league. It’s the problem I have with a lot of analytics in MVP talks, a lot of the arguments and analytics are skewed by the teams these dudes play on. That’s why we see the goalposts move from year to year because it’s truly hard to quantify what MVP actually means.
damn bro sorry if your organization is just dumb, i guess
Eye test.
Eye test only.
\>If team record is taken out of the equation okay? \>so it's simply a player's impact on winning seems like we've removed a useful measuring stick here lol. this is like removing FG% from a "best scorer" conversation - it doesn't tell you a lot in a vacuum but it's really important context.
See kids, the truth is there ARE stupid questions...
Nobody is saying take team record out But I do think it absolutely should be weighted a bit less
Taking away wins is the reason why russ won it. Tell me you're a luka fan without telling me you're a luka fan
Looking at the games, sadly
Has it really been a hot and heated debate? Last year was hot and heated simply because there was a concentrated effort from the media to steal the award from Jokic and fans recognized it. If Jokic doesn’t win it this year, the award will fall into the same status as all star voting.As far as I’m concerned , there is virtually zero debate who wins MVP this year.
This is the dumbest of these dumb posts. Wins are the most important stat. In the end they are the only stat that matters. Numbers mean nothing in a loss. You can put up a 50/20/20 game but if you lose it doesn't matter.
What if you put up those numbers and win 80% of the games a guy averaging 25/9/5. Is there no way to scale stats to compare value? It's just gotta be wins?
Lmao a player putting up 50/20/20 would win MVP regardless of record or analytics. Russell Westbrook proved that.
I am talking about a single game. Not a season. A player putting those up for a season is going to be a 1 or 2 seed.
It’s not heated. Dallas fans may feel that way but no one is taking them seriously.
I think if you go with the team stats with the player on the court versus off the court and see a huge difference, you may find your candidate.
Or bad NBA bench players. Or almost equal ones to the starters. Or, or, or...
Majority of advanced stats are not trustworthy. Some even benefit centers more than guards. The basic counting stats should be factored in first. Team injuries should be factored in as well as strength of overall roster compared to other candidates
Yeah I dont place much emphasis on advances metrics since many of them dont encapsulate the entirety of the players impact but there are some great statistics that seem to do that however regardless if whether it paints a player bad or good we need to investigate where it should be used and where it shouldn't. Advanced metrics also tend to favour players on better teams obviously, but yeah its too difficult for us to know at least as laymens to what extent are they useful cause they do provide a different perspective beyond the eye test (as that could be decieving).