OhayoKD wrote:At the buzzer but...
Doctor MJ wrote:
Will expand on the rationale later but I'll be voting for POY and leave the rest to my betters. Was thinking of trying EOY, but with the "double-dipping" considerations, I'd probably just confuse things.
Criteria/Methodology for player evaluationFor now, player-assessments are strictly era-relative. Am considering a shift to "impact averaged over time" or modernist-era-translation as factors, but for now it's really just how much you increase a random team's chances of winning it all. I'm not exclusively looking year to year necessarily(other teams may take a season or post-season to adjust), but it's not nothing. Surrounding years also matter to me, and for a rough rant explaining the steps, you can look here(I think I've fine-tuned that in ways but still):
https:/Wit /forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=103144819#p103144819
Other ConsiderationsBasing these guesses on historical and contemporary results, I'm working on a few assumptions:
-> Protecting the Rim is the most consistent source of value across different situations and contexts:
OhayoKD wrote:Dutchball97 wrote:Perhaps at a higher theoretical treshold the gap between playmaker stacking and wing-scorer stacking becomes evident, but that treshold hasn't been reached and "paint-protectors" currently look like the least "situation-dependent" archetype. At an individual level, Duncan and Russell are probably the quintessential metronomes if we go by team success and if we go by individual impact, Russell and Kareem stand-out in terms of a lack of fluctuation. From rookie year to 1980 Kareem's "impact" stays pretty consistent with small postseason samples being where most of the fluctuation happens. Russell is still winning with seemingly average help right as he's about to retire.
-> Offensive players who are highly efficient-creators(think passer-rating instead of box-creation or ast:tov%) are the most resilient in playoff-settings
-> Players who function as on-court coaches(telling teammates where to go, prompting coaching decisions at key spots) on one or both-ends are extremely resilient to changes in situation and provide value higher than their physical production might indicate
-> Players who cannot require more specific conditions to reach their situational ceilings and therefore are curved down
Blackmill wrote:OhayoKD wrote:it's not just about what you create. It's also about the quality of what you're creating AND how much you're leaving on the table with suboptimal decisions. Players on this tier have better discernable offensive "lift" than players the tier below, and often this is blamed entirely or pre-dominantly on "this is just because of who their teammates are", but I actually think the real source of this offensive advantage is the "quality" of what they're creating(and some of the backseat coaching stuff has an off-court effect that can't be tracked via impact stuff):
Don't have access to the numbers(paywall) rn but passer-rating also sees this. Curry and Jordan graded out as comparable or right behind creators in a pure volume metric like playval(based on ben's bpm which is using assist totals I think) or Box-OC, to guys like say Lebron, Magic, and Nash, but they had teammates telling players where to go(draymond/pippen respectively), and don't make the best possible reads as often(I think ben said it was something like 60% vs 80% of the high quality passes in his peaks video and we have the "good passes" number above).
Incidentally they don't seem to have the same level of offensive lift in the absence of a specific structure where those decisions are delegated to someone else:
By comparison, the best pre-triangle Jordan stretch(with Jordan arguably at his peak) sees a 52(Ben) or 53-win(E-balla) team over a 30-game sample going at +4.4 offensively(you can reach a +4.6 if you swap minuite distributions for the 5th and 7th mpg guys for 20 games and ignore the team didn't actually improve), Curry wasn't close to leading all-time offenses(and had worse metrics than both westbrook and durant) with Draymond on the bench.
-> All else being equal, being able to impact without the ball offers an advantage of being reliant on having the ball(KD vs Westbrook):
However, Nash’s situational value clearly changed from Dallas to Phoenix, as multiple APM methodologies demonstrate marginal impact in Dallas and seismic correlations in Phoenix. Improved health and the freedom-of-movement rule change were both factors, but I view these competing measurements as a classic case of fit. Similar to LeBron and Wade, Nash’s style of play created some diminishing returns. Unlike LeBron or Wade, Nash’s unheralded background and diminutive stature masked his poor fit in Dallas. Nash was more of a situational floor-raiser who could wash out in certain lineups next to ball-dominant scorers; he wasn’t as versatile as someone like LeBron, so pairing him with other centerpieces didn’t automatically supercharge such teams.
-> Players who disproportionately rely on being elite man-defenders to boost defenses are less likely to reach their situational ceilings than players who are not
-> Players who have limitations as ball-handlers are less likely to reach their situational ceilings than players who are not(There are levels to this, a Kareem or Jordan is dramatically less reliant on lower-ball-handling load to maximize their scoring value compared to players like Bird or Durant)
-> Credit is warranted when a player succeeds in-spite of roster-turnover or fo-drama, as it is harder to perform well in such situations
-> Failure is more forgivable in such circumstances(If the Suns go ballistic with an off-season to figure things out I'll retroactively raise Durant's 2023 a bit)
Off-court "impact on winning" matters, but I am going to be going off direct accounts and tangible actions/examples as opposed to media-narratives(am going to get into this with certain "coach-killer" claims at some point). Steph may be considered the leader of the Warriors, but as Dray is the one who is telling teammates what to do when he's on the sideline(you could hear this on mic'd up in game 2), is called the emotional leader by teammates, and is coaching up young-talent, he gets the lion's share of off-court credit. Not too relevant to a single-season ranking, but I'm planning to copy and paste this preamble(mostly) for the top 100 so humor me.
Off-court "gming" good and bad, taking pay-cuts, ensuring teammates sign contracts, side-line(or on-court) coaching(and the actual results), all come into play. I am not going to assume "the best player" is the "leader" even though people(teammates included) tend to assume that, but I will account for what specifically players in the organization say a player did or didn't do.
What is "Likely" to happen or how replicable something is(across different situations) is also relevant(not as much in a descriptive POY ranking). This is an important thing to consider with injuries(not so much with POY voting but still).
Competition quality matters but in terms of winning championships, the top-end is more relevant than the bottom-end. Beating the better "best" opponent matters more than beating a better "2nd best" opponent. Can be applied to looking at how strong a "year" is or how strong the path to a championship is. Regular season srs is also less relevant than something like say "San's psrs" in comparisons featuring teams from the last 10 years.
With all that said
POY BALLOT1. JokicHe was the best regular season player. He also completed a three-year stretch where had a better argument for being the best player every single one of those seasons than nearly anyone(and yes that includes any 3-year stretch for Jordan or Lebron). The only players in history I think may have had a comparably good argument are Bird, Kareem, and Russell. He destroyed 1-year impact-witnqlw like wowy, lineup-splits, extended wowy, ect(note that RAPM and APM-derivatives are less useful differentiating between 1-year peaks), and those sorts of numbers remain nigh-unprecedented when you make adjustments like taking out Jamal. Taken at face-value that 1-year rs portfolio looks better than anything that's available for the likes of Magic, Bird, or Jordan and right up-there with the likes of 2016 Steph, non-09/10 Lebron, and 03 Duncan. He also played significantly more than either of the other MVP-candidates and coasted to end the season because the Nuggets secured the 1-seed extremely early. Note that his best-teammate looks pretty pedestrian over a substantial when we flip things.
In the postseason the Nuggets went 16-4 posting point-differentials of +8.8, +8.9, +6, and +8.1 with their worst performance coming against a Lakers side that decisively clamped the champs. If you were to use the rs/off as I tend to do(sample-size) and attribute the playoff-improvement to Jokic(more on that later), there are a handful of players who've posted years that look comparable. I do not think he is especially advantaged in terms of fit(I consider the 2019 Raptors and Kawhi, Draymond/Steph, and Pippen/Jordan, Lebron/Bubble AD more exceptional in that regard) and even with weaker competition(like pretty much every team that was similarly dominant), the Nuggets were properly great.
Jokic is also a goat-tier offensive player with the only players i'd entertain as more valauble era-relative on that end being Oscar, Magic, Lebron, Nash, and Mikan. He is a truly do-it-all-scorer(someone like Durant can see their scoring suffer greatly when they have to function as a secondary ball-handler) who is good from pretty much every spot on the court on good to great volume. He is an all-time tough-shot-maker, an all-time post scorer, an all-time mid-range talent, an elite inside-guy, and might just be the best pure passing talent in league history. He also is one of the smartest players ever and like a Lebron, Nash, or Magic has impact that goes beyond what you can physically see him do(and thus should get some of the credit for his teammates improvement). His only weakness here is ball-handling(and it's not so easy to "push-pace"), but for a center he is absolutely exceptional there(and a matchup nightmare even for an all-time versatile defensive big like davis).
Jokic's defense held-up alot better in the playoffs than I thought and though he faced a fairly favorable set of positional matchups, it's notable his defense was outright good in the finals and against a certain Anthony Davis(albeit an injured one).
No one was as good and I would hope he would go down as a unanimous #1 here. He
should have gone down as the first B2B2B MVP in nearly 30-years.
Caveats His playoff "impact" is actually pretty pedestrian if you use the postseason for off and while I'm not too big on one-offs, this is the third-year in a row this has been true. He actually was on pace to post a negative on/off for the 3rd year in a row before the final game.
He also looks alot worse using larger samples. 15-17 Steph and 15-17 Lebron look alot better in the RAPM sets, and Embid also cooks him in both the 3-year and career stuff I've seen. His 3-year rs impact still looks good relative to the likes of MJ and Shaq(especially shaq) but he goes from a step removed from the very best looking seasons to a couple steps even using raw-stuff. Luck-adjustment flips things but on a 3-year sample using luck-adjustment feels wrong. I also think Murray and Gordon both had bigger roles in the Nuggets postseason improvement, and he ran into two teams affected with injury(Lakers and Miami) with the most favorable home-court in the league. It's also worth noting that the Lakers series looks lot closer-looking if you account for how high-scoring the games were(a 6-point mov in a 120-orating series is not the same as a 6-point mov in a 90-orating series). While statistically the Nuggets are an all-time team it's hard to say they'd be favored vs the 2020 Lakers who merely rank 40th if we use something like Sansterre's methodology.
All of which is to say, while I certainly have no issue with someone arguing for Jokic to be higher, as things currently stand, I am not viewing Jokic's 2023 as a "goat-tier" year. I would also favor "non-goat" years like Duncan's 03 and Hakeem's 93/94 if we're just talking era-relative goodness. Nonetheless, he's an obvious #1 in the most talented era of league history. Give him all the props.
2. ButlerI think he was an arguable top-10 player in the regular season. I think he was also arguably the best player in the playoffs until injury and even with injury he outplayed another top 5 poy guy to make the finals with a short-handed team. I think purely on level of play he might be lower, but I also think Butler deserves some credit for the culture that has seen undrafted talent blossom in to contention-calibre starting pieces. He faded in the finals, but in a year where most of his competition got neutered by injury, an okay, not great finals performance seems forgivable.
3. TatumThis is quite simple. Tatum was probably the 4th best player in the regular season(apm-derivatives would support that) on the second best team in the regular season. He was also arguably top-5 in the playoffs. I do think Butler outplayed him h2h(consider competition) so he's 3 and not 2 but he is a do-it-all perimeter player who was one of the best in the league wire to wire on a team that suffered a fair deal of drama and nearly completed the first 3-0 come-back in history.
4. GiannisHe was the 3rd best player on the best rs team by record(top 5 by srs) despite his best teammate missing time. His injury is also less of a factor to me than say an Embid, because he was able to recover fairly quickly and had the Bucks not ran into an eventual finalist in the 1st round there's a good chance the Bucks suffer his diminished influence playing hobbled till he found health. You can criticize his ft-shooting but even if that career-worst shooting performance was not injury-related, there's a decent chance the Bucks advance anyway if Giannis's defense isn't severely limited. I put him lower than Tatum due to his injury but he's earned some benefit of the doubt so he stays on the ballot.
5. DavisHe was the best defensive player in the playoffs, a dpoy(per-possession at least) lvl player in the regular season, and performed an all-time defensive feat for a big somehow nuetralizing the Warriors P n R. As Aneigma has noted, his impact stuff is juiced based on a lack of backups(and is flatly worse than Lebron anyway considering the RS), but the playoffs matter most and he was clearly the Lakers best player come-winning time. I also don't like him being removed from the picture as factor in the Lakers making the playoffs as the Lebron-less Lakers playing like a good team post-trade on davis going ballistic was a crucial factor in them having a conference run to speak of. If Lebron was healthy or AD didn't step up his defense, I would easily take Lebron base thanks to alot of the "off-court" stuff, but as the playoffs matter more to me, AD makes the top 5 with Lebron a hair behind.
If he had played the way he did in the 1st 2 rounds against the Nuggets, he would probably be in consideration for 2 or 3.
HM:
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1, Lebron - Clearly top 5 for me during the regular season when you consider context(is arguably top 5 if you just go by impact stuff noisy as they are for 1-year), with him looking very impactful on a good team and a bad team. An easy top-10 during the postseason despite tearing his tendon and comfortably the best offensive player and 2nd best defender on what, by point-differential at least, was the best challenger to Denver(I am still giving Miami the mantle of 2nd best playoff team everything considered). Anenigma made a great case for Lebron being on the ballot but it would be inconsistent for me to put him in the top 5 even though its tempting. I don't worry about "accomplishment". Just what a player offers in terms of championship likelihood. This year should serve as a
big-wake up call for people who were treating him as a significant off-court negative or a guy who is limited in terms of his ability to adapt on higher-end rosters. He operated as a tertiary ball-handler and a small-ball 5 or 4 stretches and was still extremely valuable with the Lakers playing like a 69-win team post-trade(record, not sure what the net is) wirh him on the court. He did really well in lineups with the likes of Westbrook and really well with abysmal spacing. Being one of the smartest players ever is probably worth more than many think.
That he was willing to be deployed the way he was offensively and defensively should prompt some serious questioning for those pushing him as an uncoachable egomaniac. Ham probably doesn't do as well as he did with your traditional(in terms of temperament) all-time great.
2. Embid. He was the 2nd best regular season player and if he was healthy I think he'd be top 3. Alas, he was injured, again, and despite being one of the most talented players ever, his career turning a warning shot for large players hoping to stay healthy in the current iteration of the league.
3. Booker. If he didn't get hurt in the last 2 games of the suns season, I'd consider him for 5 or 4. He was excellent in the postseason putting up great scoring with good defense and underrated playmaking(the idea that Durant was some sort of Curry-like fulcrum is absolutely absurd) and ball-handling. He was also a top 10 rs player when healthy but alas he missed a large part of the seaosn. He also played pretty weak defensive competition and a really weak 1st round opponent. The Suns did take the most games from the nuggets but they were also outscored by the most. I would also expect they would have lost against any of the other contenders given health.
4. Curry. Great playoffs, but he was not top 5 in the regular season and he was arguably worse in the playoffs than a guy who didn't make my ballot despite being up a tendon and down 30k minutes of milage. Warriors lost with home-court to a non-finalist after being close to .500 in the regular season in a pretty good situation in terms of fit. Steph was also a clear 3rd best in the biggest game of the season and he was wearing down quicker than his aforementioned tendon-less nemesis.
I see no good arguments for him being top 5 honestly, but he's probably better than anyone I haven't mentioned yet. As I've mentioned before he does a lot better projected across time than he does era-relative.
5. Luka. A better rs player than a couple of the guys on my ballot but...no playoffs no party