UPDATE: It’s Over; Embiid’s set to claim his first-ever MVP
- Thread starter Gil Scott-Heroin
- Start date
Blackrogue
Superstar
The race has been so close between them the last three seasons I think they all deserve one MVP each for their troubles 
The desperate attempts from you trying to deflect from your own bullshyt is hilarious. It's non-stop. You think trying to divert the heat from yourself is somehow going to erase all your dumbass posts as if I just can't pull them up at any given moment.
There was no clear narrative from to make Jokic the MVP.
The media were dikkriding Tatum over the first couple months of the season because he was the new shiny toy; it was only when he and the Celtics plateaued that Jokic started making waves in the MVP race. This happens every season - the fickle ass media get pulled by whatever narrative is the hottest, they don't have any allegiances to any one player. I've said this time and time again, year after year. Cherry-picking articles and tweets that favor Jokic doesn't change that fact. You can find pro-arguments for every player in the conversation if you look hard enough.
I'm going to add this as my signature every time you try to stick your chest out about this discussion with your transparent agenda -
Now, stop wasting everyone’s time with your nonsense.I see you’ve been running from that MPJ smoke. Remember when you said I was crazy for saying he was the best talent on the team?“But but but Jokic!”
HandyWithTheSteel
Superstar
JoelB
All Praise To TMH
I thought you said the white media don't fukk with Embiid. I thought you said they go out of their way to not give him his props.
JoelB
All Praise To TMH
I thought you said the white media don't fukk with Embiid. I thought you said they go out of their way to not give him his props.
They dont...Legler is one of the few that always keeps it a buck tho. Voted for Jojo last year too. He believes defense matters.
Nuggets choking down this stretch has the Jokic stans quiet in the media and on this forum.
Oh, so Legler is one of those ones you're gonna invite to the cookout, huh?
Legler is one of the few that always keeps it a buck tho. Voted for Jojo last year too. He believes defense matters.
You gonna invite all the other white voters who pick Embiid for MVP too?
VegetasHairline
Veteran
In NBA MVP race, no need to belittle a candidate to make your guy big
In service to your candidates, you're creating a river of virtual bile. And you're not helping your guy's cause.
theathletic.com
I’m sick of Nikola Jokić stans.
I’m sick of Joel Embiid stans.
I’m (slightly less) sick of Giannis Antetokounmpo stans.
In supposed service to your favored candidates for NBA Most Valuable Player honors this season, you’re creating a river of virtual bile, bytes of contempt, segments of dreck. And you’re not helping your guy’s cause.
This is not about the players themselves. They’re all MVP-worthy. They’re all great talkers. They’re all great ambassadors for the game, ably carrying the flags for their native Serbia (Jokic), Cameroon (Embiid) and Greece/Nigeria (Antetokounmpo). They’ve each led their teams to the top of the league standards, where they’ve been most of the season. Entering play Wednesday, they were first (Jokić, at 31.73), second (Embiid, 31.62) and fourth (Antetokounmpo, 28.74), respectively, in PER. They were first (Jokić, 8.2), second (Embiid, 6.0) and eighth (Giannis, 4.7) in Value Over Replacement Player.
It’s their fanboys and fangirls who are sucking all the fun out of what should be a joyful debate.
Doc Rivers is beyond right in his contention that you don’t have to vilify either of the other two superstars to make the case for yours. They’re all great. This should be a celebration, not a bloodletting.
Jokić, of course, is the most efficient offensive player we’ve had in the league for some time, maybe ever. He dominates games by not trying to dominate them. There’s no nightly highlight of Jokić abusing defenders on the block. He scores almost as an afterthought, like Tim Duncan. His wizardry is in his passing, in making his teammates’ lives easier. He doesn’t seek the limelight; at All-Star Weekend last month in Salt Lake City, he was a reluctant interviewee, the game a dud and not in keeping with how he views how basketball should be played, anyway.
“I’m not meant for this game,” he said.
Embiid’s been on a heater all season that is insane in its illustration of his destructiveness at both ends of the floor. He leads the league in scoring (33.6) and 30-point games (41 entering Wednesday’s games). He’s sixth in the league in total blocked shots, and with him anchoring Philly’s defense, the 76ers allow the eighth-fewest paint points in the league (48.2 per game before Wednesday), ahead of the Bucks (11th, 48.8) and Nuggets (25th, 52.8). He dropped 47 on Jokić’s head in a January head-to-head matchup with the two-time MVP.
Antetokounmpo carried his team during the first half of the season while Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday, Pat Connaughton and Joe Ingles were rounding back into shape from respective injuries. He has a great chance to be the first player to average 31 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists per game since Wilt Chamberlain did it in 1966 — 57 years ago; going into Wednesday’s games, Giannis was at 31.2 points, 11.9 boards and 5.5 dimes.
This is beyond splitting hairs. We’re splitting atoms.
And yet, the argument — and it’s always an argument — about which of the three should be MVP this season has devolved, even more than normal.
Of course, in the era in which we live, “debate” has degenerated into, “Not only am I right, but you’re stupid.” You can only be for Jokić (or Embiid, or Giannis) because you hate the other two guys and don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t acknowledge that a vote for any of the three is a valid vote — or, if you wanted to make the case for Jayson Tatum, any of the four. It’s been this way for a while, since keyboard warriors started proliferating like weeds in the discourse, every hot take a click away. It’s not the sole province of NBA World, or sports, or this country, for that matter. But it’s no less awful.
Speaking of which, much of this recent talk about “toxicity” in the debate is shorthand for “Kendrick Perkins brought race into it.”
The ESPN analyst opined (incorrectly, by the numbers) that 80 percent of the voters for MVP were White, leaving unsaid his obvious assertion that that may have led to more votes for Jokić than were perhaps deserved, either the past two seasons or this season’s upcoming vote. (The actual number of White media voters this season, as our Sam Amick pointed out this week, is around 63 percent.) JJ Redikk got predictably outraged, and, voila!, viral clip.
For the record: I disagree with Perk, whom I love, on this particular subject. I’m not naive enough to think race never is a factor in voting, but I doubt it’s a mitigating or decisive one in this case. (Also for the record: I’m Black, and I’ve voted for Jokić two years in a row, just as I’ve voted for Giannis and LeBron and Steph and James Harden and Russell Westbrook for MVP in previous years. And a lot of White voters voted for Giannis and/or Embiid the last two years, just as a lot of White voters voted for Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Duncan and on and on and on.)
Yet, why is everyone jumping on Perkins when it’s no less “toxic” to think people can’t make a fair judgment that Embiid or Giannis deserve MVP over Jokić despite Jokic’s advanced stats?
The tyranny of the advanced numbers set means anyone who may not bow at the altar of Box Plus-Minus or whatever is the flavor of the month stat now is immediately dismissed as a Joker “hater.” Jokić’s numbers are historic! Therefore, you cannot vote against him. You cannot be taken seriously. VOOOOOOOORRPP!
This conveniently ignores the reality that most offensive stats, terrestrial and advanced, have trended higher in the era of 3-point primacy. Per StatMuse, eight of the top 20 single-season PERs in league history have occurred since the 2015-16 season, including Jokić’s all-time single season high PER of 32.8 last season and Antetokounmpo’s 32.1, tied for second-best with Chamberlain, who set the mark in his historic 1961-62 season. It also leaves out the extreme difficulty of measuring individual defensive impact and/or effectiveness through advanced stats; the honest brokers in the stats community acknowledge this. And thus, there isn’t a tidy stat to show how good Embiid (and, to be sure, Antetokounmpo) have been at that end. Individual defensive rating is the best we can do at present. But that doesn’t leave the board any less tilted.
Is it possible, then, for everyone to use whatever numbers they want, and whatever eye test they want, and whatever retired player/coach testimonials they want — as long as those affirmations lift your guy up and don’t pulverize the other two guys into the blacktop?
I’m sick of Joel Embiid stans.
I’m (slightly less) sick of Giannis Antetokounmpo stans.
In supposed service to your favored candidates for NBA Most Valuable Player honors this season, you’re creating a river of virtual bile, bytes of contempt, segments of dreck. And you’re not helping your guy’s cause.
This is not about the players themselves. They’re all MVP-worthy. They’re all great talkers. They’re all great ambassadors for the game, ably carrying the flags for their native Serbia (Jokic), Cameroon (Embiid) and Greece/Nigeria (Antetokounmpo). They’ve each led their teams to the top of the league standards, where they’ve been most of the season. Entering play Wednesday, they were first (Jokić, at 31.73), second (Embiid, 31.62) and fourth (Antetokounmpo, 28.74), respectively, in PER. They were first (Jokić, 8.2), second (Embiid, 6.0) and eighth (Giannis, 4.7) in Value Over Replacement Player.
It’s their fanboys and fangirls who are sucking all the fun out of what should be a joyful debate.
Doc Rivers is beyond right in his contention that you don’t have to vilify either of the other two superstars to make the case for yours. They’re all great. This should be a celebration, not a bloodletting.
Jokić, of course, is the most efficient offensive player we’ve had in the league for some time, maybe ever. He dominates games by not trying to dominate them. There’s no nightly highlight of Jokić abusing defenders on the block. He scores almost as an afterthought, like Tim Duncan. His wizardry is in his passing, in making his teammates’ lives easier. He doesn’t seek the limelight; at All-Star Weekend last month in Salt Lake City, he was a reluctant interviewee, the game a dud and not in keeping with how he views how basketball should be played, anyway.
“I’m not meant for this game,” he said.
Embiid’s been on a heater all season that is insane in its illustration of his destructiveness at both ends of the floor. He leads the league in scoring (33.6) and 30-point games (41 entering Wednesday’s games). He’s sixth in the league in total blocked shots, and with him anchoring Philly’s defense, the 76ers allow the eighth-fewest paint points in the league (48.2 per game before Wednesday), ahead of the Bucks (11th, 48.8) and Nuggets (25th, 52.8). He dropped 47 on Jokić’s head in a January head-to-head matchup with the two-time MVP.
Antetokounmpo carried his team during the first half of the season while Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday, Pat Connaughton and Joe Ingles were rounding back into shape from respective injuries. He has a great chance to be the first player to average 31 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists per game since Wilt Chamberlain did it in 1966 — 57 years ago; going into Wednesday’s games, Giannis was at 31.2 points, 11.9 boards and 5.5 dimes.
This is beyond splitting hairs. We’re splitting atoms.
And yet, the argument — and it’s always an argument — about which of the three should be MVP this season has devolved, even more than normal.
Of course, in the era in which we live, “debate” has degenerated into, “Not only am I right, but you’re stupid.” You can only be for Jokić (or Embiid, or Giannis) because you hate the other two guys and don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t acknowledge that a vote for any of the three is a valid vote — or, if you wanted to make the case for Jayson Tatum, any of the four. It’s been this way for a while, since keyboard warriors started proliferating like weeds in the discourse, every hot take a click away. It’s not the sole province of NBA World, or sports, or this country, for that matter. But it’s no less awful.
Speaking of which, much of this recent talk about “toxicity” in the debate is shorthand for “Kendrick Perkins brought race into it.”
The ESPN analyst opined (incorrectly, by the numbers) that 80 percent of the voters for MVP were White, leaving unsaid his obvious assertion that that may have led to more votes for Jokić than were perhaps deserved, either the past two seasons or this season’s upcoming vote. (The actual number of White media voters this season, as our Sam Amick pointed out this week, is around 63 percent.) JJ Redikk got predictably outraged, and, voila!, viral clip.
For the record: I disagree with Perk, whom I love, on this particular subject. I’m not naive enough to think race never is a factor in voting, but I doubt it’s a mitigating or decisive one in this case. (Also for the record: I’m Black, and I’ve voted for Jokić two years in a row, just as I’ve voted for Giannis and LeBron and Steph and James Harden and Russell Westbrook for MVP in previous years. And a lot of White voters voted for Giannis and/or Embiid the last two years, just as a lot of White voters voted for Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Duncan and on and on and on.)
Yet, why is everyone jumping on Perkins when it’s no less “toxic” to think people can’t make a fair judgment that Embiid or Giannis deserve MVP over Jokić despite Jokic’s advanced stats?
The tyranny of the advanced numbers set means anyone who may not bow at the altar of Box Plus-Minus or whatever is the flavor of the month stat now is immediately dismissed as a Joker “hater.” Jokić’s numbers are historic! Therefore, you cannot vote against him. You cannot be taken seriously. VOOOOOOOORRPP!
This conveniently ignores the reality that most offensive stats, terrestrial and advanced, have trended higher in the era of 3-point primacy. Per StatMuse, eight of the top 20 single-season PERs in league history have occurred since the 2015-16 season, including Jokić’s all-time single season high PER of 32.8 last season and Antetokounmpo’s 32.1, tied for second-best with Chamberlain, who set the mark in his historic 1961-62 season. It also leaves out the extreme difficulty of measuring individual defensive impact and/or effectiveness through advanced stats; the honest brokers in the stats community acknowledge this. And thus, there isn’t a tidy stat to show how good Embiid (and, to be sure, Antetokounmpo) have been at that end. Individual defensive rating is the best we can do at present. But that doesn’t leave the board any less tilted.
Is it possible, then, for everyone to use whatever numbers they want, and whatever eye test they want, and whatever retired player/coach testimonials they want — as long as those affirmations lift your guy up and don’t pulverize the other two guys into the blacktop?
T.he I.nformant
1st Ballot HOF Teller
Happens every season.David Aldridge is tired of y'all!In NBA MVP race, no need to belittle a candidate to make your guy big
In service to your candidates, you're creating a river of virtual bile. And you're not helping your guy's cause.
And it's not just limited to the MVP conversation.
It's sad how folks just can't enjoy hoops. There's always gotta be some ulterior motive or one in plain sight where today's game and its players can't just be appreciated as they are.
