Bill Simmons discusses his MVP vote, saying, "I voted Jokic (for MVP). I thought it was the best offensive season since Jordan" (01:12:10 onwards). He also notes that Jokic isn't stat-padding like Westbrook did in 2017, and that—unlike Luka's season last year—Jokic only dominates the ball out of necessity. His employees, Rob Mahoney and Ryen Russillo, are also voting for Jokic as MVP.

Source: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7j0zlbR4rBbBFSlS4eJNai?si=XZyARqdJSnmh9qvxj59pQQ&nd=1&dlsi=15e1024eb49f4147

38 comments

  2. SGA will use this as bulletin board material.

    Jokic will use it as, I dunno, horse feed?

  4. The whole Ringer crew has definitely been trying to influence the other media voters to vote the same way they did. Let’s see how it plays out.

  5. with how dominantly SGA tracked in Bontemps straw poll, i was a little surprised by how up-in-the-air Lowe said his canvassing of the league was (he said he asked ~40 people)

    with the Ringer doing seemingly a clean sweep for Jokic (Pina has a vote and also said he voted Jokic), i wonder how the actual results will pan out. for reference SGA got over 75% 1st place MVP votes in the last Bontemps straw poll

  7. He’s wrong twice.

    It’s a much better offensive season than Jordan ever managed.

    And SGA’s the MVP.

  9. The coach getting fired and the poor defensive effort would get held against anyone else. For Jokic somehow the former *helps* his case.

    The Westbrook take is a lame excuse. Jokic dropping 61-10-10 in a loss is transcendent and amazing but Russ dropping 57-13-11 in a win is selfish statpadding. It’s BS.

  10. Jokic had an incredible season — but his numbers were pretty inflated by beating up on bad teams. his teams defense (partially because of him) was so poor, that bad teams hung around often with denver enough, that it lead to jokic putting up insane numbers in those games. in games against good teams, his numbers came back down to earth

    it’s not a perfect metric — but if you sort his “game scores” on basketball reference, out of his top 20 games, only four came against playoff teams. Six came against play in teams. And ten came against lottery teams.

    conversely, out of SGA’s top 20 game scores — 10 came against playoff teams, 7 against play in teams, and only three against lottery teams. The Thunder were generally blowing out these lottery teams, so SGA didn’t have a chance to play huge minutes against them. And his six games he missed were against New Orleans, Utah, Phoenix, Dallas, Portland and San Antonio.

    tldr — Jokic’s numbers were insane, but inflated by playing big minutes and beating up on bad teams. His numbers come down and normalize a bit against better competition.

  11. The discussion on MVP through the years tells you how this is all about narrative. With the right narrative you can always make your argument for a candidate because it’s just that subjective. All these arguments are like those content farm materials and somehow a lot of NBA fans find them insightful.

  12. I hope jokic doesn’t win this mvp. I’ll need therapy or anger management.
    He’s had no better of a season than giannis.

    I remember the slander giannis faced when griffin was fired last season. He was disqualified then and there.

    Meanwhile shai has had an incredible season, an incredible record and a historically good team. Why? From Lu Dort? No.

  13. Michael Pina, also of The Ringer, also voted for Jokic. That organization is going to single handedly flip the MVP race

  14. At some point you have to reward winning. SGA could’ve easily padded his stats but winning by so much actually hurt his MVP case because he had to sit out so many 4th quarters and blowouts. The difference in +/- between SGA (#1 at +918) and Jokic (#2 at +594) is equal to the difference between Jokic and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (#49 in league at +270)

  17. All this is gonna be hilarious when Jokic gets baptized in the first while SGA wins a chip

  18. Michael Jordan couldn’t win MVP with 69 wins lol the voters are a joke no matter what era

  21. Nobody fucking cares. Jokic fans should worry more that Jokic is under a dumpster fire organization and Nuggets team isn’t good enough to win a championship this year.

  23. SGA should win this year and it’s not really that much of a debate. If the nuggets had one 60 games maybe, but they are too far below in the standings

  24. Everyone’s going to get riled up over some votes going to Jokic, even though that’s bound to happen SGA is winning the award.

  25. BPM has curry’s 2016 season as the best offensive season ever.

    Also while jokic had a crazy offensive season (2nd highest via obpm) shai quietly had one of the best offensive seasons as well (12th highest)

    Both players are very deserving of mvp, but i think team record pushes shai over the line for this one

  26. SGA is winning this one. He lost his 2nd best player to injury and dragged a team of 22 year olds to the best record in the league. If that isn’t MVP worthy not sure what else is

  27. Guess Luka didn’t need the ball for the Mavs to win, shit, someone shoulda told the Mavs that

  28. Knowing what goes into the sausage and seeing it actually get made are too different things. The “Debate” before the actual award just goes on to diminish the accomplishment IMO. It put an Asterisk next to the award. “Jokic won it but SGA was a close second” makes whoever wins less important.

  30. Bill claims to be a huge Curry fan but forgets about him all the time in stuff like this. Jokic had an amazing season but nobody is going to remember it in comparison to Curry’s 2015-16 season

  31. He’s a complete clown show. He had two clippers which is fine but how is Zubac All NBA on your ballot meaning you think he’s a top 15 player, but then you take Dyson Daniels over him for most improved? This is a guy that regularly shit on Zubac too last year. Makes zero sense.

  34. They need to replace these dudes voting or else these rewards are going to continue to mean less & less.

  35. Best offensive season since Jordan? There have been tons of better offensive seasons then any of MJ’s

    Curry, Harden, Jokic, LeBron, Luka, even probably Steve Nash have all had multiple seasons that were more offensively impressive the MJ’s best offensive season. MJ made a ton of shots but he also missed a ton of shots. His biggest thing was being able to dominate on both ends of the court

  36. Since Jordan? Since 1996? We’ve had so many more better offensive displays since 29years ago

  37. Thought Luka should have won the MVP last season, and the run the Mavs went on to the Finals made more people feel that way I think after it was finished. Just like how the year before that Embiid won it but Jokic went on to win the Finals and people said that Jokic should have won the MVP instead. I wonder if we get that again. Where the one that loses the MVP goes on a run to the Finals and people say they should have won it instead.

    Though if Luka did win MVP last year I wonder if Nico could have still traded him. Probably would have been more difficult, lol.

  38. What does ball-dominance “out of necessity” look like if it isn’t Luka averaging 38-8-10 for 2 months because Dante Exum is his second option lol

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