Ryen Russilo: “I’m not having a hard time with this one, I’m voting for Jokic. I decided a while ago” Bill Simmons: “The problem with the SGA candidacy, if you gave Jokic SGA’s 2 through 12 I’m pretty sure he’d win 65-70 games with the team SGA has.”
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This is so dumb, it makes me irrationally mad.
If the Nuggets fizzle out in the first round, all these dudes are gonna pretend like they went with SGA all along.
Also, nice way to shit on SGA and the Denver supporting cast (which won a title less than 2 years ago) in the same breath
I assume they never gave Tatum a top-3 MVP vote either then, yeah?
Jokic hypothetically winning 65-70 games with SGA’s team: ššš
SGA actually winning 68 games: š“š“š“
NBA award voting is just media members looking for an excuse to vote for their favorite players.
Man, “if you swap SGA and Jokic, OKC might win the same number of games” isn’t exactly the most compelling Jokic for MVP argument.
Thereās an argument for Jokic winning MVP but this isnāt it. Hypothetically winning 65-70 games doesnāt trump actually winning 68 games.
The argument for Jokic is in his on/off splits.
We have ALL THIS DATA and yall still wanna talk hypotheticals?
Congrats to SGA. He had a phenomenal season.
I don’t really get the 65-70 comment because SGA won 68 anyway? lol?
Better way is just saying if you do straight role swap of Chet and SGA for Jokic and Murray then OKC is a better team or something
I don’t recall anyone ever using this for Luka.
By that argument, Giannis should win it because heād win 75-80 games with that team.
Itās clear that these two have an aesthetic preference for Jokic, I donāt even mean that as to imply a racial bias, but I genuinely think that if they just admitted that they just prefer his game and want to reward him in a situation where they perceive the race to be close, Iād respect them more for it. This pussyfooting, hypothetical scenario making is just foolish. Zach Lowe also has some of this too.
fuck you guys and the narrative last year it was the best player of the best team bla bla blaā¦
Meet Hypothetical Man!!!
if things were different, they’d sure be different.
Counterfactuals will always be a trash argument made by people with losing, unconvincing points.
Picking your mvp because of what ifs should get you publicly hanged
OKC, with Jokic, possibly winning the same amount of games they did with Shai, is an insane argument for Jokic!
I wonder how many players have won MVP the year their coach got fired?
Jokic is great without a doubt but Iām just not buying that SGAs supporting cast is 18 games better than Jokics. Especially with Chet missing 50 games. Despite whatever advanced metrics may say, I think Jokic is a big part of Denver being the 22nd ranked defense in the league.
So your argument for Jokic is that if he were on OKC he *might* be able to achieve the result SGA *actually* achieved?
āI decided a while agoā that makes you a bad voter
if joker wins MVP this year then you gotta give him the MVP the next 5 years after because his stats or going to be the same if not BETTER! weāve never voted MVP on whoās the best player in the league if that was the case Lebron would have 10 like wise with Jordan.
SGA getting shafted
So because he may win 65-70 games it makes it more impressive than actually winning 68 games? Also, if you “decided” a while ago, you are missing the entire point. As it isn’t a 3/4 of the season award.
Is that the criteria now? Lmao
“And if my grandmother had wheels she would be a bike”
I don’t think it’s actually complicated. Jokic is the best player in the world and he’s having an incredible season. He’s the most valuable player in the world. SGA is having a great season but I’ve never thought he was better than Jokic or that I wouldn’t rather have Jokic on my team.
Not only is this hypothetical stupid for MVP voting, SGA didnāt even get to play with his 2-12 the whole year because of injuries!
I usually find Russilo pretty reasonable but heās just too all in on Jokic. SGA has the stats and the record, heās the right pick, even if Jokic is the better player. Itās an annual award or else Jordan would have 10 MVPs
I hate this shit so much. “Yeah but if everything was totally different, would the result be different?” Like yeah, no shit Sherlock. So stupid. There was an awesome season to look back on and judge and instead they decided to create a fake scenario that only helps the candidate they favor. Stupid bullshit
Okay but what if Kobe Bryant was Italian, Bill? What then?
Itās weird to me how strong the push has been to make the mvp the ābest player in the league awardā ever since jokic became the best in the world. itās about rewarding excellence and thereās literally always been an element of āthis guy should have one/letās get this great player this oneā.
Thatās very much what Kobeās was in 08 when he was arguably the best player in the world multiple years before 08. Thatās what hardens was when LeBron was clearly a better player than him because Westbrook robbed him a couple years before that.
SGA has had a real all time mvp caliber year, thereās no āhere damnā nature to it like with embiid. Heās putting up crazy numbers on the best team in basketball and whooping everyoneās ass. Every year Jokic doesnāt win itās ābut Jokic is better than this guyā when past greats donāt get nearly the same championing. Thereās a section of the media that thinks he should be on his way to 5 straight. No notes I just find it strange.
People act like OKC has 12 all stars playing for them while Denver has 12 high schoolers playing for them. This is a stupid narrative. āOKC has Chet!ā He was out half the year. āOKC has dub!ā He was out 15+ games. āOKC has wig!ā Heāll score 20 one game and 0 the next. OKC literally got bounced from the playoffs last year as shai was playing out of his mind specifically and directly because his teammates all sold. Jokic has won a title with effectively the same starting pieces around him and a lot of people were picking Denver to go deep before the year because of their roster. Now all of the sudden they all suck because Denver isnāt winning? OKC beat 4 bad teams, 3 of which actively and intentionally tanking, without shai. In the one game where they played a team with a pulse without shai, they were hopeless on the offensive end.
See hereās the thing, if you vote for Jokic this year then you shouldāve voted for Luka last year. Yet it wasnāt even close last year.
If a voter voted for Joker last season, and is still voting for him this season they are literally moving the goal posts for Jokic
Other teams to win 68+ games or have a .829 winning percentage:
2016 Warriors – Curry won unanimous MVP
1996 Bulls – Jordan ran away with MVP
1967 76ers – Wilt ran away with MVP
1973 Celtics – Dave Cowens won with double the first place votes Kareem had
1972 Lakers – Kareem (35/17/5 shooting 57%) won it over Jerry West (26/4/10 shooting 48%)
1997 Bulls – Karl Malone won it in a close race over Jordan with fairly similar but slightly better stats, and the Jazz won 64 games.
The Nuggets won 50 games this year.
Iām sorry, but SGA should be the MVP with the year heās had. We have to stop punishing players for having good teams if theyāre winning *SIXTY EIGHT* games. If thatās the reason then just give Wembanyama the MVP because the Spurs would be nowhere without him, or Giannis the MVP because the Bucks would be awful without him.
If Jokic wins it this year, just give it to him every year going forward because heās always going to raise the floor of his team as a great scorer and facilitator and gets the Nuggets to 46 wins every year and if thatās enough, thereās no sense in voting anymore.
I hope this means we can also retroactively give LeBron his MVPās in 2006 and 2018 because Nash and Harden had much better teammates.
Obviously OKC is great, but people are underselling that outside SGA you have one first-time all-star (who was not close to being voted in FWIW) and Chet missing FIFTY games.
Wild. All year all I heard was if they win close to 70 games then SGA is the MVP but now theyāre making up hypotheticals to not give it to him. Lmao.
SGA is the best player on the best team and led the league in scoring. If that aināt MVP worthy idk what is
Amazing how the rules of the mvp simply don’t matter for jokic.
People used to have to talk themselves out of a LeBron mvp because we canāt give it to the same guy every year.
Interesting to see people talk themselves into giving it to Jokic every year.
āIf Jokic had Shaiās team, he would probably do what Shai already did.ā
Is this even an argument supporting Jokic? Its basically saying that Shai is as good as Jokic, so since he was as good and won 68 games, it should be Shaiās award.
Jokics teammates are only ever as good or bad as they need to be to support his fans argumentes itās absurd. If you believe something that were recently said about his teammates youād think he was LeBron on the original cavs team.
The funniest part about this is, Jokic literally was the best player on the best team 2 years ago and he lost, Which makes it even more of a kerfuffle if you throw it into any mvp argument lmao
My problem with this argument is that itās more about position than anything else. If you remove Jokic from the Nuggets and replace him with any non-center star in the league, theyāre going to struggle because they have no starter-level center. Most good teams have a few players capable of playing starting PG, so of course removing a superstar PG isnāt going to have as huge an impact.
People keep leaving out how many games OKCs players have missed due to injury. Playing without anyone over 6’7″ for close to a quarter of the season and still winning 68 games is crazy.
Both players had incredible seasons.
The Nuggets won 50 games.
The Thunder won 68 games.
At the start of the season, the Vegas Over/Under for Denver was 52. For the Thunder it was 55.
They were similar teams to start the year. Both teams dealt with a significant injury early on (Chet and Murray).
And yet the Thunder destroyed their O/U and Denver was worse.
Joker is the best player in the world.
But SGA is the clear MVP this season.
The further you seperate team success from the MVP, the more it will be devalued and viewed as a joke.
Jokic had a historic season and they will get bounced in the 1st round.
Giving the MVP to this situation will damage the league.
So winning counts for absolutely nothing just because you THINK that Jokic could’ve done it too?
It’s not like Shai is pulling a 2015 curry in terms of stats. He’s having a season straight out of Michael Jordan’s prime.Ā
If winning 20 games more than your opponent counts for absolutely nothing because “the team is too good”, then the award should just be renamed to “best stats of the year”.
I know damn well if Jokics team won nearly 70 games but his stats were a bit worse than Shais, Jokic would win.Ā
So he’d have the same wins as SGA?
I listened to the podcast yesterday. At one point, Simmons suggests that Malone getting fired is a benefit for Jokic’s MVP case because Jokic was able to lead the team through what must have been a dysfunctional situation and still achieve 50 wins. Last year, I’m pretty sure he docked Giannis’s MVP candidacy because Griffin got fired.
I acknowledge that they’re different cases (a veteran coach versus a new coach). I’m also not trying to imply that the narrative stuff should be the ultimate deciding factor in these awards. But it just strikes me that there always seems to be some hoop that media members are willing to jump through to make their preferred candidate work.