[SI]Daryl Morey: MVP Criteria Is 'Shifting Away From Winning'

Agree, thats my thoughts as well. Morey says he likes "clean answers". But the irony is clean answers DISSOLVES interest in the game. Storylines, narratives, FALSE HOPES, inconsistent as the logic can be, thats what keeps fans engaged. Thats what pays the league's bills. Thats what keeps sports radio and fan sites going. We have titles won by hard results, and everything else is up for discussion.

Of course taking away awards leaves it FULLY about DISCUSSION only. Maybe it can fuel the engagement even more. Arguing rankings and seedings is very much the college sports way. But keeping it at just hard data makes everything mechanical and settled requiring little investment into the product

 

Daryl's focus is also shifting from A to B......stop worrying about things unrelated to your job....

 

I actually see where he tried to go. The influence FOR participation trophies IS because of RESENTMENT / butthurtness toward winners at "expense" of others. And when you remove individual winning, you actually can remove competition altogether. Thats the COMMON element of Morey's MVP opinion and participation trophies.

MAIN KEY DIFFERENCE though, is Morey is saying NOBODY gets ANYTHING ("F-Everyone" in practice"), NOBODY gets candy. Compared to participation trophies where EVERYONE gets something, everyone gets candy regardless of performance. But Morey clearly didnt say remove competition. He said remove the inaccurate rewards system only.

I dont agree with Morey that cuz you cant have clean results for awards means to not have the awards. That means things like no more school voting of "Most Likely to Succeed", or no more judges calculating swimming & ice skating scores (how do REALLY measure that?).

 

In a sport about winning, awards that aren't about ones role in winning, aren't awards that that help the value of the game. To award people for behaviour that is deliberately antithetical to winning behaviour is not a good thing.

 

That's sadly a development because the criteria shifted hard, most MVPs helped their team in big ways and were champions at one point. That's what MVP is meant for, but nowadays it's about boxscores and headlines.

 

I love Morey but man they need to just let it go and worry about basketball. I really felt that the whole MVP deal was a huge distraction last year and not necessarily a good thing for our team and would really prefer not to have to sit through that again as a fan. Westbrook got the MVP and his team got bounced in the first round by the Rockets, I'll take that trade off any day of the week.

We have CP3 here now and it looks like we might be adding other stars soon, if not this season then the next. Harden not winning the award had zero impact on Houston being a destination city as some posters thought it would. Time to let it go and move on to next season, hopefully Harden can put it behind him and just focus on winning games rather than trying to get that extra assist in order to keep up with Westbricker.

Also, **** Blake Griffin. He's the last guy who should be making comments about participation trophies.

 

They are not boys. Paul def could care less about him.

 

You said it very well, better than me.

 

until james harden gets the MVP, i don't give a **** about these awards..

 

Morey's argument doesn't make any sense. The process is very clear and 'clean.' A panel of 100 people get to vote for MVP. Whoever gets the most points wins the award. There is nothing at all ambiguous about it. It's like complaining about the presidential election because voters didn't react to stimulus in 2016 the same way they had reacted in 2008. If you want the MVP, go be entrepreneurial and figure out a way to get it.

 

Did you read the article? Of course the setup is clear but the criterias aren't when the last few decades, the MVP hasn't had that low of a seeding and won. Anywho Morey just sticking up for his player and that's what he should do.

 

Exactly, he's just sticking up for his player.

I'd say MVP is intentionally vague so as to empower voters to apply their own criteria. Morey's complaint implicitly reproaches the intelligence/wisdom/fairness of the voters who have been entrusted with the decision. I have to say, it probably won't do Harden any favors when he's in the running again next season.

 

Morey doesn't like that the MVP voting is based on 100 random opinions, and he is analytically minded.... so it would make sense that random, and opinion bothers him.

Nothing really here to see other than Morey expressing a very Morey-like opinion on the matter.

And the fact that he's sticking up for his player should shock nobody.

 

Harden has lost two MVP's for reasons that others have won two MVP's. Morey's comments do not matter for Harden's MVP chances. He isn't getting the majority regardless. Media has made that rather clear.

 

People here just won't admit it, but the fact is Harden himself lost the MVP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-favorite-for-nba-mvp/?utm_term=.cc1b2b50aeca

This was the media's mid-season MVP vote and Harden was clearly the front-runner. Westbrook was still averaging triple-double at that point, so that possibly couldn't have been the final deciding factor. So what changed in the latter half of the season? Well for starters, Harden and Houston began to kinda..... suck, yeah remember? We couldn't even beat mediocre EC teams such as the Pacers and Raptors, Harden's shooting fell off the cliff along with his soaring turnover averages, and while we were muddling through to barely maintain above .500 after the All-star break, Westbrook simply went nuts, which certainly didn't help the situation.

Let's not pretend that all of the things I've just mentioned didn't happen. Let's not pretend that humans are some kind of robots where recent performance doesn't affect how people cast their vote, because it always does. Let's also not pretend that Harden didn't semi-quit on this team in the playoffs, and as a fan I don't think Harden deserves any more sympathy than he's already getting.

 

False. Harden was ahead when it wasn't clear that Westbrook would avg the MVP. Once it became clear that he would then that's all the masses cared about. The narrative focused on that and ignored traditional metrics. He did what he did all season in the final few weeks, put up crazy numbers and beat bad teams enough to have a decent record.

 

I would agree with this notion if it was correct, but it really isn't.

Harden finished the season averaging 29/11/8 on better efficiency with a far superior team, one that outperformed expectations even more than the Thunder, despite the revisionist history on that. Harden did not "lose" the MVP. The Rockets weren't a supernova like they were in December, but no, they most certainly did not "suck". I definitely do not remember that. And the caveat that humans have recency bias, while true, makes the reasoning even sillier.

 

Recency bias doesn't justify Harden losing the MVP award, but explains it. The point I'm trying to make is enough with the victim complex and conspiracy theories. The fact is Westbrook outplayed Harden in the 2nd half of the season. Every stat proves that except for maybe TS% (which incidentally some people take issue with the way Harden draws fouls and bumps up his scoring efficiency), and that was a bigger reason for why Harden lost the MVP than people here give credit for.

Also, we had 15-9 record after the All-star break. For a supposedly elite team, that qualifies as sucking pretty hard. OKC was 15-10 during that same time span, btw.

The other thing that doesn't get nearly enough attention is the sheer impact WB had on his team. Contrary to what people here believe, Harden's impact was not greater or even similar to WB's this year. In fact, in terms of on/off numbers and other various plus-minus metrics, Harden was more crucial to our offense back in 14-15 than this year. Just going off of my eye test, my general impression was we were not markedly better when Harden was on the floor, especially during the 2nd half of the season. I mean how many times did we start off the game poorly, and our bench unit got us back into the game? How many times did our bench unit actually closed the gap or increased the lead when Harden sat down?

Harden's traditional stats might suggest that last year was his best year, but I saw what Harden did in 14-15, and to me that version of Harden was more impressive. If Harden deserves an MVP trophy, he should have gotten the award that year. Just my two cents.

 

This is the very definition of disingenuous.

 

Agreed. That's why the flipping of the criteria remains silly.