wiggins and oubre are high end role players, and are paid as such. super athletic 2-way wing defenders are expensive, and curry needs those type of players around him to hide his weaknesses
Why are you basing everything on that one podcast episode and then thinking they would not say the same thing about Smith that year. I think you are wildly inflating what they said about Draymond but even if so that does mean Smith was better that year. When was this podcast?
The fact that Stephen curry is being talked about as a legit mvp candidate is ... I’m just gonna come out and say it flat out LIGHTSKIN privilege. he doesn’t crack the top 10 according to basketball references historical mvp tracker https://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/mvp.html I mean he is currently the 10th seed in the west. What the hell is their even to discuss. All because he had a couple of hot games in April. They were 6-5 in those 11 games too so we are just giving top 5 mvp finishes to guys who can’t put their team in contention at all. If that’s the case why wasn’t Kevin love, Tracy McGrady, and other past great players in average teams seen as mvp candidates. We are bending over backwards and breaking the fundamental fabric guidelines AGAIN of what the mvp criteria is because we WANT someone to win it( they did before in 2017) I know JOKIC is gonna win the award. But the fact that people are mentioning curry as a top 5 candidate is a JOKE harden would have this same warriors team as a top 4 seed no doubt in my mind
Everyone knows it's gonna be Jokic or Embiid. But they're boring players for the media. They talked James for a bit, even he's injured. There's nothing else to talk about. Media sells stories, not excel sheets. Sorry if you feel bad about it. World is not about fairness. This is just entertainment.
steph would finish 2nd right now. and on a 9th seed. he is definitely treated very favorably by the media. whether it's because he's light-skinned or not is up to interpretation.
When it comes to voting, Embiid is surely ahead imo. You're describing the flavor of the week put on a plate by the media. On top players favoritism, I don't believe in the light-skin argument. Got charm? Got marketing. The top NBA media darlings were dark-skinned: MJ, Lebron, who's above the rest. Then there's Kobe who is light. Shaq is dark. Well remember Duncan? he's light also. I also agree there is voting bias. The bias though, has to do with expectation built from prior results, plus a bit of off-court image. Harden never got it done. Curry did. Hence the bias. There's no what ifs. Curry got it done as the leader of a championship team and got a historic regular season record, memories that fans want to relive. Harden otoh routinely under-performs in elimination games, this had stuck in the voters' minds. Is it fair? maybe maybe not.
The MVP should go to Jokic, and Giannis probably has the second best case. Embiid, Harden, and LeBron have missed too many games. If Embiid played 10 more games he might have had the strongest case. Curry shouldn't even be in top 5. My top 5: Jokic, Giannis, Embiid, Doncic, Harden
Curry is playing amazing. Great numbers. He should definitely make an all NBA team. But the lack of victories is troubling. Let's not forget he is currently 10th in the west. That is 2 spots out of the play offs in the old setup. Currently he is only holding 5 teams in the west behind him 3 (maybe 4) of which are actively trying to loose. So in the west he is only beating 2 teams who are trying to win in the standings. So this talk about MVP is ridiculous. For him to be considered MVP he should be a top 3 team in the west..
Draymond Green is currently 20th in the entire NBA in wins above replacement. He is a positive both on offense and on defense. The Warriors aren’t very good, but Curry is NOT out there playing with ONLY a bunch of below replacement level scrubs. As far as comparing supporting casts I would say this tool is helpful for rough comparisons. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/nba-player-ratings/ If we are talking 15/16 Rockets and current Warriors, based on 538s metrics I’d say the Warriors supporting cast is slightly better based mostly on having an extra 1-2 slightly above negative value guys. AND Green is clearly the best available of the two teams and some of the Rockets players are lower in impact then you might remember from that year. That season outside of Harden we only had two positive impact players, Bev and CC. Current Warriors have 5 with a positive RAPTOR outside of Curry.
20th in WAR is a strange stat to tout. It helps prove the idea that the rest of the team is so bad, which is the point. If you are playing with a bunch of scrubs your WAR is going to be inflated, obviously. (Btw Curry is 3rd on that list) What does your tool tell you about the 14-15 Rockets v. Current warriors?
What’s strange about touting a player having a very high WAR? It’s showing he is having a large impact on adding wins... Also could you possibly breakdown how it obviously inflates your WAR to play with scrubs? Most the league leaders are on the best teams.... Like always... What inflates your WAR is being a high impact player...Period. Curry and Draymond are high on the list because they are almost always high on this list. 4th and 14th in 18/19, 13th and 15th in 17/18, 1st and 5th in 16/17, 1st and 2nd in 15/16, 1st and 4th in 14/15. They are extremely high end valuable players. The 14-15 Rockets had less higher end impact role players and more replacement level depth, but the 15-16 team had a couple higher impact individuals with less overall depth.
Jakob Poeltl is 22nd on that list. Bradley Beal 18th, Fred Van Vleet 12th. Are those guys on the best teams? Are they considered to be in the highest tier of players in the league. Of course not. So why are their WARs so high? Because relative to the talent level on the rest of the team, their presence on the court makes the most difference. Of course most of the best guys on the best teams are highest on the list, but there are clear exceptions, Draymond being one.
Man you suck at this. This not how you counter an argument, he already told you this warriors team has better overall WAR than that Rockets team. What does on the best team means. It's amazing that you just glossed over the fact that 16 out those 20 players have teams that are top 4 playoff seeds and that 17 out of 20 players are currently in the playoffs.
Westbrook is on the same team as Beal. And he is 219th in WAR... His team sucks....where is his bump? There isn’t one because that’s not how the stat works. It sets out to identify individual high impact even on shitty teams. Like the examples you gave. Westbrook is not high impact so he does not rate favorably in this metric, Beal is high impact so he does. Same team different players, logical results based on what we know of these players. Beal is really good and Westbrook really isn’t. Same for Draymond as evidenced by years and years and years of rating highly in this metric. This isn’t a one year blip where all of a sudden Draymond is showing high impact while the team is mediocre. He’s always shown high impact. The stat isn’t there to list the best players in the league in order from best to worst. It takes in account impact and how many minutes you are on the floor. And in reality the opposite is way more true than what you are claiming. Players on really good teams usually will have their WARs inflated a bit because the team is winning most of the time. I think the stat you are thinking of is on/off net rating. That metric can greatly favor players who are one of only a couple good players on a team that is mostly mediocre to garbage.
It’s amazing that you don’t know how to read. In my post I said most of the players on the list are on the best teams but there are exceptions. How is that glossing over? It’s not.
