Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - The Luka Dončić MVP Discourse Is Heating Up, and Making People Angry!

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Luca Donchich discourse is shifting into overdrive, how people get it right and people get it wrong when it comes to the MVP talk. That's next. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for joining us here on Locked on Lakers. I'm Brian Kemenitsky with Andy Kamenetsky, and I'll tell you this, Andy. Say what you will about who's getting a lot of. right and who's getting it wrong. Things are good in Lakerland when we're having an MVP debate

Starting point is 00:00:41 about a Laker. Lukadanschich is destroying worlds right now and the Lakers are overperforming expectations. I like both of those things. Yeah, absolutely. It's a good time to be a Laker fan right now. It is a good time to be a Laker fan knowing that Luca Dantzich has just entered his prime and he's going to be on this team for a while. And to your point, he is, even by Luca Donchich standards, he has been playing out of his flippin' gourd for the last anywhere from three to six weeks, and particularly the last two to three. He has been doing things. Don't tell me you're a fan from the Mavericks or a fan from Slovenia. This is what Luca does. No, even by Lucas standards, this is some new bleep and it's glorious.

Starting point is 00:01:35 15. I mean, the post all-star break numbers are pretty shiny, 35 and a half points a game, 7 and a half rebounds, 7.5 assists, almost a full block and over two steals a game. If you think that's good, you're going to love March, 15 games in March, 37.2 points a game, over eight rebounds a game, over seven assists a game, 2.3 steals shooting 49%. And that's before you start getting into the stretch

Starting point is 00:02:09 where he's averaging 40 points a game. He is right now part of a mix of players that are being widely bandied about as the front runners, Shea Gilges Alexander and Victor Rummanyama, I think are considered the pretty solid one and two. Shea for most of the season. but Wemby has really been coming on strong between the Spurs play of late,

Starting point is 00:02:34 Wembe's play of late, Wemby actually advocating very confidently, and I think in some ways very persuasively on his own behalf. He was asked to lay out his credentials, both in a piece for the athletic and in a post-game scrum. And Vic, as is often the case, not shy, not in a way it's arrogant or off-putting, but just pretty straightforward. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome. These are the reasons why.

Starting point is 00:03:03 And then I think the next tier of players has included Luca, Yokic, and Jalen Brown. And those I think right now, particularly with Kate Cunningham, no longer in contention because of the collapse long and not being able to hit the 65 game minimum. These are your top five players. And from your and my perspective, what is most interesting to us isn't making necessarily the case that Luca should or should not be MVP. I mean, particularly the top four. And I think the top four consensus is Che, Wembe, Luca, Yokic. There is no bad choice among the four.

Starting point is 00:03:48 What we find more interesting is the cases that are being made for Luca again. against Luca and the way a lot of people right now seem to be, particularly people who cover the Lakers or Lakers fans are getting their backs up about the way Luca has been discussed in this whole MVP conversation. And some of the discussion about Luca, I think, has been kind of silly. I think two things. First, I actually love that Wembe is like, you know, a lot of people will be like, I don't care about the awards. I don't think about the voting. It's like, no, I want these things.

Starting point is 00:04:32 I want to be defensive player at the year. I think I want to be, I like, I like that he's just like, yeah, I want to win all the awards. Absolutely. Like, I want my team to win. I want all this stuff. Like, I think it's great. Here's my, here's my position about this.

Starting point is 00:04:44 Like, I agree with you. Like, I, first of all, I don't, I, I've watched Luca play however many games he's played this year. I've seen every Luca game all year. I have not seen Shea play every game. I have not seen Wembe play all of his games. I have not seen Yokic play all of his games. If you watch people who are that good all the time on teams that are playing really, really well,

Starting point is 00:05:09 it is easy to develop and appreciate it. I'm sure if I watched, you know, 70 whatever games of Shea or 60, you have a stronger opinion about him winning MVP and so on and so on and so on. all I care about is, A, are you grading people on things that are fair and are accurate? And then are you kind of holding a consistent line throughout the whole thing? If you're saying, if you worry about it and we've seen different, there are three or four clips that have been going around different high profile members of the media. It is not all basketball people are saying this and this. But enough voices are saying, I cannot vote for Luca,

Starting point is 00:05:54 Luca doesn't play defense. If you are saying that, especially about the last five or six weeks, you are simply not watching the Lakers play. You are going on Luca's reputation, which to me is somewhat overstated, you know, in terms of how bad he is on that side of the ball. But not only has he not been bad defensively over the, last, you know, the course of this big push from the Lakers, he's actually been quite good

Starting point is 00:06:27 when you break down his numbers and the effect on the team and net rating and all that kind of stuff. So that's part one. And then part two is, are you applying the same standards to Luca that you do for certain other players in the race? And I'll explain what I mean by that. Next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by TurboTax. It's tax time, but for a lot of us the old way of doing taxes is a lot trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenience sitting in a waiting room with stack of papers emailing back and forth wondering if they really get your situation this year though you're getting a major upgrade into it turbotax now has in-person locations nationwide you can meet face-to-face with a real

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Starting point is 00:10:02 We mentioned the defense. We mentioned, you know, his impact on the team. And obviously, Luca going, is nuclear in the last, you know, 10, 15, 20 games. These are all things that it's not just one-sided, you know, Lucas scores a lot, but he completely ignores you. Okay, so are you watching the games? That also means you can ding Luca for maybe not doing enough of it

Starting point is 00:10:30 in the first, you know, part of the season again. I was going to say, I think if you, if your argument is Lucas defense over the last month to six weeks has been really good, but the standard was not being met for too much of the, season for me to vote him MVP or for me to have him even second, you know, behind either presumably SGA or Wembe, I may not agree with that, but I think that is a reasonable take.

Starting point is 00:11:01 There's a difference between a take that is reasonable, you may not agree with it, versus unreasonable. You don't agree with it. To ding Luca for not playing any defense whatsoever, that is unreasonable. also inaccurate and it's also part of why how this stuff gets framed and how you break down the criteria. That to me is what matters most because again, the guys who are front runners right now, and I think ultimately it's going to end up either SGA or Wembe, it's really hard to make arguments against them. And I think at some point it becomes either a waste of time or just a

Starting point is 00:11:45 blatant exercise in caping up for your guy. And by the way, you want to cape up for your guy, cape up for your guy. Fine, whatever, particularly if you're a fan and you're not putting in an actual vote and you just want to take up for your star, go for it. But I'm just talking about arguments that are in good faith. It's really hard to tear down the candidacy of SGA and Wembe because they are so worthy. My point is you don't need to tear down Luca for false or contextually inaccurate or sloppy reasons to make the case for Wembe or SGA. You can make strong cases for everybody while still ultimately landing on one guy because at the end of the day, it's a choice of one. So here, I think you're exactly right. And here are two examples what I'm talking about.

Starting point is 00:12:41 three things happen. We all know it's a narrative award and you know over the course of the season and then like people get bored with the storyline and then you got, you know, let's change this stuff. We talk about this guy. Ooh, like you want it to be a race.

Starting point is 00:12:53 And it's been SGA's award the entire season. It's natural people get bored with that. Now it's getting complicated because Wembe's making a charge. I don't think Wemby making the charge, by the way, is people being bored. I think it's more of a,

Starting point is 00:13:05 it's a lot of it's happening. It's just sort of the ebb and flow of how these things go. And Luke is making a charge. and oh, this guy's going to take it. It just becomes part of the conversation. So there's that. But then also, too, you're graded on your team's success.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And for all the talk about like, well, Luca can't win because the Lakers aren't good enough. They've been a third, fourth, or fifth seed all season. You can argue about that. Oh, they haven't beaten this team. I mean, they have been a three, four, five, whatever, all year. And the reason they are there is in very large part because of Luca.

Starting point is 00:13:42 And I will put it this way. If Yokic gets to be in the conversation because Denver is good and he's putting up great numbers and he's leading that team. And they were missing Aaron Gordon for a bunch of the season for Peyton Watson for bunch of the season. Same argument for Luca. If you can talk about Yokic in this conversation, then the same rules should let Luca also be a top candidate for this.

Starting point is 00:14:10 Really quick, just so it's clear, because I don't want to, I don't want to potentially frame this in a way that makes us a bad part of the conversation. Luca clearly is a strong candidate. He's going to finish in the top five by definition that makes him a strong candidate. We're just because I hear people, and remember this was something I brought up like three weeks ago when I said, I'm starting to see all these people questioning why, hookah's not part of the conversation. JJ was asked about this and I'm like, folks, he is part of the conversation. I think he's fine,

Starting point is 00:14:48 but I do think, granted his play is part of this. I think he has pushed his way into it. Sure. The point being he is in it. I just want to make sure that is clear. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:59 I think you can vote for, I think Yokic just, Yokic is Yokic. Like there is never going to be a season where you can't vote for Nikola Yokic as MBB. He's just that good. And, you know, but I will say this.

Starting point is 00:15:14 I feel like another way things get misappropriated is, you know, I'll use Jalen Brown as an example. And I've seen two or three really high profile people talk about, well, my guy is Jalen Brown. And they, you know, you point to, Jailen Brown's been outstanding this year. None of this is a ding against him. The Celtics are wildly overperforming most preseason, preseason. predictions about how they would play. Jalen Brown's been excellent for this team that is arguably the biggest surprise in the NBA. To me, at some point, you're giving a player too much credit for team success.

Starting point is 00:16:00 It is still an individual award. This is just my perspective. And so in my mind, the people who should be rewarded with awards for the same, Celtic success this year are Joe Missoula as a potential coach of the year candidate and Brad Stevens as an executive of the year candidate for putting that team together in a way that is so coherent and building a culture that is so perfect to creating this success in a year where Jason Tatum hasn't played. That to me, I just think broadly hasn't played much in any of Hasn't played much.

Starting point is 00:16:40 You know, the four guys we've talked about have been better than Jalen Brown for an individual award. Their teams are very, very good. So that, okay. So like there are certain things like that that happen where I think, you know, voters maybe just look at it and say, I want to show how much I value winning more than the individual stuff, whatever it might be. Or just it's like it's a great story. their reasons are, I think it is possible to overindex for the success of a team.

Starting point is 00:17:16 The Thunder are still a great team in the days that Shea doesn't play. The Spurs have a stacked roster, whether Wemby plays or not. That's a great team. So at some point, it's an individual award. And that would be the other thing in just the broad MVP, how we talk about it, that gets on my nerves a little bit. Well, I would say the last thing, because I know just to get to something specific that I've seen from a lot of Laker fans and even various people covering the Lakers is a perception that the people, and this is really more national media and national media, many of the people. whom have votes, that it seems like they are looking for more reasons to detract from Luca than they would look for reasons to detract from Shea or detract from Wembe, detract

Starting point is 00:18:17 from Yokage. And I understand where that perception is coming from. I don't think it is anything as far as these national media figures disliking the Lakers and actively trying to keep the Lakers down. I don't think that's what it is. I do think, and I've talked about this before, there is a tendency among national media to try to avoid looking like they are trying to hype the Lakers

Starting point is 00:18:45 because they want to avoid seeming like they are trying to just latch onto the Lakers for clicks and attention economy and headlines and that they're just talking about them because it's gratuitous. how you get engagement. They will often spend 10 minutes explaining why they're not talking about the Lakers and then eventually stop not talking about the Lakers. But I think that is a piece of it. I think stylistically and in some respects I think presentationally is more off-putting to a lot of

Starting point is 00:19:23 people than Shea, Wembe, or Yokic and that may play a real. All of the foul merchant stuff has been. But also the arguing with refs, the perceived petulants. I think things like that play into it. I don't think unless you are making the argument, and I do think this argument can be made because we have made versions of it that Luca's continual complaining hurts the team. And that is an argument you and I have made. So if you want to say that that specific piece of it could be.

Starting point is 00:19:58 when you are looking to break ties, points against Luca, because that is something that he does that actively hurts the team. I think that is a fair criticism. I just think you need to make sure if you are one of these voters, one of these media figures, that you are spending as much time, if nothing else, looking for the devil's advocate argument against the other three frontrunners. And if you're doing that, you're doing that. Again, you have to only choose one. And by definition, choosing one means you are saying this guy does more positive than the other three.

Starting point is 00:20:33 That's just how this works. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's also important to keep it in perspective. Like the arguing with refs would be great if it didn't happen. It'd be, you know, be great if it didn't take 15 Ts to really get Luke to lock in because you can't argue with refs and all that stuff. But it's like, let's not overdo it. It's like it's not even with the arguing with the refs, his impact on the team is still, wildly possible.

Starting point is 00:20:56 He's going to finish in the top four. I would be stunned if he did not. But I don't think like, but I, like, four other four guys I can live in. I think, you know, Jalen Brown, I actually don't think is a great choice. But we'll see how it shakes out. But the, the discourse is often as interesting as the actual arguments for each guy. Locked on Lakers on YouTube is where you can go hang out with over 38,000 subscribers, who of course be back after tonight's game against the Wizards.

Starting point is 00:21:23 And we'll say everyone after the game.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - The Luka Dončić MVP Discourse Is Heating Up, and Making People Angry!

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