The Ringer NBA Show - Why Are We Obsessed With the MVP Award? | The Answer

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Chris is joined by 'Ringer NBA University' cohost J. Kyle Mann to discuss the current obsession with the early MVP race and what factors go into who wins the award (03:00). Later, Chris is joined by 'Group Chat’ cohost Justin Verrier to spotlight “the real MVPs,” or important players to their teams who likely won’t get MVP recognition (25:30). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: J. Kyle Mann and Justin Verrier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Ringer NBA show. It's The Answer. I'm Chris Ryan and on this week's show, MVP, MVP. What's up, everybody? Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Answer. I'm Chris Ryan. I'm your host. As you can tell by my second consecutive week starting the show with a chant.

We were talking about the MVP award. And I wanted to talk about it because everybody else is talking about it. Some reason, this early in the season, we haven't even gotten to the All-Star break. And I feel like MVP talk is all the rage. More so than all-star game selection, all-star team selection. I just feel like every night when I'm watching basketball, I'll look at Twitter, look at my group chat,

and it's just like, oh, MVP, this guy should be caught in the MVP conversation. I can't believe this guy's in the MVP conversation. That's ridiculous. I feel like it really started this season with the Luca stuff, like with Luca getting crowned, kind of going into the season as a MVP to be. And that really put the MVP conversation on Front Street to start with.

But I was watching. I was watching the Lakers a bunch this week. I was watching them play the Thunder. I was watching LeBron put in 40-minute nights. I was like, what is he doing? It's February. Like, he should be tired. I'm only a few years older than LeBron.

I'm tired. And I was like, oh, he's campaigning. He wants that MVP. And we want to give it to him. You know what I mean? Like, I think that people recognize, if it took this Lakers run to recognize his importance to the game and his greatness still,

I think people are fully aware of that and there are some arguments to be made for Mbiden there are arguments to be made for Yokic and there are arguments to be made for Curry and I guess Donchich and Janus and all these other people but it does feel like it's LeBron's trophy to lose and I feel like he is building up his resume and I feel like when he goes out

and he is still playing at the end of these thunder games when Davis is resting, there are different situations but when Davis is resting and he's out there and he's like watch me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm national TV, and I am the MVP of this league, and I will show it to you in February whether or not these games wind up mattering at all in the long run. Maybe it's just, maybe he wants to make sure that they have home court advantage in whatever the playoffs wind up looking like, but to me, he's campaigning.

So I wanted to talk to two people today about why we care so much about the MVP, why we started caring about it so early in the season. And maybe beyond this obvious group of guys who are MVP candidates, LeBron, Yokic, Mbid, Curry, Janice, whoever, who are the real MVPs? Who are the guys who are actually invaluable to their team?

The essential, essential players for their team. So Justin Varyer and I came up with a starting five of the actual MVPs. But first, let's talk to Kyle Mann about why we're so obsessed with this award. All right, now with his return performance, his return appearance on the answer,

it's Kyle Mann. Kyle, what's going on? Not too much, man. Just hanging out in this ice out here, trying to stay warm. So Kyle made a video this week that you can find on our YouTube page about Joel Embed. And I'd say it's like there's some constructive criticism in that video, but for the most part, the reason why you did the video is kind of to reckon with the leap that Embed is making and to some extent the leap that the Sixers were making and his position as an MVP co-favored,

I think with LeBron this year. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a three horse race, I think. I mean, I think Yokich, LeBron, and Embed are the three. guys. It's funny because Janice actually didn't slip like tremendously if you start looking at the numbers, but I think that can kind of tie into some of the things that I think we're going to talk about. Yeah. So I do want to talk about that. The thing that reason I wanted to ask you to talk to me about this in the first place, though, is I wanted to get your feelings on why the hell we're talking about MVP award anyway. If this was like a normal season, what we would be, I think, either at or just past Christmas, you know, it's, I feel like we're

just bleeding over from last season anyway. And in my experience, in years past, this is a pretty recent phenomenon. I think that this is kind of can be traced back to the Rust season, the Russ triple double season where he won the MVP in 17 over Kauai and Hardin. And that being this really contested, I don't want to say contested election, but very contested award. And ever since then, I feel like we've sort of started to like introduce MVP conversations a little earlier, a little earlier to the extent now where when I'm looking at Twitter during an NBA night, I feel like the conversation is almost entirely about who's going to win the MVP and who should win the MVP and who's not worthy of the MVP. Have you noticed the same thing?

I've noticed people talking about sort of a lack of narrative in this season that maybe it's felt a little flat on that front. I don't know that I've noticed it as... For teams, you mean? Like that there's no breakaway team sort of thing? Right, yeah, yeah, that it has been a little ho-hum. Maybe that's... I mean, there are a lot of different kind of pressure-pressurizing factors,

I guess that could cause that. Maybe the bubble. I don't think that I'm going to break news to anybody and say that this is a super, super unique year. And I think that it's having some effects that could be a result of what you're talking about. I mean, like teams, some teams started slow, took it easy.

You know, like we've had varying degrees of people being ready. We've had varying degrees of availability. And then you've got that on top of sort of the gamesmanship of people being rested, teams, you know, the game within a game thing that teams, do in a season. That's a great point. I mean, like on any given national TV night, if you're watching the Tuesday or the Wednesday night games or the Thursday night games, you'll get all fired up to watch a game where going into it, there's all these caveats. Oh, this guy's not

playing. There's COVID. This is the second night of a back-to-back. These guys have been on the road for seven days, et cetera, et cetera. Like, Kevin Durant gets pulled off of the court. Like, you have no idea going into it, like what curveball is going to get thrown at you as a viewer to say nothing of the guys who are actually participating in it. So you're right. It's not a normal season by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think that we are in this interesting place in terms of how we talk about the NBA where we're a little betwixt in between MLB and NFL. Like, it's a high volume sport, not unlike baseball and half the amount of games of baseball, but you know, like they typically play 82 games to 100 games a season. And so there's a lot of data points

and there. There's a lot of ups and downs. But we want to talk about it like it's the NFL. We want to have these definitive inflection points of this happened. So this guy is now this. And I think that the MVP race is kind of the NBA's version of the way we talk about quarterbacks in the NFL. You know, it's like we could talk about these teams, but it's much more fun for some reason to talk about Mahomes, Brady, Russ, whoever. And I wonder whether, do you think that that's the same thing for the way we talk about like the top five, six, seven NBA players? Yeah, I think if you're zooming out, there is sort of an interesting, there are so many

different reasons why I think that this has developed the way it has. There are a lot of different reasons why individualism has sort of permeated and pervaded the sport to the extent that it has. I think that it goes, I actually was kind of going back and studying the history of the MVP award. It's interesting that, you know, for like the first seven or eight years of the league, they didn't even have an MVP. And in studying, I agree with you that it's like, I think it's a function of the fact that we

just have a lot of time on our hands and we iterate so much fat. That's the biggest thing is that we iterate, we don't iterate daily anymore. I mean, you're the son of a newspaper man, right? I think I heard you said that before. I mean, like, we used to iterate daily and now we're to the point where we iterate up to the second and it's just gotten more and more. So we need these conversations to sort of contextualize and add color to it. In the broad sense, like I was saying, it's an odd thing, the MVP award to me, because

individualism sort of entered, there's like this sort of like original sin moment in the NBA. If you go back and look, and I learn this from studying, like, the evolution of jump shooting. There's some people that think that basketball, I don't know if there's like a, I don't know for sure why they didn't have MVP's like the first few years of the NBA. But there's an interesting thing where when jump shooting, came around, and that is, like, players being more enabled to create for themselves. Thus, we started to get this huge inflation of, like, counting stats and players. And then, like, from there, we grew into, like, what can the individual do? And that has just become a whole culture on its own within basketball, to the point where

you and I've talked about this before, people become obsessed with, like, individual players even over teams at some point. Sure. I mean, that's, there's an interesting parallel. Are you suggesting that there is a school of thought that team basketball suffered because of the primacy of individual skill and individual sort of our celebration of individual players? Yeah, I mean, I think that we've seen some, we've seen a few timelines kind of go lately. I've been thinking about this a lot. Like we had this interesting pre-Jordan timeline where it was like the players that were revered where like the guys that could score, but they were like kind of their games were really.

predicated on sharing and things like that. And I think, I even think we talked briefly about this last time I was here. It's just kind of like when the individual started to get more, I feel like it was around the early 90s. I remember you, you made some point about like when did the best player on the best team become the thing. And we've kind of had this push and pull between like what this, we value so highly this idea of a player producing the maximum counting stat thing that they can.

And that has produced stand culture, which I think is like highly, highly damaging to basketball. And those two things great against each other, like winning and stain culture. So, yeah, it is a whole, like, separate, like parallel culture to basketball. I think that we've recovered some.

I think the pace and space era actually has recovered some of that. But, but yeah, that's that's kind of a thing that I've watched unfold in basketball over the last several years. When do you see, I mean, so going back through the MVP's, when did you see that the best player, best team thing really started to

to sort of coalesce. Well, I looked it up. It's hard to track. I mean, like, because I think narrative plays a big part in this, too, and I don't know that I could put my finger on that exactly when that started to happen. But the MVP has played for the champion 26 different times. There are some repeat offenders in there. Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, LeBron, and Bird are four people that have repeated.

Best player, best team also means a few different things. Well, two different things specifically. it means, because they're too, I think what it kind of comes down to, and I think that elephant in the room we have to address here is that the regular season in the playoffs are basically two different sports. And I mean, there's a big thing on YouTube if you want to go watch. I think it's from the Sloan conference where Bob Myers talks about that at length, just talking about how they are just completely different. So winning the regular season, being the best team in the regular season often is, and having like this maximum stat output.

I was looking this up that like Janus had like an incredible statistic. fiscal season last year. Carried about as much as a person could. And I actually in a video paralleled that with like Michael Jordan in 1988, who had like a career year. LeBron in 2010 had like a career year by a bunch of catch-all stats. But they didn't end up winning the title. So I guess what you're talking about like best player, best team, I don't even know if I know you could answer that in like a clean way because best player best team during the regular season doesn't ultimately mean you win, which is what this is all about adding to winning. Well, we can start talking about specifically example is because I think it helps with this best player, best team idea, is that, like you said,

the two favorites, I think, are in being LeBron for different reasons. And then I think you mentioned Yokic as this third party, but Yokic's team, while improving drastically over the last couple of weeks, are still, I would say struggling compared to last year's Nuggets team. So does Yolkich have to wait his turn? Like, is Yokish, should Yokch be taken seriously, even if, the nuggets are like a six seed, you know, like, and are kind of up and down this season. There's some things here that are kind of chicken egg, especially with it and it applies to Embed to. I think that like players are unfairly penalized at times. And we overlook this a lot. Like the fact that Embed has had a roster successfully built around him that like caters to his

finally, yeah. Yeah, the caters to, I mean, that's a major part of it, you know, and like I've had some very fun back and forth with Sixers fans about this. If you look at the way that metrics and efficiency are measured, you can make a great pass. And if the player misses the shot, you're penalized for that. That penalizes your efficiency. Well, the fact that players are making shots for Embed, I still don't think that the,

I think the Sixers are near the bottom of league in, like, spot of efficiency, but they're still really good. Those things matter. So it's like the fact that Yokic has a team that is less tailored to him effectively at this moment. Like if you swapped Joelle and Bede for for Nicola Yokic, what would happen? You know, because I've seen some people that have Yokic first. You were talking about him third.

And then also you have to factor in. It's just, it's not really totally fair to compare the context in a vacuum as if they don't matter because they matter a huge amount, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, this is something that's like debated among many, but really decided among comparatively few, I think. And that's one of the most interesting things about it. I think in some ways the MVP award becomes closer to like a pop culture award that we have like, say, the Oscars. You know what I mean? And I think another parallel of the Oscars is it used to be that in when I was younger, Oscar movies came out in November at the late, at the earliest. And the Oscar season, quote unquote, was like two or three weeks.

You know what I mean? Especially pre-digital. And now Oscar movies can come out pretty much anytime during the calendar year and there are mechanisms through which to keep those movies. in front of people's faces and people thinking about them as award seasons. You can re-release movies in theaters when we have theaters. And you can just like kind of press the button to put a Francis McDormon or a Denzel Washington or whoever in front of people's faces repeatedly over the course of the year and tell a story that says, this is why this is the year this person should win this Oscar.

And this is why this movie is the best representative of that. I think it's similar for the NBA right now. I think we're watching LeBron. and I mentioned this in my intro, but LeBron going out and playing 40 plus minutes and overtime games against the Thunder in February, so it has nothing to do with whether or not they're going to repeat. You know what I mean?

And I appreciate the fact that he's doing it, and he's fucking awesome this year. And he's definitely, as much as I love Joelle, I think LeBron's the MVP, but it's... Really? Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but like I do kind of wonder whether or not LeBron is campaigning. I mean, LeBron's hands are everywhere in terms of his influence, you know?

It's hard. That stuff is really difficult to quote. quantify. I mean, in terms of narrative, we shouldn't attach it to this award, but we do. And also, you know, LeBron, something that really just blows my mind that it's odd to me at this stage in his career, considering what he's accomplished, that it's like, you know, it's not like it's like a hit thing to say. It's not like an edge lord take that like LeBron is still good. We still do that shit on Twitter. And so we're just like, man, he's so good.

But it is insane that when you take a step back and look at like the leaderboard for the MVP, LeBron is 10 years older than the other three running people here. I know. In some ways, isn't that also part of why he's in the contention or part of why he might be the favorite is because he is accomplishing this at 36. He has been looked over the last couple of years for a younger generation of players. And yet everywhere he goes, he just fucking wins. Yeah.

And there's another, there are other factors, too. do, like, I have, I wrote here in our doc that, like, there are all kinds of, like, I think the reason that we just, we obsess about, you know, this award and it gets people riled up is that we, we just love to obsess over, like, the unquantifiable things that have to be applied. They're just inevitable. So LeBron's, you were talking about him being 36. It's like, technically we shouldn't, the MVP is just not capable of handling the width of the scope of somebody like LeBron. Like, I don't feel like that you, he's such a special case. case. And you start to think about the mileage on him and then also like he has these two kind of warring things going on where he's older, yeah. And he's gone to the final so many times now that like winning the title, which is kind of the point, it's like, which do you want to do? He could just go all out and average, like insane averages, but he kind of paces himself. So I just I just think that LeBron is a really interesting case. It fascinates to me that you think that he's, I mean, it's not like bizarre, but yeah, that's neat.

But I think I'm not a victim, but I'm like definitely vulnerable to the story that this season is telling not only about this season, but about last season. And I think that we could get into a very interesting discussion here about whether or not winning it or not winning it sometimes is a good or bad thing. Not to get to Galaxy Brain about it, but I do think that winning the MVP award was really bad for Russ's career. I think winning that MVP there was already a lot of like anti-rush chatter about like he's stat padding or he ruined KD because he's not like an efficient point guard who sets KD up for success all the time

but that season which started out and it had like all this romance to it because he stayed you know or whatever and then he was averaging a triple double which I think on its surface is like very cool but like when you think about what goes into putting together those stats you're just like right so you were just having like Stephen Adams

like volleyball set it to you so that you could get the rebound. That stuff happens. And then he wins the award over Kauai and Hardin. I feel like he gets blamed for it. You know, it's like he gets blamed for and it's like, oh, Russ, Russ won this MVP unfairly or this like tainted MVP award. And now ever since then, I feel like has been this kind of pariah. Do you think that Russ's MVP, this is a lighthearted question,

do you think that Russ's MVP is the crash winning the Oscar of MVP? I don't think it's that bad. I don't think it's that bad. I mean, like, there's, I don't know whether that would be Derek Rose. Like, it's not that bad. But that's a, that's a worthwhile shout. And I wouldn't say, you know, I think that is it La La La Land Moonlight? And we wish we could have given it to Moonlight and it didn't actually have the accounting error at the very end.

Like, I don't, I don't know. But, man, like, I wonder whether or not LeBron not winning the MVP over the last of whatever it's been like five years. has actually set him up to win it this year. Like, I wonder if he had won one in Cleveland, like in those last couple seasons at Cleveland, and then like maybe won it last year or something, although I don't necessarily think he had like an MVP season before the bubble last season.

Like if that sets it up where it's like, we have to adapt this dude up, this might be the last time we have to give LeBron the MVP. Yeah, I mean, I hate that kind of thing. Like, we should just, we... You should not be an Oscar voter then. Right, right. We have to, I mean,

God, it's just like we kind of have to do it in some ways where it feels inevitable. Like these, I just keep thinking about that parallel between like winning the moment, like, whatever that means. And then like there is this really interesting parallel of like letting the season unfold all the way. I mean, we can't, it's better to get, and I know the ringer has done this numerous times. Like it's we always are better about evaluating these things in hindsight, it seems like. You know, like Oscar, like, there are all kinds of Oscar winners that, like, the test of time has proven, like, this thing lasts, this thing aged better than this thing. And, you know, I was talking about, like, how the counting stat boom sort of hit a point with,

with, like, the Iverson MVP's. That's a great way to have more Sixers fans come after me. Jesus, I can't believe you have. Yeah. I admire your courage. The goal. No, and then, well, and then, yeah, like the Derek Rose and then Westbrook. Yeah, it's like those kinds of things.

they do just kind of accumulate over time, but it is interesting that we just, it feels set up to fail to me. That's what I'm saying. Because the MVP awards should take the entirety of the season into account because of all the different factors that go on during the season like we talked about, like, you know, teams,

teams don't show. And that's something with MB that I think specifically is going to be really interesting to see. He's making simple passes out of the post. Like we talked about, his passing has gotten better. but you know what's it going to look like whenever you have to take in the nuance of what teams do and that's part of the puzzle for me

and that's what makes LeBron so brilliant is that like he can make those adjustments so if you're just looking at it's an incomplete picture to me to look at part of the season and not the whole thing would your choice be in beat then? It's man it is really really tough are you a Yokic truther like what do you do

what are you doing to me here? I mean I'm a big Yokic person I really really enjoy him as a player. I love Yokch, but I just don't think he can be in this conversation. But I think if you swapped Yokic into, what would the Sixers look like if you swapped Yokic onto that team? How would that affect their spacing? That would be an interesting experiment. Like, what would they be better or worse? Like, you know, Yokic, you know, Mbid is shooting a hell out of the ball right now. That's a huge thing. He's getting a huge amount. I mean, his on-off numbers

are the highest of those three. He's plus 14.2. And he's shooting 67. to almost, almost the other number in true shooting. And he also has been a better, had a higher two-way impact this season. You know, he's not, like I said, he's not blocking as many shots this year, and he's fouling less as a result and staying on the floor. But, yeah, in terms of two-way impact, I think he's at the top. What would your case for LeBron just be purely narrative-driven? Because that's kind of what we've circled around.

No, I mean, I think that this year, for whatever reason, I've just seen a tremendous amount of Lakers games. I find this team, this version of the Lakers, more entertaining to watch than the last season's Lakers. And I was curious whether or not they were going to have a flip-the-switch year and whether they were going to be like, we'll be cool for the third seed. And the most important thing is that AD and LeBron are ready for the playoffs

and they had a really long season and the bubble was very demanding. And I just don't think that that's the case. I think that almost every night, sometime in the third quarter, they just throw on maximum overdrive and just get after teams. And LeBron's intensity and precision, I just don't feel like he's been playing sloppy at all.

I know that's not like an MVP staple, but watching him play, I just feel like he's incredibly locked in and pure. It's a very pure LeBron experience this season. So I'm not even throwing numbers at you as much as I'm like, he is the best player on the best team, and he might be the best player on the best team

over the course of two years, which I do feel like Warren's recognition. He's the best player in the world. I mean, I think that we did, make a mistake of like coming off of that in the last few years. I feel like we did that a couple different times. I mean, LeBron is unequivocally the best player in the world. And, you know, second, I don't want to get into that. But, you know, but also another thing that I would add. You were to get into goat stuff here? No, I hate goat stuff. But I was going to say, too,

that like we're talking about quantifying, not quantifying things. You know, LeBron, I made a whole video about this, about the fact that he, I tried to coin a term elevationism. It's just like, LeBron himself, is a context. You know, you put LeBron on a team, and some of the things that you, that he is a floor raiser, one of the best floor raisers, maybe the best floor raiser we've ever had in basketball.

So there are a lot of little intangible things that are difficult to measure. Couldn't do Alonzo and B.I. though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's got, it's a funny thing where LeBron, this would be my last thing I would say about, LeBron can add value to players who in other contexts might not have the same value.

And to me, that is the definition of individual player value. He is sort of, LeBron is, he's sort of like a really great amp that you could plug like any kind of crappy guitar into. And you're like, damn, that sounds better. He's the Marshall stack of, yeah. No, I like the idea of LeBron is like, is doing value redistribution. He's like spreading it around. And that's, that maybe is something that, like, we don't recognize. recognize enough because it's hard to quantify that. Kyle, thanks so much for joining me. People can

check out your Joel and Bede video on the Ringer's YouTube channel, and you are on Ringer MBA University every two weeks. I believe the most recent episode went up on Wednesday. Kyle, thanks so much, man. Thanks for having me. All right, now I'm joined by my buddy, Justin Verrier. Justin oversees our MBA stuff over at the ringer.com, and he is the host of group chat where I used to lay my hat, but now I'm obviously off on my solo project. Justin, what's going on, man? Good to see you. Always good to see you, Chris. RIP, the original group chat format. I know.

I wanted to have you on because we're going to talk about the real MVPs, the guys who do, like you and me, the guys who do the work behind the series. Right, yeah, exactly. But before we got into that, I know that you are actually a big proponent of MVP talk, that you like having MVP talk be part of your daily breakfast, that you don't mind it showing up pre-All-Star. We're already talking about MVP's.

Have you always been that way? Or is this more of like a recent thing because you also need to create content around the NBA? Yeah, it's kind of like my brain flakes. You know, it's where I get the protein or whatever, all the good vitamins into my diet. No, I mean, I think when you're going through the slog of the season,

you can probably focus a little bit too much on certain things. And in the case of the ringer, perhaps, focus a little bit too much on the esoterica of things. It's nice to take a step back and take a nice snapshot of all of the really important things and to do sort of the deep dives, the data work and whatever in order to really get a sense of where we are.

That's why I like it. It almost forces me to do the work. Do you wish there were more awards? Do you think MVP basically has like, it's got too much on its shoulders and there should be more nuanced awards that we're giving some of the best players? I think there should be fewer awards,

but I'm open to replacing some of the dumber awards like Sixth Man of the Year, which I still don't. really understand why that is important and is a part of the yearly award ceremony and replace it with something a little bit more interesting. It's funny because like I think every year now since I've been here, we've done a other awards post to complement our just like traditional awards. And it's actually really tough coming up with other awards. The one that I've always really liked is the Skeleton Key Award who has traditionally gone to like a PJ Tucker type, right? Right. Right. Now that's

that's essentially segueing into what I wanted to have you on for. So these last couple of weeks especially, but really this whole season, I think partially because this season feels so close to last season. We had such a quick turnaround from the end of the bubble to the beginning of this season, that it almost feels like a 1A, 1B, like an extension of it. But I feel like we started talking about MVP really early.

And in the meantime, I've been watching basketball this season, and on a night-to-night basis, I'll just see guys, as I'm sure everybody does, where I'm just like, we're not for this dude, this team would be screwed. And in that sense, that really just encapsulate value. Now, I wanted for the sake of our conversation, what Justin and I are going to do,

has come up with the starting five of actually valuable guys. That is not to say that Steph Curry or Luca Dodgers are not valuable, but we're just kind of trying to focus on the dudes who basically make everything work and drastically improve their teams, even if sometimes that doesn't always show up on the stat sheet. the CR award, pretty much. Yeah, right, exactly. But, you know, this is the kind of thing that they don't give out an award for.

Really, they don't give it an, like, there's a couple of awards, like in the Premier League. Sometimes you'll see an award go to a guy like Jordan Henderson, who is the reason why Liverpool kind of works. Like, he is the Draymond of Liverpool. But they don't really have that award in the NBA. And I kind of wish there would be some more nuanced, specific categories rather than just most approve six-man rookie DPOI and MVP. Yeah, I think a lot of the guys that we've pinpointed here are guys who don't really have explosive offensive statistics.

I think that is probably the through line for them. And I think most of them maybe have more of an impact on defense where we don't have the same thoroughness of statistics in order to really capture how good they are or just like, you know, someone like our first guy, perhaps Chris, who knows how to set up a team pretty well. Yeah, so let's start a point guard. We don't necessarily have to do a starting five here, but we're talking about the actually valuable guys. And I was watching, we're recording this on a Thursday.

I watched Sons Bucks last night, so I'll be drawing a lot from that. And I just couldn't get over Chris Paul. I feel like in some ways, we haven't discussed his impact on the NBA and this sort of third act of his career enough after the New Orleans stint, after the Clipper Stint. but his basically his ability to go in and almost be like a consulting firm that you bring in to like optimize your team. I kind of wanted to ask you,

clearly the bucks are going to make the playoffs unless like some disastrous health thing happens for them in terms of injuries. But how bad would a team have to be for Chris Paul not to be able to transform them? It's a really great question. I mean, the Thunder probably the prime example of like his impact on that, right?

just because last year, I think going into that season, no one really knew what to make of them, except for you, actually. You were very bullish on the three-guard lineup. I love a three-guard lineup. Yeah, it ended up being true. Like, he pretty much made that viable

when you wouldn't think that Dennis Schrooter, Shea, Gilderis, Alexander, and him would be able to do much on both ends. But, I mean, he provides structure, I think, to a lot of structuralist situations. And I think the Sun situation is particularly interesting because they almost had all the pieces, and you really saw him lean into being more of an orchestrator

than I'd ever seen before. He was almost overpassing to an extent. Like the whole thing about Paul is people say that he spends his game, setting people up earlier in the game and then tries to take over late when he needs to. It seemed like he was doing that over an elongated season where he was just trying to get the guys like Cam Johnson involved, Devin Booker going and being sort of the All-Star he needed to be Ait and whatnot. And now you're starting to see him take over a little bit more,

and now you're starting to see like the full Chris Paul experience. Yeah, last night was a really, or the Wednesday night game against the bucks was a really good example where I just felt like guys were in and out. Aiden had a really nice game until he got into deep foul trouble.

But Paul was just like the, he was the guy who kept the Sons within striking distance the entire game. And I think that that's something that is really underrated about what Chris Paul does. I saw a stat that was like the bucks have played in like the fewest games decided

under 10 points or less in the last two years because they just blow everybody out. I would be really curious to know how often a Chris Paul team gets blown out because I feel like he's able to stop the bleeding and keep a team within 8 or 11 and then really drive them over to get back in the game.

That's what happened against the bucks. And I also feel like he is just, he's so miserable to deal with. You might as well do the right things. You know, like you watch, I wonder what he would be like on the Hawks. You know, obviously it would change a lot because of Trey Young's need to have the ball

on his hands a lot. but like what do you think would be like his effect on a team like the wizards if he was there instead of Westbrook or the wolves if he was there instead of DeLo? I do think he's able to vacillate between like getting his and setting up others better than someone like

Westbrook. It seems like you have to play a certain type of way with Westbrook but as we saw like just with Paul's transition from Houston to the Thunder and even before that from the Clippers to Houston to the Thunder he can kind of pick and choose how you're really utilizing him. I mean they pretty much traded on and off with Hardin in Houston. And then he was kind of like stewarding some of those

guys where I think the math showed that like when two of them played, all three played together, they were really good, but only when two of them played together, they weren't as good. And so you have to imagine that he would be doing for Beal what he's doing with Booker now. And now, you could say that like Booker hasn't been as indulating, hasn't been like, hasn't really taken the step. I think a lot of people thought with Paul next to him. But I mean, as you're seeing lately, I think that Paul impacts winning in ways that like someone like Westbrook just doesn't. Like even beyond like the efficiency and everything like that, Paul is able to micromanage situations in order to bring out the best. And I think his clutch record with the Thunder in

particular, which was like historic last year, both his individual production and also the thunder as a team in the clutch speaks to that. He is just tempo for me. Like I still feel like Ruff plays at one speed and one speed only. And Chris Ball, can play at a variety of different tempos, and he knows how to, like, slow things down and speak things up. His counterpart or his adversary, I guess, on that Wednesday night game against the Bucks, was Chris Middleton, at least the one that I'm talking about. And I would put Chris Middleton on this team, too. And I think that this is like a nice, sneaky little subplot that I want us to keep our eye out over the course of the season, which is obviously the best player

on the Bucks is Janus, but is the most important player on the Bucks Middleton. I think it has to be, right? Like, this season in particular, I've come full circle on Milton. Like, he is kind of the geeks, like, MVP. He's the guy that, like, some of our quants and stats guys put up above their bed at night, just because the efficiency stats, just the shooting. He's on and pays for another 50, 40, 90 season again. But what I'm seeing from him is, it seemed like in last year's playoffs,

the one game that the Bucks won against the heat, where he just went nuclear and they pretty much fed him like 50, shots and it was like, Chris, just save us. Like, we need to save pace in this series with Yannes gone. It seems like it almost emboldened him and perhaps the team even to start feeding him more in certain situations. And you're starting to see him almost be the difference maker in situations where they need him to be.

And I think in clutch situations, again, another player, like, I think it's starting to show where Yannis is really, like, playing more of an off ball. I'm just a transformative bigman style of, like, screen setter sort of position rather than what we're typically used to seeing him as some sort of like light years ahead point guard. And it's more Middleton is controlling it. And you're starting to see him being the orchestrator, getting Janus involved in Al Uves, or just like settling into this mid-range shot, which is like, quite frankly, one of the more dangerous like offensive options in the game right now. Yeah. And they desperately need that change of pace because the bucks can be a

little bit monochromatic with the like the driving kick. And, you know, a guy can be like two feet from the hoop and like does a 360 in midair to find Pat Conantin in the corner because that's what that's how their offense is kind of laid out but watching Middleton kind of work to get to his little spots on the nail or here or there get guys in foul trouble just kind of maybe extend a play a play clock a little bit whereas like maybe early on in the play clock they're shooting threes like he kind of just like brings a different flavor to that team it was really interesting watching that that sun's game come down to a last shot because I I felt like Yon is kind of telegraph that he was going to be the person to take it. He was doing all this like mental

exercises down at the other end of the floor as they were coming at a time out, like kind of giving himself a motivational speaker talk. And so I was like, okay, I guess Janus is going to take this shot. But that's got to be Middleton shot. Well, to that point, he was in the corner. If you go back and look at that, waving his hands as Janus is doing these little dribbles. And like, back to Chris Paul, Paul actually leaves his man to go and double on Janus. I don't know how much good it did because Janus's like two Chris Paul's like stacked on top of each other. But Paul was like trying to at the very least crowd him on that shot as Aiton was going for for the contests there. So like yeah, you're right. He was like he was going for it no matter what. And I think everybody on the court knew that for

better or worse. Well, Devin Booker definitely did because after the game, he was asked what he thought about when he saw Yannis pull up from the midrange and he apparently said we're in good shape. That's the one place I feel like Booker and Paul really like speak to each other on. There's a little bit of an F view to both of them that I think I can appreciate. And it sounds like just based on things that have come out about that team, like, I think they both appreciate it in each other as well. Yeah, they're chirpy. Speaking of chirpy, let's talk about Dremont. So this entire Warrior season, which I've really enjoyed as a neutral, like I wish them well, but I also think that they've gotten more joy out of that franchise in the last 10 years than most people get over a lifetime.

It's been fascinating to watch Steph going full MVP Steph But you wanted to throw Dremont on this list Why was that? Yeah, so listen, I know you're all about the math And so I have some stats for you here So I see stats and I see stats like seven points and four fouls Seven is actually way too high

Because he's averaging five points per game this season So he's also shooting sub 20% from three Which is wild. And I guess the heave he threw up the other night is indicative of that. So there's only one player in the past three years to have a sub-40 effective field goal percentage who plays 25 plus minutes, and that is Jemond Green. However, he is second best on the Warriors in offensive rating. So he is not shooting at all.

Yeah, next to Uber right. Actually, it was funny. It's actually Kavon Looney, who I think we could all. also bring up here, because that dude stabilized that starting lineup and does all the little things that you wraps. That's beautiful 10 days when Kavana Looney was a healthy starter. Yeah. Right.

But Drayman has, I mean, to have that level of an impact on offense to begin, like, forget about defense where we all know he's going to orchestrate and do all the brilliant things that we've come to know about Draymond. He's one of their better offensive players, even though he's a complete negative whenever he shoots the ball.

That's insane. And he is essentially playing like point forward for them right now. He's a pass force point guard somehow in 2021, and he's playing small ball center on the other end. It's like the most wild combination I've ever seen. So the next guys that we wanted to talk about, we were going to cheat and add two people for this. These are two, as old school as you can really get in this league, I guess, any more rim protecting centers that you think are having profound effects on their teams. Yep. So Rudy Gobert, Clint Capella. We had John Hollinger on the other day on group chat, and he had made the case for one of his articles

in The Athletic that Gobert is so important to the jazz and what they're doing that he should actually be up for regular MVP. And I think it's... How is that received generally, aside from outside of the Utah people? Probably poorly unless you're really into screen assists. But I think he has a point here in that like everything that the jazz are doing defensively starts and finishes with Gobert. And I think there's this really interesting trend happen

where I think last year's postseason showed how big man, like just transformative, like unique big man are kind of the counter to this idea that small ball is ruling the NBA, yada, yada. But I think it's interesting this regular season seeing traditional guys like Gobert and Capella anchor defenses to the point where like they are the defense. They are single-handedly turning around both of those defense.

the point where some of the forwards, like the fours that they're putting out on the court, are functionally wings. Like the Jazz start Bogdanovich, and like he was a small forward shooting guard up until he got to the Jazz. And so I wonder if teams are going so small, for the most part,

that having this dominant one guy can make such an impact that your regular season defense is pretty much set. Both of these are top 10 defenses. The Jazz are third. Yeah, and you can essentially take away one guy can take away the paint. You know,

watching that Celtics jazz game from earlier this week, you could just, like, Tatum didn't want anything to do with him. Like, and Tatum and Brown are like excellent, excellent drivers.

And they were just like, I don't think it was, it was any kind of self-preservation or embarrassment. I think they were just like, this is stupid. This guy's just going to blot out the sun if I go in,

like up against him. So you would see Tatum diving towards the rim and then just kind of be like, oh, shit, I have to like throw this back out to Kemba. You know, like, this isn't going to work.

Yeah. I mean, you've seen certain defenses. The bucks were kind of the trendsetter in this regard of selling out and trying to stop the rim, allowing more three-pointers. Now, the math is actually tilting the other way. Zach Kramm has a piece on throwing her up today about this. I would recommend people checking out. But, like, that's the math, again, so much as people, like, it's now tilting the other way, like, people are trying to take away threes. More that, like, the math isn't in favor of that defense because teams are,

because people are so much better at shooting threes now that actually leaving even, the worst or second worst player on the team to shoot the three isn't actually mathematically a good idea. But in theory, the Jazz or the Hawks are getting that rim protection with one player. They are selling out to stop the rim with just one player. And it affords them perhaps more opportunities

to go out and guard the three. The Jazz are very good at being selective of who they're really allowing to take those shots. I think that's in part because Gobert is out there basically not only walling off the paint, but like he's also, preventing guys for me thinking about that, leaving the three-pointer as perhaps the only shot.

Yeah, if that whole area becomes like, not just like contested, it becomes like toxic. It's just like, that is like the floor is lava. I'm not going in there. So for our last player on our actually valuable starting five, a dude who I have a really complicated relationship with

and has missed a bunch of the season. So I was surprised to see you throw him in there. It's Jimmy Butler. Yeah, I think most of the time you would try to pinpoint someone else from the heat. Like, Bam is the prime example of a guy who probably doesn't get enough love. And he's taken a big bump in just like his offensive just duties and also like what he's capable of doing on the floor there. Bam on Twitter is almost over exposed. But were we allowed to go into a bar?

I bet like most people would not have heard of him. When you get the Zach Lowe feature, you've reached that point, right? But I think you've seen a mark of difference with the heat since Butler has been back. And I think at a certain point, like, just having a superstar actually matters. And, like, he makes sense of that team in ways that, like, they weren't getting by, like, throwing in some of those other, like, deep bench guys who are good in their own right, Duncan Robinson, all of them. But Butler kind of makes it all work. And I think that's important. They've won their past three to that point.

So our line up here is Chris Paul, Chris Middleton, Jimmy Butler out on the perimeter, and then Draymond Green and a combination of Clint Capella and Rudy Gober in the middle. How good would that team be in a playoff situation? Pretty good. That's a finals team to me. Yeah. Yeah, no. I think that's pretty good.

We don't have depth, but we don't need it. You know what I mean? Right. Let me ask you this. This is a little bit on the spot, but before I let you go, is there anybody that you think is in the contemporary MVP conversation, even if just peripherally, who you think has no business being in that conversation?

That you're like, I can't believe we're actually talking about this. Trying to think here. What are some examples? Well, I'll give you the odds on the current favorites. LeBron Yolkich M. Durant Luca Yonis, Steph, Dame, Kauai,

Anthony Davis, James Hardin, Paul George. Well, Anthony Davis, definitely not. Because that dude hasn't showed up for most of the games this year. Yeah, well, him and LeBron are doing the exact opposite. Like, I feel like LeBron is actively campaigning for MVP, whereas AD is just like, I'll see you in the playoffs. Right, right.

I mean, I would probably pinpoint some of the guys whose team success hasn't really been there. I mean, Luca is the prime example of that. Are you shocked at what's happening with Luca in the Vabs this year? Or are you just like, I kind of expected this there to be a little bit of a deflation here? I am surprised, probably not shocked. They definitely haven't had their full complement of guys.

I mean, Christops was out for a while. They had a couple guys out with COVID. But I am surprised that Luca, after all, the talk about him being kind of almost like a one-man team, you only really need him in order to be successful. Like, he was pretty shaky to start the season. And now you're starting to see people come for him, like starting to talk about.

He's also got some bad habits. Yes. That's the other thing. Just like aesthetically, he's really just become the successor to James Hardin here. Hardin with like some pretty bad, rough habits, I think. Mm-hmm.

Just like really, STFU, Luca. Like, everybody gets fouled. Right. I guess it speaks to just, like, how we interpret MVP in that, like, and, like, how much expectations impact our perceptions of that, that, like, the Mavs aren't that much worse than the Warriors. And yet we're all like, oh, my God, Steph, just offensive dynamo, yada, yada, yada.

And we're like, Luca, I expected you should be MVP from the start. It's all storytelling. If, I mean, if people have just been like, I think if Steph, if they had Clay and the Warriors were like seven wins better, Steph's in the, and it makes it a three-person race for MVP if he's playing this way. Sure. I mean, he still could. Yeah, sure.

He could, but I think it's a two-horse race for now. Justin, thank you so much. This is a fun exercise. I really appreciate you coming by. Thanks for having me. Take care.