Nikola Jokic - 23-24 NBA Thread - '24 NBA MVP & 23 Finals NBA MVP

[parsnips33]

Really was not aware 22 Dubs were regarded as such a stacked team

The good thing is it shouldn't be hard for the Nuggets to go out and trade for Poole and Wiggins and finally give Jokic enough help

It was a weird team in that they had a ton of role players who had career years. Have come to appreciate them more as time as gone by

Maybe my favorite of the Champion Warriors just because of how renegade and out of nowhere the whole thing felt

[Special_Puppy]

Really was not aware 22 Dubs were regarded as such a stacked team

The good thing is it shouldn't be hard for the Nuggets to go out and trade for Poole and Wiggins and finally give Jokic enough help

It was a weird team in that they had a ton of role players who had career years. Have come to appreciate them more as time as gone by

Maybe my favorite of the Champion Warriors just because of how renegade and out of nowhere the whole thing felt

2015 was the year where the Warriors had the lowest pre-season odds of winning the chip!

[OhayoKD]

LeBron playing poorly in the 2011 Finals doesn't make his 2009 or 2010 seasons any worse.

Jordan retiring in 1994 doesn't make his 1993 NBA Run any less impressive.

And to add to both, while Lebron maybe still had some questions in 2011 since he hadn't won a title yet, he only went on and was in the finals for a decade straight and won 4 titles after that bad series. Nobody should still be talking about that series as other than a blip. And Mike had already made it clear how great he was, but he also came back and won 3 more titles after that first retirement.
.

Now here's the part you show me Jokic's equivalent of this, before or after.

[Cavsfansince84]

Really was not aware 22 Dubs were regarded as such a stacked team

The good thing is it shouldn't be hard for the Nuggets to go out and trade for Poole and Wiggins and finally give Jokic enough help

Has anyone in this thread actually called them a stacked team? I think they are a team which had strong role players who did step up with 25-30 pt games at times and as a unit played great defense. They also benefited from it being sort of a weak league, Murray being out for Denver and Steph having a really strong playoff run. 20-23 in general was a somewhat weak or balanced league imo.

[Djoker]

The 2022 Celtics were a very strong team so I don't buy that the Warriors had an easy run. At least not compared to the other recent champs.

[parsnips33]

Really was not aware 22 Dubs were regarded as such a stacked team

The good thing is it shouldn't be hard for the Nuggets to go out and trade for Poole and Wiggins and finally give Jokic enough help

Has anyone in this thread actually called them a stacked team? I think they are a team which had strong role players who did step up with 25-30 pt games at times and as a unit played great defense. They also benefited from it being sort of a weak league, Murray being out for Denver and Steph having a really strong playoff run. 20-23 in general was a somewhat weak or balanced league imo.

I don't think they were particularly strong when compared to other title teams, and had never really seen anybody make the argument until this thread. I'd never seen somebody argue, for instance, that the supporting cast of the 2020 Lakers led by peak Anthony Davis was weaker than what the Warriors had in 2022. But to each their own

I too agree that the Warriors benefitted from their best player having a strong playoff run, but again don't see that as notable compared to any other champion

Happy to drop the subject, I don't wanna further derail the Jokic thread with Steph talk

[lessthanjake]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did (the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I think the sense that it was an easy run comes in large part because there was a sense at the time that they were very lucky to face the Mavs in the WCF instead of the Suns. I think that probably was fortunate for them, but that assessment is looking less clear in retrospect now that we know what sort of player Brunson is. I don’t think Brunson was quite as good then as he is now, but he was playing really well in the playoffs, and I don’t think the fact that the Mavs had beaten two 5+ SRS opponents was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I think on its face it is obvious that the 2022 Warriors were not stacked. They were one of the least stacked champions we’ve seen on paper. They did have players stepping up doing better than normal (Wiggins being a big example). And as with virtually any team that seems to overperform their talent, they played really well together defensively. But if the 2022 Warriors were stacked then so is like every champion ever, because that was one of the least stacked championship teams we’ve ever had.

[Cavsfansince84]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did(the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I'm not 100% sure that is true but even then a big part of that would be that Celtics team which had the highest srs in the league and really sort of fell on its own sword in the finals. Then you have the 5.4 srs Griz whose top 3 players were an avg of 22 yrs old with almost no playoff exp. So srs is fine to throw out there but its not really a fool proof method of saying how big of an out they were in the playoffs.

[lessthanjake]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did(the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I'm not 100% sure that is true but even then a big part of that would be that Celtics team which had the highest srs in the league and really sort of fell on its own sword in the finals. Then you have the 5.4 srs Griz whose top 3 players were an avg of 22 yrs old with almost no playoff exp. So srs is fine to throw out there but its not really a fool proof method of saying how big of an out they were in the playoffs.

You can check my work, but the 2022 Warriors beat a cumulative SRS of 17.66, and, unless I’ve miscalculated something, the only champions in the last 21 years that are above that were the 2011 Mavs (18.42), the 2014 Spurs (18.16), and the 2016 Cavaliers (18.38). I agree that SRS isn’t a foolproof method of assessing team quality, but I do think we can operate from a baseline assessment that a team that beat an abnormally high cumulative SRS probably didn’t have an easy run and that there’d need to be some pretty extraordinary things to negate that assumption. I don’t think Ja missing games in a series the Warriors were already ahead in or the mere fact that the Grizzlies were young qualify as things that really negate that—especially when we take into account that most champions in recent years had luck regarding opponent injuries or things like that, so getting a bit of that isn’t really getting lucky relative to the norm (it’s more like that it’d be unlucky to be a champion that didn’t get it). In fact, I’d actually argue that the injury luck the 2022 Warriors got was *less* significant than most recent champions, since the Warriors’ strongest opponent (the Celtics) were quite healthy, while a large number of recent champions have had major injuries to the team that otherwise would’ve been their strongest opponent.

As for the Celtics “falling on their own sword,” I think we should assume that a 7+ SRS team with lots of playoff experience looking pedestrian at times in a series is probably caused more by their opponent than anything, rather than being a reason to downplay the opponent’s achievement in beating them.

[Colbinii]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did (the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I think the sense that it was an easy run comes in large part because there was a sense at the time that they were very lucky to face the Mavs in the WCF instead of the Suns. I think that probably was fortunate for them, but that assessment is looking less clear in retrospect now that we know what sort of player Brunson is. I don’t think Brunson was quite as good then as he is now, but he was playing really well in the playoffs, and I don’t think the fact that the Mavs had beaten two 5+ SRS opponents was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I think on its face it is obvious that the 2022 Warriors were not stacked. They were one of the least stacked champions we’ve seen on paper. They did have players stepping up doing better than normal (Wiggins being a big example). And as with virtually any team that seems to overperform their talent, they played really well together defensively. But if the 2022 Warriors were stacked then so is like every champion ever, because that was one of the least stacked championship teams we’ve ever had.

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

[lessthanjake]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did (the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I think the sense that it was an easy run comes in large part because there was a sense at the time that they were very lucky to face the Mavs in the WCF instead of the Suns. I think that probably was fortunate for them, but that assessment is looking less clear in retrospect now that we know what sort of player Brunson is. I don’t think Brunson was quite as good then as he is now, but he was playing really well in the playoffs, and I don’t think the fact that the Mavs had beaten two 5+ SRS opponents was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I think on its face it is obvious that the 2022 Warriors were not stacked. They were one of the least stacked champions we’ve seen on paper. They did have players stepping up doing better than normal (Wiggins being a big example). And as with virtually any team that seems to overperform their talent, they played really well together defensively. But if the 2022 Warriors were stacked then so is like every champion ever, because that was one of the least stacked championship teams we’ve ever had.

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents (i.e. there were perhaps the types of “huge caveats” that I referred to in the post you quoted), but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

[OhayoKD]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did (the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I think the sense that it was an easy run comes in large part because there was a sense at the time that they were very lucky to face the Mavs in the WCF instead of the Suns. I think that probably was fortunate for them, but that assessment is looking less clear in retrospect now that we know what sort of player Brunson is. I don’t think Brunson was quite as good then as he is now, but he was playing really well in the playoffs, and I don’t think the fact that the Mavs had beaten two 5+ SRS opponents was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I think on its face it is obvious that the 2022 Warriors were not stacked. They were one of the least stacked champions we’ve seen on paper. They did have players stepping up doing better than normal (Wiggins being a big example). And as with virtually any team that seems to overperform their talent, they played really well together defensively. But if the 2022 Warriors were stacked then so is like every champion ever, because that was one of the least stacked championship teams we’ve ever had.

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

So the best or 2nd best player being injured and missing games is not a really major factor?

[Colbinii]

The 2022 Warriors did not have an easy run, and they were not a stacked team.

In the last 21 years, only three champions have defeated a higher cumulative opponent SRS than the 2022 Warriors did (the 2016 Cavs, 2014 Spurs, and 2011 Mavs). And even those three all had less than 1 more cumulative opponent SRS. And it’s not like there’s some huge caveat here. Ja Morant did get injured during their series, but the Warriors were also already ahead in the series when that happened. And they didn’t have home-court advantage in half their series. It was a pretty objectively difficult run.

I think the sense that it was an easy run comes in large part because there was a sense at the time that they were very lucky to face the Mavs in the WCF instead of the Suns. I think that probably was fortunate for them, but that assessment is looking less clear in retrospect now that we know what sort of player Brunson is. I don’t think Brunson was quite as good then as he is now, but he was playing really well in the playoffs, and I don’t think the fact that the Mavs had beaten two 5+ SRS opponents was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I think on its face it is obvious that the 2022 Warriors were not stacked. They were one of the least stacked champions we’ve seen on paper. They did have players stepping up doing better than normal (Wiggins being a big example). And as with virtually any team that seems to overperform their talent, they played really well together defensively. But if the 2022 Warriors were stacked then so is like every champion ever, because that was one of the least stacked championship teams we’ve ever had.

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

I mean come on man. Talk about a complete nothing-burger of a post here.

The Nuggets played against a historically weak run.

Injured Minnesota team with KAT/Gobert < 100%, McDaniels and Reid missing all the games, SlowMo missing a game.

Phoenix who lost CP3 mid-series and had no bench.

A Lakers team who beat a hobbled Memphis team and the Warriors on their last leg, and then a Miami team who only made the Finals because of GOAT level, outlier shooting and then couldn't make any open 3s against Denver.

It's okay to call a spade a spade, instead of beating around the bush and writing 4 sentences that don't say anything.

The Nuggets had a historically easy finals run by any metric.

One sentence. Straight to the point. No beating around the bush, no double negatives, no sentences with 4 freaking comma's.

[Colbinii]

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

So the best or 2nd best player being injured and missing games is not a really major factor?

What are you talking about about.

Jamal Murray?
Ja Morant?
RWIII (Celtics crushed Golden State in the RWIII minutes, shame he has a minutes restriction)

[OhayoKD]

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

So the best or 2nd best player being injured and missing games is not a really major factor?

What are you talking about about.

Jamal Murray?
Ja Morant?
RWIII (Celtics crushed Golden State in the RWIII minutes, shame he has a minutes restriction)

Yes.
Yes.

I don't really put much weight into off-samples from spot minutes

[lessthanjake]

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

So the best or 2nd best player being injured and missing games is not a really major factor?

There’s almost always some injuries to players on the opponents’ teams. That’s just sort of priced into the baseline, and it’s actually somewhat abnormal if that doesn’t happen (especially in recent years). The question in assessing whether this makes a run easy (or rather makes opponent SRS be an abnormally optimistic assessment of opponents compared to what it is for other champions) is more about whether they had more luck than average on this front.

The main injury for the 2022 Warriors’ opponents was Ja. But the Warriors were already ahead 2-1 before he missed any games. Not to mention that in 25 regular season games without Ja that year, the Grizzlies had a 12.98 SRS, so it’s not super clear that missing Ja was a huge negative for the Grizzlies.

I don’t know what other injury you’re referring to. The Nuggets were missing their 2nd best player, but that player hadn’t played a single minute in the regular season, so that is very obviously not a factor that would suggest that the 2022 Nuggets’ SRS overestimated how good they were.

[Colbinii]

So the best or 2nd best player being injured and missing games is not a really major factor?

What are you talking about about.

Jamal Murray?
Ja Morant?
RWIII (Celtics crushed Golden State in the RWIII minutes, shame he has a minutes restriction)

Yes.
Yes.

I don't really put much weight into off-samples from spot minutes

Fair.

RWIII, in the final 3 games of the series [Ignoring his +21 game], was +16 in 94 minutes while the Celtics lost all 3 games by 10, 10 and 13 points.

[Cavsfansince84]

You can check my work, but the 2022 Warriors beat a cumulative SRS of 17.66, and, unless I’ve miscalculated something, the only champions in the last 21 years that are above that were the 2011 Mavs (18.42), the 2014 Spurs (18.16), and the 2016 Cavaliers (18.38). I agree that SRS isn’t a foolproof method of assessing team quality, but I do think we can operate from a baseline assessment that a team that beat an abnormally high cumulative SRS probably didn’t have an easy run and that there’d need to be some pretty extraordinary things to negate that assumption. I don’t think Ja missing games in a series the Warriors were already ahead in or the mere fact that the Grizzlies were young qualify as things that really negate that—especially when we take into account that most champions in recent years had luck regarding opponent injuries or things like that, so getting a bit of that isn’t really getting lucky relative to the norm (it’s more like that it’d be unlucky to be a champion that didn’t get it). In fact, I’d actually argue that the injury luck the 2022 Warriors got was *less* significant than most recent champions, since the Warriors’ strongest opponent (the Celtics) were quite healthy, while a large number of recent champions have had major injuries to the team that otherwise would’ve been their strongest opponent.

As for the Celtics “falling on their own sword,” I think we should assume that a 7+ SRS team with lots of playoff experience looking pedestrian at times in a series is probably caused more by their opponent than anything, rather than being a reason to downplay the opponent’s achievement in beating them.

The Celtics comment was mostly with regard to Tatum and White and the team's inability to get away from bad iso ball. As much as we might say they were experienced they were also still a very young team(Tatum only 23 and Brown 25) and going against a core that had been to 5 finals and won 3 rings already. So no surprise that they kind of fell apart while on the verge of going up 3-1.

[lessthanjake]

Just to confirm.

You are using cumulative SRS for the Warriors.

Are you using the same for the 2023 Nuggets and acknowledging they had an All-Time easy playoff run?

I think that the low SRS of the 2023 Nuggets opponents is suggestive of it being a relatively easy run, and have said exactly that repeatedly. It is true that, unlike with the 2022 Warriors, there were lots of really major factors that would suggest that SRS is pretty far off in assessing the 2023 Nuggets’ opponents, but, given how low the SRS was, it’s not enough that I’d say the slate of opponents wasn’t relatively easy.

I mean come on man. Talk about a complete nothing-burger of a post here.

The Nuggets played against a historically weak run.

Injured Minnesota team with KAT/Gobert < 100%, McDaniels and Reid missing all the games, SlowMo missing a game.

Phoenix who lost CP3 mid-series and had no bench.

A Lakers team who beat a hobbled Memphis team and the Warriors on their last leg, and then a Miami team who only made the Finals because of GOAT level, outlier shooting and then couldn't make any open 3s against Denver.

It's okay to call a spade a spade, instead of beating around the bush and writing 4 sentences that don't say anything.

The Nuggets had a historically easy finals run by any metric.

One sentence. Straight to the point. No beating around the bush, no double negatives, no sentences with 4 freaking comma's.

Usually things are quite a bit more complicated than one sentence, buddy. And this is certainly an example of that. There’s a boatload of reasons to believe the Nuggets’ opponents were substantially better than their SRS. I wrote about them in detail here earlier today, essentially in response to you making very similar points in a different thread: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=112986116#p112986116. And as I concluded in that post, “it’s really not mutually exclusive to say that the Nuggets’ opponents were significantly better than their 0.54 SRS average and that they were still on the weak side in terms of difficulty of opponents in a title run.”

In any event, I don’t really think it’s the case that if one thinks opponent SRS is somewhat inaccurate for the 2023 Nuggets it must be inaccurate for the 2022 Warriors too. Obviously SRS is not a perfect measure of an opponent’s quality, but it gives us a good baseline, which is then subject to adding additional context. In the case of the 2023 Nuggets, there’s a lot of additional context that suggests SRS likely underestimated their opponents a good deal. In the case of the 2022 Warriors, there’s really not much additional context that suggests SRS likely overestimates their opponents a good deal. There’s basically just the injury to Ja, and that’s it, but the Warriors were already ahead in the series before he missed games, and the Grizzlies had had a 12.98 SRS in 25 games without Ja that season anyways.

In both cases, though, my view errs on the side of what the SRS tells us. I’m saying that the team whose opponents had low SRS had a relatively easy run and the team whose opponents had high SRS had a relatively difficult run. This shouldn’t be controversial. You seem to agree regarding the Nuggets, but yet still be arguing with me? I’m not sure why. Meanwhile, I can’t even tell if you have a position on the difficulty of the Warriors’ run or whether you are just using what I said about that to try to catch me out regarding the Nuggets, even though I’ve already said repeatedly (including in other threads literally earlier today) that I think the Nuggets’ run was “definitely on the easy side.”

[Special_Puppy]

LeBron playing poorly in the 2011 Finals doesn't make his 2009 or 2010 seasons any worse.

Jordan retiring in 1994 doesn't make his 1993 NBA Run any less impressive.

And to add to both, while Lebron maybe still had some questions in 2011 since he hadn't won a title yet, he only went on and was in the finals for a decade straight and won 4 titles after that bad series. Nobody should still be talking about that series as other than a blip. And Mike had already made it clear how great he was, but he also came back and won 3 more titles after that first retirement.
.

Now here's the part you show me Jokic's equivalent of this, before or after.

The point is that we don't know how Jokic's career will end. He could never win another ring or he could win 2 more finals MVPs. Both seem totally possible