When You're The Best Player In The World And No One Cares

what do you call a player who is averaging 34 N and 10 a game on 62% true shooting the face of the NBA the best basketball player in the world how about the player who is fourth on the NBA's MVP leaderboard at the moment 10 years ago these numbers would have had a player in conversations as the greatest basketball player ever let alone the MVP for a season but now this statline hardly even earns you a shot to become the League's Most Valuable Player lately I've been paying close attention to how the MVP race is playing out this season and it's going about how you would expect the season started out with jic leading the race coming off a very controversial decision last season then Joel embiid morphed into a basketball God for two months and buried all hopes of anyone else winning the award and then he got hurt and yic jumped back out in front and has held the top spot ever since with currently SGA in second and Yannis in third but as I was going over the timeline of the race this season one thing jumped out at me why is Luca donic so low I'm going back and looking at some of his performances and his numbers from this season and Yep they're still completely unreal so why is he all the way in fourth place at the moment have voters gone on a Luca strike they all just collectively decided they're not going to vote for him I don't know maybe his play style is just too polarizing to reward his game right now is often compared to Prime James Harden and we all know how that turned out but even Harden and all of his Antics still won an MVP award on the NBA's last weekly recap of the race it seems they've taken a strong stance on his chances of winning the award up to this point Sorry Mavs fans but the standings matter we understand he scored 25 plus points in nine straight games but flashy highlights and massive numbers aside donic needs to lift Dallas out of play and tournament territory to climb near the top of this list but that isn't true is it in fact I know it's not because other players have won just as many games as Luca is winning this season with worse numbers and less individual dominance and they still went on to win the MVP Luca donic is being held to a higher standard than anyone else right now and I think we might be looking at the MVP award and how we value players all wrong today's video is sponsored by DraftKings tournament time is officially here so fill out your bracket and place your bets on who you think will rise to the top with my partners at draftking Sportsbook right now all new customers who bet $5 will get $150 in bonus bets instantly that's right new customers bet just $5 on anything and receive $150 in bonus bets so even if your school loses you my friend are still a winner and you can stay in on the action and use your $150 in bonus bets on draftking same game parlay plays for a shot at an even bigger payout and if sports betting is not yet available in your state you can still get in on the action with DraftKings daily fantasy download the draftking Sportsbook app now new customers use promo code Jimmy High Roller and bet just $5 on any wager and get $150 in bonus bets instantly that's promo code Jimmy High Roller only at DraftKings Sportsbook when Luca donic first entered the league in 2018 he immediately leapfrogged all the assumptions we had about his game and his potential by his second season his 29 Points nine rebounds and nine assists a game earned him first team all NBA and a fourth place finish in the MVP voting at just 21 years old by the end of his second season the general perception was that this guy was the future of the NBA an MVP award was inevitable and it would happen sooner than later but Luca is now in his sixth season in the league and despite getting better nearly every single season his place on the MVP leaderboard has only Fallen virtually every season voters seeming to become less and less interested in this Luca magic how did Luca's best case for the most valuable player in the NBA come in just his second season and has only gone downhill since are we looking at the MVP award all wrong is it even possible for someone to be the most valuable player in the NBA while not elevating their team to a title Contender a question not applying to just Luca but to any player in in general where exactly is the balance between individual dominance and team success when evaluating the top talents in the NBA if the Nuggets ran into some injuries and had a tough stretch of games and somehow fell to the seventh seed would we be willing to admit that Nicole yic is still the best and most valuable player in the league despite the lack of Team success is it possible to get voter fatigue or even player fatigue before a player has even won anything here's a number for you 41.8 this is the number you get if you combine the average points rebounds and assists per game of every MVP winner over the last 30 years this season Luca is averaging 53.2 combined points rebounds and assists the highest combined total since Kareem over 50 years ago in 1972 and putting up numbers like this usually results in winning games and winning an MVP most of the players near the top of this list have earned the award for their efforts Kareem missed out on the award in 1973 but he already won back-to-back MVPs in the previous two seasons James Harden came in second in 2019 but he already won the award in the previous season as well Luca on the other hand seems to be suffering from a rare case of voter fatigue before winning any awards raising the bar to First Team all NBA in just your sophomore season means every year after that must be even better if you really want to Captivate an audience and Luca has gotten better every single season so maybe he's just not winning enough games the unwritten rule about the MVP award has always been that you not only need to be great but your team needs to be great but this isn't always the case in fact recently it's hardly the case and voters have not shied away from rewarding exceptional Seasons even if it didn't result in overall team success in 1987 after just over two seasons in the league Michael Jordan finished second in MVP voting ahead of generational talents and vets of the 80s despite closing the season with a record below 500 and finishing the season on a stretch of 15 losses in 23 games he was young he was unproven and yet voters were still so enamored by his individual dominance that they just looked past the lack of Team success one argument you can make for this season is the fact that it happened nearly 40 years ago in a league where numbers like this were unheard of but a similar case of crazy numbers and individual performance outweighing overall team performance just happened again a couple seasons ago in 2022 Nicole yic won the league MVP after finishing the season with just 48 wins and the sixth seed in the west his numbers were incredible and his Advance metrics were even better in fact he was so good that the lackluster 48- win total was a bit of an afterthought for many voters the only thing is this season the Mavericks are on Pace to winning 48 games as as well and as loaded as jokic's statline was in that 2022 MVP campaign Luca's numbers are just about as good this season so how does one of these Seasons earn a player his second consecutive MVP and the other hardly even earn a player a spot on the MVP leaderboard but I think the most glaring case of a player winning over voters with a historic individual season was back in 2017 when Russell Westbrook lit the whole league on fire for 81 games and averaged a 30o triple double for an entire season this was just 7 years ago and it's already easy to forget just how inconceivable this was at the time there is not a person on Earth who thought a player could average a triple double for an entire season so when Westbrook pulled it off the MVP award had his name on it and rightfully so but the Thunder finished with the six seed and just 47 wins in fact James Harden and Kawhi Leonard both had strong cases to be the most valuable player in the league That season so again what has changed between then and now how did we go from being so captivated with a statline like this to just casually brushing aside a similar season in just 7 years but Westbrook's triple double season in 2017 didn't just shatter our ideas of what were possible from an individual player his season completely altered the way MVP voting works alog together up until Westbrook's 2017 season the MVP award was virtually the best player on the best team award if your team wasn't the first seed or on occasion the second seed going into the playoffs your chances of winning the award were almost non-existent from 1988 to 2016 23 of 29 regular season MVPs went to players who led their team to the best record in their conference five of the 29 MVPs went to players who earned the second seed and only one went to a player who didn't lead their team to a top two seed but with Westbrook's MVP in 2017 voters of the award and fans in general almost recalibrated the way they approached the discussion of who the most valuable player in the league can be and what is required of them because four of the last seven MVPs finished the season with the third seed or lower this season jokic is favored to win the award and the nuggets are on Pace to finishing the season with the third seed as well something that only occurred once in 37 seasons and required the best player of all time to put up the best individual season of his career is about to happen for the fifth time in just 8 years it's almost as if overnight we all realize that winning the most games is not the end all Beall to what makes a player the most valuable 10 years ago an NBA fan posted this on Reddit and reading it is almost like jumping into a time machine and traveling into the past he goes on to list the last 30 MVP winners and the seed they earn going into the playoffs recognizing the correlation between winning the most games and winning the MVP and he posted this with a note at the end that tells you everything you need to know about how the award worked just 10 years ago I put this on here so people hopefully stop making unlikely MVP predictions no Anthony Davis is not going to lead the Pelicans to the fifth seed and win MVP and the comments on this thread are just as insightful as the post itself so is it really an MVP award in theory yes but maybe it's more of a best player on the best team players do not win MVPs getting six seeds overwhelming majority of the time because this is a superstar league and Superstars get top seeds and this fan is right or at least he was 10 years ago so why did we make exceptions for other players and continue to do so but we hold Luca to such a strict standard if the Mavs went on a nice stretch of wins to close out the season and finish with let's say 53 wins instead of 48 finished with the fourth seed instead of the sixth would that really help Lucas's case the Mavs could have an e easy schedule to close out the season Kyrie could go on a tear the team could get into a rhythm and earn a higher seed and Luca could be playing at the same level he did all season but since they're winning more games none of which had anything to do with Luca playing better he would miraculously have a better case for the MVP I know this is how it works this is the nature of this award but it's still a bit odd that there is so much weight put into some factors when considering who the most valuable player in the league is and the season luk is having in particular is shining a massive light on this irrational way of going about this is Jason Tatum more valuable than Luca this season you could make the argument and I'm sure there's a lot of people who would including the NBA's MVP leaderboard and yet Luca has been more valuable this season according to virtually every single metric other than win totals Jason Tatum has missed five games this season and in those games the Celtics have outscored their opponents by 70 seven points this season Luca has missed eight games and in those games the Mavericks have been outscored by 47 points when Jason Tatum isn't on the court the Celtics are plus 10.1 points per 100 possessions this season when Luca isn't on the court the Mavericks are minus 2.8 points per 100 possessions this season when Tatum isn't on the court the Celtics are still really good when Luca isn't on the court the Mavericks are terrible to look at how many wins a team has as the driving factor for the MVP race neglects how teams even got those wins and how much the best player on that team is contributing to those wins now this season might actually be a case of the league getting a whole lot better or maybe just the stats getting better rather than voters and fans appreciating different aspects of the game and its players than they did in the past the threshold for what it takes to make let's say an all NBA team earn the label of Superstar and win the League's MVP has been raised so high that a player could have a one of one unprecedented season and not even get a mention as one of the League's best players a great case of this is damonta sabonis who is averaging 20 points 13 rebounds and eight assists a game right now and he wasn't even selected as an Allstar this season these are not empty stats he's not a product of the system he plays in he is a certified star but since there's a guy in the league who can do all of this and more he ends up being unjustly labeled as the watered down version of Nicole yic it feels a bit surreal that we live in a time where a player like Luca donic exists with numbers like these and the MVP award isn't already boxed up and on the way to his house as we speak and this realization is less about Luca and more about the big picture of the league right now it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how much things have changed and even harder to grasp how quickly they have changed how can he be this good and still be trailing behind multiple other players if it wasn't for embiid getting hurt Luca could very well not even be within the top five on the MVP leader board while averaging nearly a 34. triple double and being on Pace for 48 wins which begs the question what would a player in Lucas's position need to do to win the MVP with the six seed an underwhelming Supporting Cast and a handful of generational Superstars to contend with what would be the equivalent to the 2017 Westbrook triple double season in 2024 where the numbers are just too absurd to ignore 38 10 and 10 maybe 40 points 12 rebounds and 12 assists T night on League high efficiency it sounds like hyperbole but it's not how good do you have to be to win the MVP in today's NBA when you put the bar as high as Luca did at such a young age how much higher would you need to go for it to be impossible for fans and voters to ignore your efforts or is the MVP award still just the best player on the best team award

Channel: JxmyHighroller

Views: 462,330

Keywords: LeBron James, House of Highlights, ESPN, NBA highlights, Jimmy Highroller, NBA trash talk, Buzzer Beaters, Brooklyn Nets, Ankle Breakers, NBA Championship, Rebound, Stephen Curry, Lakers, nba breaking news, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembenyama, Michael Jordan, kobe bryant, in season tournament, nba free agency, Giannis Antetokounmpo, NBA trade, Milwaukee Bucks, Luka Doncic 73 points, NBA playoffs

Id: yKTND_ikxlc

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024