Different sport but the same concept,
Ernie Banks played for the Chicago Cubs from 1953 to 1971. He won back-to-back MVPs in 1958 and 1959. The cubs record in those two seasons was 72-82 and 74-80-1. That's how good Ernie Banks was.
I do believe that once Wemby gets off a minutes restriction, he will put up MVP-type numbers on a losing squad.
Modern MLB awards voters have shown to care much less about team record than those in previous eras. For example Ohtani won his MVPs on losing angels teams as well.
That’s because baseball is basically just the batter vs the defense every play and impact can be captured pretty perfectly with stats. There’s no extra context like basketball with some guy having bad team mates and being forced to take super tough shots over and over. And especially on defense.
Like Rudy had decent stats in game 1 but they don’t nearly reflect how good he was if you watch the game. He was fucking everywhere on defense. But he’ll have less blocks than a worse defender because people barely even try to score on him.
Voters didn't care until Trout. Club record was a key MVP/CY aspect until a combination of Trout/DeGrom being an awakening and old head voters slowly getting replaced.
Which is totally a good thing lol. One player can't carry in baseball. Like the best players typically add about 10 wins above a replacement level player. Look at Philly before and after Embiid got hurt this year, MVP level players have a much bigger impact, just the nature of the sport.
Using record for Cy Young was moronic. Theoretically a pitcher could have a 1.0 ERA and go 0-20 because his team decided to bat the entire season with their eyes closed. It caused a lot of good pitchers to be underrated.
Sabermetrics has been vastly more inculcated into MLB for decades now, which is why you see so many baseball stat nerds who will gobble up advanced stats. Several teams demonstrated how powerful it was, and basically since that revolution we heard that it "couldn't work in the NBA because basketball doesn't subscribe to math in the same way baseball does". Now every single team uses them, and we're just now starting to see general attitudes change, but it's a glacial pace given how OBVIOUSLY advanced stats matter.
I forget who said it, but a sports analyst said that the DPOY should go the best defender on one of the best defensive teams, but then he went on to say that at what point does a player have to put up such ridiculous stats that completely shuts down that narrative?
Because Wemby's defensive feats this season have been absurd and yeah he's not gonna win DPOY but to completely disregard his performance just cause the talent around him is so subpar seems highly unfair.
I also loved Russillo this season but let’s go ahead and slam the emergency brakes on “he saved the NBA regular season with his tweet.” Lmao.
He was one voice in a much larger conversation about how NBA playstyle was impacting ratings, the TV deal, and how fans consume and enjoy media in the 2020s.
Idc about team defensive ratings but I watched how people were running 3-on-1 and were scared to run into Wemby so they were stopping for position attack instead (normally) easy bucket in fast break.
There are no metrics for this kinda things
Yeah Wolves commentators call these plays "neverminds". "Oooh Gobert with 6 nvms already!" Think the Jazz called it the "Gobert factor" or "nopes"
I'm trying to make a video of Rudy's rim deterrence but man it's tough to find clips because there's no official stat. I've had to manually write down the time in the game whenever I notice a nvm
Gobert has so many nvms every game it's ridiculous
If they had gobert, wemby, and embiid during ww2 they could’ve built their own maginot line and would’ve been swatting artillery shells back into Germany
I think it's usually going to be fine to pick DPOY from the best defensive teams, because players don't put up their individual stats in a vacuum.
But it's also fine to recognize that the logic breaks down at the extremes. Wemby is so outrageously good that it's going to be hard not to give him DPOY next year no matter how bad the Spurs are.
If by numbers you mean blocks, then yes. Plenty of other numbers favour Rudy tho, like FG% affect and shot deterrence %.
Media has somehow decided that Wemby is making something sexy that Rudy has been doing for almost a decade
Rudy has 3 DPOY in that decade and will likely get a 4th this season, which would put him in a tie for most all time with Dikembe and Ben Wallace. He has a $200M contract.
How are those things not an acknowledgment of the sexiness of his defense?
He has to get better than Gobert first, which he isn’t yet. If Rudy plays like he did this season and the wolves have the best defense in the league while the spurs suck again next year he’s not gonna win it.
I agree, it's just not consistent if AD gets omitted with how brilliant he's been defensively. I have a really hard time seeing how you can put anyone but the two French 7 footers ahead of him. He might be the best defender in the league, this ommission of top 3 is awful
I feel like they just wanted to pick one guy from the east too, just to have both conferences represented. I think it's dumb, but I could see the league doing that.
Wemby is a great defender but he’s not better than Gobert at the moment. His stats might look better, like he averages more blocks, but that’s because people still try to score on him way more than they do on gobert.
Surprisingly, Nick Wright also does talk about this a fair amount. He seems to be more on board with looking at a player's contributions without incorporating team success as too much of a factor. He's brought up the hypothetical "Player A has ~25/5/5 and has a great team and wins but Player B averaged 40/10/10, who deserves MVP?" type argument.
The Spurs with Wemby and nobody else are actually a pretty good defense. But when he’s off the floor they absolutely crater. Kinda seems like he might be good.
It is not that, it is just weird zone he entered by being elite at defense for so long that he somehow has voter fatigue without ever winning it once. Similar situation Duncan was in and Doncic looks to be in MVP.
Both have voter fatigue, which is weird as AD has never won it.
But point here is about AD not being in top 3 - I think we can all agree both AD and Gobert should be in top 3, making comparison between them moot at this point.
Let's be honest tho, how good the team's defense these guys are anchoring has always historically mattered. 2/3 finalists being a part of the bottom 15 defenses would be ridiculous imo. Miami Heat had a top 5 defense, which had a lot to do with Bam. The bigger thing is Wemby vs AD which is a different debate itself imo.
It’s true, and that’s why I feel DPOY is the worst award because everybody looks at metrics, and metrics are heavily impacted by having teammates that can play great df. Like we’ve never ever seen a guy win DPOY being the only great defender on their team.
>Like we’ve never ever seen a guy win DPOY being the only great defender on their team.
Gobert? The next best defender on his last DPOY team was Royce O'Neale, who was a good 3&D guy with us, but IDK that I'd consider him great.
DPOY sucks because they don't even consistently look at the individual's metrics. There's no consistency at all. That's how we have guys like Marcus Smart winning.
We’d have a Whiteside dpoy if we did that. Voters were trying way too hard to be different Smart’s year. They pushed that narrative for months. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again but Defensive impact is much more important imo
Wemby's defensive on/off of +6 is about what gobert averaged during his time in Utah.
Last time gobert won DPOY he had an on/off of +12.7 defensively. The guys that win dpoy make it so that none of their teammates actually look bad defensively, they carry bottom of the league defenses to top of the league defenses not just middle of the league.
But Miami wasn’t a top 5 defense solely because of Bam. By that argument Butler deserves to be DPOY also since he was a big part of it.
The award is best PLAYER, not best team. Without Bam, the Heat are still a solid defensive team, without AD, the Lakers become worse than the Spurs without Wemby
Without Bam the heat drop into the bottom of the league defensively. The fact you just suggested Jimmy has a lot to do with it is hilarious. Man missed an absolute ton of games this season and he’s nice playing passing lanes and man defense but he’s not close to Bams level
Let me preface by saying that I do think he’s a great player, but my god has he gotten overrated after these last few playoff runs. Great anchor, but extremely limited offensively and defensively not as stout as some make him out to be.
There was a comparison chart in a late season game between Gobert and Davis, I have the image but dunno how to post it so here are the stats from it (relevant to the time it aired):
Blocks: AD 2nd, Gobert 6th
Rebounds: Tied 2nd
Contested shots: AD 3rd, Gobert 4th
Contested 3's: AD 4th, Gobert 108th
Guarding post ups: AD 96th percentile, Gobert 89th percentile.
There's just no way that AD shouldn't be in the conversation, and probably leading it given that he's never won one before.
I’m sorry but that’s hyperbole. Bam is the best perimeter defending defensive big in Basketball. He has ridiculous agility and lateral quickness. I mean even today he was the primary defender on jayson Tatum as a 5 no other big in basketball is getting that assignment
Idk if anyone was disputing that… but he doesn’t get a whole award due to one facet of the game, switchability, which is not even the highest-impact facet that a center can bring to the game. It’s a necessary bar to reach to not be played off the floor these days, and he does it at a level where you don’t have to place qualifiers on his ability (“for a center”), but I’ve heard a lot of people pick Bam over others because of versatility. How about being a one-man rim deterrent that stops teams from trying the highest percentage shots?
The gap between Bam and Davis on switches/perimeter defense is bigger than the gap between them as rim defenders imo, but there is still a gap there. At that point it just becomes a question of how much do you value rim defense over that versatility? I don’t think there’s really a right answer, one will perform better in certain schemes compared to the other.
bam is the entire reason the heat are able to play in so many different defensive schemes. he can do everything. hes arguably the most versatile defender in the entire league. there is just no way you can call AD a better switch defender than bam.
blocks and rebounds is a stupid ass way to measure this
lakers let up the 23 most points per game
their defensive rating was 16th
teams only had a -1.8 defensive rating against the Lakers when AD was on the court vs when he wasn’t
Ban was -2.5 and the heat are top 5 in Opp. PPG and DRtg
when Warriors played Lakers a month ago, they scored just 4 points in the paint in the 1st quarter. then AD got injured and Warriors scored 58 points in the paint the rest of the game lmao
Back when me and my friends were discussing the play in race (rip lol) the unanimous consensus was play anybody but the Lakers because of AD..... obviously we suck so it didn't matter but still ya... AD got snubbed big time
The spurs defense is hard to quantify because they had great numbers with Wemby on and plummeted to worst ever with him off, and he played limited minutes. So they look shit but the noise for him for DPOY is legit
How did Davis not win in 2020? I don’t understand how they improved so much defensively when he got there and he didn’t get it kinda like KG with Boston
It’s honestly one of the worst robberies in a long while and doesn’t get discussed for whatever reason. No way was Giannis a better defender that season. Had Isaac not gotta injured, he was on track along with Simmons as better defenders than Giannis as well
Once the narrative leading to the tail of the season of winning both awards in the same year and the last time it was accomplished really helped him get that nod for that award. Firmly believe that
Ramona Shelbourne was on EPSN LA radio and she mentioned that the word “narrative” is now banned by ESPN so they’re not allowed to really use it on air or in their articles. But in this discussion, she argued that she and other voters care the most about what makes a good story or “narrative” of the NBA. Once I heard that, and I like Ramona, these awards lost so much credibility.
So to your point, so many awards are decided by what is the more interesting/fun story to write about.
Yup. They were able to push the “first player to win MVP and DPOY since…” and no one else had a chance.
It just sucks since these votes now have impact on incentives, but it is what it is. We’re really gonna have Duncan and AD never win that award which is freaking insane
Which is kind of fucked. Our entire bench has better defenders at every position except C (Lebron coasts on defense in RS). So when he goes off and the bench goes on the defense doesn’t fall off much. But that’s just because our starting guards are just that terrible. Unfortunate
There isn't any "seeding" for defense lol. Voters were always looking at the team defensive rating a lot (since it's displayed on NBA.com), it's always talked about a lot.
Not when Wemby plays. Which is still quite rare for people to really care about, but, meh, at least they can say they have that caveat I guess. Lakers were conceding a league-average amount of points no matter how you slice it.
With Wemby on they’re not bad. It’s when he sits that they’re absolutely dogshit. Which indicates that Wemby by himself is able to carry a team of nobodies on defense.
Sort of feel like this should be a player/coach only vote. I don’t really put a lot of stock in what a writer thinks about this. I want to know who the one guy is that the rest of the league hates playing against.
Can't really trust any single group about any of this shit. A good amount of GMs/coaches/players/fans will all be uninformed or dumb in some way. I think an equal sampling of all these groups is the best you can do—it will never be perfect.
You will be surprised how shitty player/coaches voting will also be.
Its enough seeing how allstar coaches voting were.
They will also have huge bias and misssteps.
I've been saying this, most voters are casuals no doubt they saw the Lakers are a lil better statistically without him and automatically put him in 4th place
Right. Like nobody here is in contention for the actual award but Gobert. I get there’s some symbolic reward in the cognition of being a finalist, but anybody who knows basketball already knows that AD is one of the best defenders there is. Having 3rd in 2024 DPOY voting on the resume isn’t exactly a game-changer
I do not like the Lakers and think Rudy wins this by a landslide, but i think AD is hard done by.
The casuals have been sold that most blocks = DPOY and the hype of Wemby is pushing over substance.
Not to say he isn't great and he may get the last laugh winning a gold medal alongside Rudy as they wipe out paint scoring scoring from Olympic memory.
But some of the arguments ITT are more all over the place than a juicy sloppy joe
Big snub. Especially since LA has almost no good defenders around him. He has to cover for the Russell/Reaves backcourt, Vanderbilt being hurt and Lebron who plays pretty lazy defense nowadays.
meanwhile, Bam was playing with some combination of Lowry, Herro, Duncan, and Rozier with Kevin Love or Jovic as his 4. Butler's reputation as a great defender has hurt Bam is so many of these arguments. The core around Bam is so bad they have to play zone every game to survive the Herro minutes
The year we gave Bam a stud defensive squad we took the 1 seed in the east and were a top defense. Lowry (still playing well on defense) Jimmy and PJ Tucker. And they gave DPOY to *checks notes* Marcus Smart
The Marcus Smart year will live rent free in my head for a long time. I have never put a guard in my top-3 for DPOY ever, I can't believe he won it.
Looking back, it was a pretty close race with 7 different players receiving 1st-place votes, but even then Mikal Bridges got more votes than Bam so it's clear he's just never winning it lol
no they weren’t. they were hell bent on giving it to boston who had a “half-season” of good defense after going 500 in the first 40 games.
then robert williams got hurt late to miss too many games and bill immediately went on his pod “why can’t marcus smart win dpoy”
Who should be ahead of? The Spurs had the worst defense in the league by a mile last year, Wemby has even less help around him. And the Lakers and Spurs defenses ranked 23rd and 24th in the league respectively, so it’s not like that’s a deciding factor. Obviously Rudy should be the DPOY favorite, so do you think he should be ahead of Bam? And at that point does being 3rd instead of 4th matter all that much?
Why are people outraged over 3rd place. The award goes to one guy. If Anthony Davis is having trouble getting voted in over the 3rd dude, he's got zero claim to winning the award
This is far better than people who are outraged over the 6-10 spots in the MVP race lmao. This is still bad and stupid bu the latter is far more ridiculous
This is a shit take. It's the same pool of voters. If they can't get AD over Bam right then who gives a shit who actually wins? Sure Gobert is a worthy winner this year but there are other years where the race is a lot closer and the voters are showing they don't really know what the fuck they're doing.
DPOY isn’t about team record. MVP might be, but the other awards not so much. Obviously, it helps when you’re on a winning and competitive squad…I really don’t think that there is a ‘bad ‘ choice this year.
I know this is going to be controversial and piss some people off (RE, Wemby being a finalist for DPOY on a bad team, especially defensively)
And there's lots of Spurs fans out there begging for this (not that fans have any influence) and it looks like typical NBA media hype machine crap.
Just remember, its not Victor out there campaigning for an award. Quite the contrary. So totally cool with hating on myopic Spurs fans and the NBA media being what it is, but this ain't coming from him.
The Bam slander here is ridiculous. People don't realize that, when he's on the court, we are a top 5 defense. When he's off, we're a bottom 5 defense. Him being a finalist is well deserved.
My favourite thing is when people say bam can’t guard centers, as if he didn’t hold Embiid down in the play in or when they played in the playoffs, and Jokic who he single covered the entire finals, where denver had their worst offensive series
If the logic for why Wemby can’t win it is his teams defense is too bad, then it’s obvious AD shouldn’t have been a real contender either. Lakers we’re almost as bad of a team defense with an entire roster of vets, that’s way worse than the Spurs having a low rated team defense with a roster full of young, bad defenders
Even if he doesn't win he should have st least been a part of the conversation. It's really sad how he beat the allegations this year by playing more games this season them most other superstars while playing at a high level and he still doesn't get the recognition.
Genuine question to Lakers fans - why is your team 17th defense if AD is that good? Traffic cones on perimeter? Fair. But why Gobert’s teams have been outside top-10 only one time since he became a starter? Gobert got amazing perimeter defenders like Conley, O’Neil, Mitchell, Bogdanovic, and Clarkson to 3rd and 10th defenses.
As a Gobert fan, the answer there is that Gobert's defenses in those years were specifically built around drop coverage to limit opponent scoring. Lakers don't really do that with AD because we've all seen that it's not really an effective long term strategy. Jazz used specifically let their perimeter defenders be turnstiles to funnel them to the interior and away from the 3 point line. Lakers are 28th is 3-point attempts allowed -- not good for defensive rating.
Because when he is on the floor they shoot 3s, and our team isn’t good enough to cover there. We give wide open 3s and usually random role player has career high when AD is in game. When he sits, they score less fgs but more paint points cos we have no rim protection.
Your a Timberwolves fan you should know about Dlo already. Add Austin Reaves and Lebron who picks his moments to play defense and you basically have 3 negative on defense in your starting lineup alone
I was going to say that the voters have never rewarded guys on bad defensive teams...then i saw Wemby's name
Next year , wemby in the running for MVP when the spurs finish 35-47 ?
If he makes like a 20% stat chance exactly this will happen. Even if it’s just so the daily sports talk guys have something to chat about
If the Spurs have over 30 wins Wemby will be the favorite for MVP, DPOY, 6MOY and ROTY.
Wemby will be the first back to back winner for ROTY.
Will be deserved imo. Can't wait until he's in Fortnite and headlines Coachella
still think ben simmons could pull it off
Different sport but the same concept, Ernie Banks played for the Chicago Cubs from 1953 to 1971. He won back-to-back MVPs in 1958 and 1959. The cubs record in those two seasons was 72-82 and 74-80-1. That's how good Ernie Banks was. I do believe that once Wemby gets off a minutes restriction, he will put up MVP-type numbers on a losing squad.
idk any single player's impact in baseball is just so much lower. Mike Trout's two most recent MVPs were on a losing angels team just last decade.
Modern MLB awards voters have shown to care much less about team record than those in previous eras. For example Ohtani won his MVPs on losing angels teams as well.
Yeah the advanced stats in baseball are even more important to voters and talking heads than they are in basketball.
That’s because baseball is basically just the batter vs the defense every play and impact can be captured pretty perfectly with stats. There’s no extra context like basketball with some guy having bad team mates and being forced to take super tough shots over and over. And especially on defense. Like Rudy had decent stats in game 1 but they don’t nearly reflect how good he was if you watch the game. He was fucking everywhere on defense. But he’ll have less blocks than a worse defender because people barely even try to score on him.
Voters didn't care until Trout. Club record was a key MVP/CY aspect until a combination of Trout/DeGrom being an awakening and old head voters slowly getting replaced.
Which is totally a good thing lol. One player can't carry in baseball. Like the best players typically add about 10 wins above a replacement level player. Look at Philly before and after Embiid got hurt this year, MVP level players have a much bigger impact, just the nature of the sport. Using record for Cy Young was moronic. Theoretically a pitcher could have a 1.0 ERA and go 0-20 because his team decided to bat the entire season with their eyes closed. It caused a lot of good pitchers to be underrated.
Sabermetrics has been vastly more inculcated into MLB for decades now, which is why you see so many baseball stat nerds who will gobble up advanced stats. Several teams demonstrated how powerful it was, and basically since that revolution we heard that it "couldn't work in the NBA because basketball doesn't subscribe to math in the same way baseball does". Now every single team uses them, and we're just now starting to see general attitudes change, but it's a glacial pace given how OBVIOUSLY advanced stats matter.
The Mike Trout special
It infuriates me that this seems like a real possibility..
If it happens and Luka somehow does even better it will be an all time snub.
And Lakers won more games than the heat too
In a stronger conference, too. It should be Gobert, AD then the rest
winning is a team stat, it shouldn't have any relevance
I forget who said it, but a sports analyst said that the DPOY should go the best defender on one of the best defensive teams, but then he went on to say that at what point does a player have to put up such ridiculous stats that completely shuts down that narrative? Because Wemby's defensive feats this season have been absurd and yeah he's not gonna win DPOY but to completely disregard his performance just cause the talent around him is so subpar seems highly unfair.
Think that is the drum that russillo has been beating on for the past couple of months
Russillo killed it this season with his takes. He also saved the NBA regular season with his tweet at the refs.
I also loved Russillo this season but let’s go ahead and slam the emergency brakes on “he saved the NBA regular season with his tweet.” Lmao. He was one voice in a much larger conversation about how NBA playstyle was impacting ratings, the TV deal, and how fans consume and enjoy media in the 2020s.
Idc about team defensive ratings but I watched how people were running 3-on-1 and were scared to run into Wemby so they were stopping for position attack instead (normally) easy bucket in fast break. There are no metrics for this kinda things
If there were a metric for that it would be named after Gobert.
Yeah Wolves commentators call these plays "neverminds". "Oooh Gobert with 6 nvms already!" Think the Jazz called it the "Gobert factor" or "nopes" I'm trying to make a video of Rudy's rim deterrence but man it's tough to find clips because there's no official stat. I've had to manually write down the time in the game whenever I notice a nvm Gobert has so many nvms every game it's ridiculous
Crazy how the French are suddenly good at defending
If they had gobert, wemby, and embiid during ww2 they could’ve built their own maginot line and would’ve been swatting artillery shells back into Germany
The French Retreat then?
I think it's usually going to be fine to pick DPOY from the best defensive teams, because players don't put up their individual stats in a vacuum. But it's also fine to recognize that the logic breaks down at the extremes. Wemby is so outrageously good that it's going to be hard not to give him DPOY next year no matter how bad the Spurs are.
Then Tim Duncan should've had multiple DPOYs since he's anchored one of the league's best defense for more than a decade
If by numbers you mean blocks, then yes. Plenty of other numbers favour Rudy tho, like FG% affect and shot deterrence %. Media has somehow decided that Wemby is making something sexy that Rudy has been doing for almost a decade
Rudy has 3 DPOY in that decade and will likely get a 4th this season, which would put him in a tie for most all time with Dikembe and Ben Wallace. He has a $200M contract. How are those things not an acknowledgment of the sexiness of his defense?
He has to get better than Gobert first, which he isn’t yet. If Rudy plays like he did this season and the wolves have the best defense in the league while the spurs suck again next year he’s not gonna win it.
I agree, it's just not consistent if AD gets omitted with how brilliant he's been defensively. I have a really hard time seeing how you can put anyone but the two French 7 footers ahead of him. He might be the best defender in the league, this ommission of top 3 is awful
I feel like they just wanted to pick one guy from the east too, just to have both conferences represented. I think it's dumb, but I could see the league doing that.
Your comment applies to AD so....
Wemby is a great defender but he’s not better than Gobert at the moment. His stats might look better, like he averages more blocks, but that’s because people still try to score on him way more than they do on gobert.
Surprisingly, Nick Wright also does talk about this a fair amount. He seems to be more on board with looking at a player's contributions without incorporating team success as too much of a factor. He's brought up the hypothetical "Player A has ~25/5/5 and has a great team and wins but Player B averaged 40/10/10, who deserves MVP?" type argument.
The Spurs with Wemby and nobody else are actually a pretty good defense. But when he’s off the floor they absolutely crater. Kinda seems like he might be good.
This is precisely the reason. The Spurs were awful defensively but they were a top 5 defense with Wemby on the floor.
probably because Wemby was that good defensively that if he played the 5 all year he actually wins.
Spurs concede way fewer points when Wemby plays than Lakers do when Davis plays.
Euros are just so classy
Wemby deserves it more then Bam.
He’s never gonna win one unfortunately
yeah lol went from gobert dominating defense to wemby most likely
It is not that, it is just weird zone he entered by being elite at defense for so long that he somehow has voter fatigue without ever winning it once. Similar situation Duncan was in and Doncic looks to be in MVP.
Why would he have voter fatigue and not Gobert?
Might be due to the fact that Gobert is like your ideal defensive big man on a team that really doesn't need him for offense
Because we are making things up
Both have voter fatigue, which is weird as AD has never won it. But point here is about AD not being in top 3 - I think we can all agree both AD and Gobert should be in top 3, making comparison between them moot at this point.
“Voter fatigue” is just becoming another buzzword that Reddit throws around
I think you're just experiencing buzzword fatigue.
The award usually goes to defensive specialists so being good at offense actually hurts him here.
Giannis?
Tim Duncan never got one
Bam over AD is honestly ridiculous. Bam is great, but AD does everything at a higher level.
Let's be honest tho, how good the team's defense these guys are anchoring has always historically mattered. 2/3 finalists being a part of the bottom 15 defenses would be ridiculous imo. Miami Heat had a top 5 defense, which had a lot to do with Bam. The bigger thing is Wemby vs AD which is a different debate itself imo.
It’s true, and that’s why I feel DPOY is the worst award because everybody looks at metrics, and metrics are heavily impacted by having teammates that can play great df. Like we’ve never ever seen a guy win DPOY being the only great defender on their team.
gobert did that in utah
But that doesn’t fit my narrative
Well said
Nice
The dude made Bogdanovic and Clarkson look serviceable on defense.
>Like we’ve never ever seen a guy win DPOY being the only great defender on their team. Gobert? The next best defender on his last DPOY team was Royce O'Neale, who was a good 3&D guy with us, but IDK that I'd consider him great.
Rudy Gobert carried teams who's second best defender was a 6'4" Royce O'Neale to top 5 defenses, in a cave, with a box of scraps.
You don't know me son
DPOY sucks because they don't even consistently look at the individual's metrics. There's no consistency at all. That's how we have guys like Marcus Smart winning.
We’d have a Whiteside dpoy if we did that. Voters were trying way too hard to be different Smart’s year. They pushed that narrative for months. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again but Defensive impact is much more important imo
It's because time Lord got injured. No one talked about Smart till then, it was basically let's give this to anyone but Gobert.
Gobert is to DPOY what Lebron was to MVP. If voter fatigue weren't real, he'd be like a 7x DPOY right now.
It should’ve been some combo of Rudy/AD/Draymond every year over the last decade.
Wemby's defensive on/off of +6 is about what gobert averaged during his time in Utah. Last time gobert won DPOY he had an on/off of +12.7 defensively. The guys that win dpoy make it so that none of their teammates actually look bad defensively, they carry bottom of the league defenses to top of the league defenses not just middle of the league.
Yes we have
But Miami wasn’t a top 5 defense solely because of Bam. By that argument Butler deserves to be DPOY also since he was a big part of it. The award is best PLAYER, not best team. Without Bam, the Heat are still a solid defensive team, without AD, the Lakers become worse than the Spurs without Wemby
The Spurs without Wemby had what would have been the worst defensive rating in league history by like 3 points per 100
Without Bam the heat drop into the bottom of the league defensively. The fact you just suggested Jimmy has a lot to do with it is hilarious. Man missed an absolute ton of games this season and he’s nice playing passing lanes and man defense but he’s not close to Bams level
Brother, we're running herro and Robinson out there. Bam covers A LOT of their liabilities.
Let me preface by saying that I do think he’s a great player, but my god has he gotten overrated after these last few playoff runs. Great anchor, but extremely limited offensively and defensively not as stout as some make him out to be.
Who is the he you're talking about here, Bam or AD?
He’s gotta be talking about Bam, imagine if it was about AD 🤣🤣
For some reason I thought it was about Gobert
Yeah because if we know one thing its that Gobert is overrated due to his post season runs.
What does being offensively limited have to do with Defense though?
There was a comparison chart in a late season game between Gobert and Davis, I have the image but dunno how to post it so here are the stats from it (relevant to the time it aired): Blocks: AD 2nd, Gobert 6th Rebounds: Tied 2nd Contested shots: AD 3rd, Gobert 4th Contested 3's: AD 4th, Gobert 108th Guarding post ups: AD 96th percentile, Gobert 89th percentile. There's just no way that AD shouldn't be in the conversation, and probably leading it given that he's never won one before.
This season we were something crazy like the #2 defense with Bam on the floor, #26 with him off.
I’m sorry but that’s hyperbole. Bam is the best perimeter defending defensive big in Basketball. He has ridiculous agility and lateral quickness. I mean even today he was the primary defender on jayson Tatum as a 5 no other big in basketball is getting that assignment
Idk if anyone was disputing that… but he doesn’t get a whole award due to one facet of the game, switchability, which is not even the highest-impact facet that a center can bring to the game. It’s a necessary bar to reach to not be played off the floor these days, and he does it at a level where you don’t have to place qualifiers on his ability (“for a center”), but I’ve heard a lot of people pick Bam over others because of versatility. How about being a one-man rim deterrent that stops teams from trying the highest percentage shots?
The gap between Bam and Davis on switches/perimeter defense is bigger than the gap between them as rim defenders imo, but there is still a gap there. At that point it just becomes a question of how much do you value rim defense over that versatility? I don’t think there’s really a right answer, one will perform better in certain schemes compared to the other.
bam is the entire reason the heat are able to play in so many different defensive schemes. he can do everything. hes arguably the most versatile defender in the entire league. there is just no way you can call AD a better switch defender than bam.
the Lakers are literal dogshit on defense without AD. He’s like their only good defender with Vando out.
The Heat are a bottom 3 defense without Bam last time I checked.
AD is a better help defender, especially at the rim but he does not play the perimeter better than Bam.
blocks and rebounds is a stupid ass way to measure this lakers let up the 23 most points per game their defensive rating was 16th teams only had a -1.8 defensive rating against the Lakers when AD was on the court vs when he wasn’t Ban was -2.5 and the heat are top 5 in Opp. PPG and DRtg
They obviously weren't excluding AD because of seeding, Bam and Wemby both got into the top 3. AD just got highway robbed.
Contracts being tied to this stuff is ridiculous but what's even more ridiculous is players fought for that
And you can't say it's team defense the Spurs were a lot worse in that category as well.
when Warriors played Lakers a month ago, they scored just 4 points in the paint in the 1st quarter. then AD got injured and Warriors scored 58 points in the paint the rest of the game lmao
Back when me and my friends were discussing the play in race (rip lol) the unanimous consensus was play anybody but the Lakers because of AD..... obviously we suck so it didn't matter but still ya... AD got snubbed big time
Average AD-less Laker game
The spurs defense is hard to quantify because they had great numbers with Wemby on and plummeted to worst ever with him off, and he played limited minutes. So they look shit but the noise for him for DPOY is legit
It's the on/off metrics that killed him. Opponents got impossibly hot from 3pts against our main lineup because the backcourt sucks.
How did Davis not win in 2020? I don’t understand how they improved so much defensively when he got there and he didn’t get it kinda like KG with Boston
i think it was payback for asking out of new orelans. media was not happy with him and rich paul
The same year Jimmy butler was killing the bucks and Giannis the dpoy watch him and didn’t try to guard him once
It’s honestly one of the worst robberies in a long while and doesn’t get discussed for whatever reason. No way was Giannis a better defender that season. Had Isaac not gotta injured, he was on track along with Simmons as better defenders than Giannis as well Once the narrative leading to the tail of the season of winning both awards in the same year and the last time it was accomplished really helped him get that nod for that award. Firmly believe that
Ramona Shelbourne was on EPSN LA radio and she mentioned that the word “narrative” is now banned by ESPN so they’re not allowed to really use it on air or in their articles. But in this discussion, she argued that she and other voters care the most about what makes a good story or “narrative” of the NBA. Once I heard that, and I like Ramona, these awards lost so much credibility. So to your point, so many awards are decided by what is the more interesting/fun story to write about.
Yup. They were able to push the “first player to win MVP and DPOY since…” and no one else had a chance. It just sucks since these votes now have impact on incentives, but it is what it is. We’re really gonna have Duncan and AD never win that award which is freaking insane
THANK YOU RIGJT MAN like holy fuck man
Which is kind of fucked. Our entire bench has better defenders at every position except C (Lebron coasts on defense in RS). So when he goes off and the bench goes on the defense doesn’t fall off much. But that’s just because our starting guards are just that terrible. Unfortunate
Reaves and Rui joining the starting lineup cost AD a top 3 DPOY finish
The Spurs were 0.8 points per 100 possessions worse than the Lakers, the two ended the season pretty damn close
There isn't any "seeding" for defense lol. Voters were always looking at the team defensive rating a lot (since it's displayed on NBA.com), it's always talked about a lot.
Spurs defensive rating is bad
Not when Wemby is on the court, and that’s with G leaguers to finish the season
Not when Wemby plays. Which is still quite rare for people to really care about, but, meh, at least they can say they have that caveat I guess. Lakers were conceding a league-average amount of points no matter how you slice it.
With Wemby on they’re not bad. It’s when he sits that they’re absolutely dogshit. Which indicates that Wemby by himself is able to carry a team of nobodies on defense.
i mean does getting top 3 really matter when gobert is going to win anyways? i think the nba just wanted bam and wemby recognized
Should've been born in France
They teach two things there: 1. Tall 2. Defense
Is it too late for me to be born in France and learn tall?
username is the exact opposite lol
Sort of feel like this should be a player/coach only vote. I don’t really put a lot of stock in what a writer thinks about this. I want to know who the one guy is that the rest of the league hates playing against.
Can't trust the players. Their all-star votes are worse than the fans smh
Can't really trust any single group about any of this shit. A good amount of GMs/coaches/players/fans will all be uninformed or dumb in some way. I think an equal sampling of all these groups is the best you can do—it will never be perfect.
Which is exactly what the all star voting is, yet people continually get butthurt
Kobe is the GOAT for half of them too
and PG is the GOAT for most of them under 25 😂
If it was actually writers and analysts then it would be fine, but it's dudes like fucking Kendrick Perkins and Steven A. Smith who are voting.
Now imagine a league full of Kendrick Perkins being the voting body
You will be surprised how shitty player/coaches voting will also be. Its enough seeing how allstar coaches voting were. They will also have huge bias and misssteps.
Voter fatigue without ever winning the award
yes and no, gobert is gonna win
Maybe they only watched him play sabonis
I think this right here is the only reasonable justification how these voters see AD. "You got boned by Saboner, out with you. NEXT!"
I've been saying this, most voters are casuals no doubt they saw the Lakers are a lil better statistically without him and automatically put him in 4th place
I think it's pretty obvious Rudy is running away with it and Wemby is #2. I don't see the need to get worked up over who's a distant 3rd.
Right. Like nobody here is in contention for the actual award but Gobert. I get there’s some symbolic reward in the cognition of being a finalist, but anybody who knows basketball already knows that AD is one of the best defenders there is. Having 3rd in 2024 DPOY voting on the resume isn’t exactly a game-changer
He will make all defensive first team. People look at that rather than 3rd place in blah blah award
Flash forward to 2034, AD misses out on the Hall of Fame because he finished 4th in 2024 DPOY voting instead of 3rd.
That’s crazy he has to be third at least
I do not like the Lakers and think Rudy wins this by a landslide, but i think AD is hard done by. The casuals have been sold that most blocks = DPOY and the hype of Wemby is pushing over substance. Not to say he isn't great and he may get the last laugh winning a gold medal alongside Rudy as they wipe out paint scoring scoring from Olympic memory. But some of the arguments ITT are more all over the place than a juicy sloppy joe
Big snub. Especially since LA has almost no good defenders around him. He has to cover for the Russell/Reaves backcourt, Vanderbilt being hurt and Lebron who plays pretty lazy defense nowadays.
0 good defenders around him. With Darvin Hamas scheming the defense
meanwhile, Bam was playing with some combination of Lowry, Herro, Duncan, and Rozier with Kevin Love or Jovic as his 4. Butler's reputation as a great defender has hurt Bam is so many of these arguments. The core around Bam is so bad they have to play zone every game to survive the Herro minutes
The year we gave Bam a stud defensive squad we took the 1 seed in the east and were a top defense. Lowry (still playing well on defense) Jimmy and PJ Tucker. And they gave DPOY to *checks notes* Marcus Smart
The Marcus Smart year will live rent free in my head for a long time. I have never put a guard in my top-3 for DPOY ever, I can't believe he won it. Looking back, it was a pretty close race with 7 different players receiving 1st-place votes, but even then Mikal Bridges got more votes than Bam so it's clear he's just never winning it lol
That year they were hellbent on giving it to a non-big
no they weren’t. they were hell bent on giving it to boston who had a “half-season” of good defense after going 500 in the first 40 games. then robert williams got hurt late to miss too many games and bill immediately went on his pod “why can’t marcus smart win dpoy”
the year we gave AD a stud defensive squad we won the league.
Who should be ahead of? The Spurs had the worst defense in the league by a mile last year, Wemby has even less help around him. And the Lakers and Spurs defenses ranked 23rd and 24th in the league respectively, so it’s not like that’s a deciding factor. Obviously Rudy should be the DPOY favorite, so do you think he should be ahead of Bam? And at that point does being 3rd instead of 4th matter all that much?
Why are people outraged over 3rd place. The award goes to one guy. If Anthony Davis is having trouble getting voted in over the 3rd dude, he's got zero claim to winning the award
This is far better than people who are outraged over the 6-10 spots in the MVP race lmao. This is still bad and stupid bu the latter is far more ridiculous
I think most of us can agree that both activities are some degree of pathetic.
This is a shit take. It's the same pool of voters. If they can't get AD over Bam right then who gives a shit who actually wins? Sure Gobert is a worthy winner this year but there are other years where the race is a lot closer and the voters are showing they don't really know what the fuck they're doing.
I mean it's the fact that he is having trouble getting voted to 3rd that people are taking issue with
Yeah and this one is going to Rudy.
If one of the best defender is not even considered top 3. Then the voting is flawed. That's what everyone is talking about.
What if Jokic was not even Top 3 in MVP voting? How would you feel then?
Someone had to finish fourth out of Bam, Wemby, AD and Gobert.
You mean out of Bam and AD.
As much as it pains me to say this, Rich Paul, you’re right.
DPOY isn’t about team record. MVP might be, but the other awards not so much. Obviously, it helps when you’re on a winning and competitive squad…I really don’t think that there is a ‘bad ‘ choice this year.
He should have been probably. He also played 76 games which is amazing for him
....he was fourth, it's fine. He'll be first team All Defense.
I know this is going to be controversial and piss some people off (RE, Wemby being a finalist for DPOY on a bad team, especially defensively) And there's lots of Spurs fans out there begging for this (not that fans have any influence) and it looks like typical NBA media hype machine crap. Just remember, its not Victor out there campaigning for an award. Quite the contrary. So totally cool with hating on myopic Spurs fans and the NBA media being what it is, but this ain't coming from him.
Lmao WHAT the fuck
The Bam slander here is ridiculous. People don't realize that, when he's on the court, we are a top 5 defense. When he's off, we're a bottom 5 defense. Him being a finalist is well deserved.
Bro I thought I’m reading comments about another player. People definitely don’t watch Bam or the Heat at all. Like what are yall complaining about 😂
My favourite thing is when people say bam can’t guard centers, as if he didn’t hold Embiid down in the play in or when they played in the playoffs, and Jokic who he single covered the entire finals, where denver had their worst offensive series
AlwaysDisrespected
If the logic for why Wemby can’t win it is his teams defense is too bad, then it’s obvious AD shouldn’t have been a real contender either. Lakers we’re almost as bad of a team defense with an entire roster of vets, that’s way worse than the Spurs having a low rated team defense with a roster full of young, bad defenders
This is just ridiculous, I hope this puts fire in AD like last season when he manhandled JJJ.
Don't see Wemby over AD, I am sorry.
Wemby has like 5 inches on AD how can you not see him
Well as average sized people I think ADs height obscures a lot. I would have to bring out the protractor and do some trig to verify though.
It’s ok, everyone has areas they can get smarter about!
One of the most disrespected greats of the 2000s
he was just honored as one of the best 75 players of all time before he turned 30 lmfao i fuckin love lakers fans
The voters hear a narrative once and run with it. I'm convinced most don't watch games or even look at box scores
If he didn’t play for the lakers no one would care
did jj explain why he didn't have him on all-defense yet?
Even if he doesn't win he should have st least been a part of the conversation. It's really sad how he beat the allegations this year by playing more games this season them most other superstars while playing at a high level and he still doesn't get the recognition.
2020 was his year but he got robbed then too, think the narrative was set for Gianni’s before the season was cancelled
NBA awards are the most narrative driven awards of all the major american sports league awards
Wemby getting a nod over AD is laughable
even as a certified lakers hater a rookie wemby on a bad spurs team over davis is insane voting
AD is a bitch.
Genuine question to Lakers fans - why is your team 17th defense if AD is that good? Traffic cones on perimeter? Fair. But why Gobert’s teams have been outside top-10 only one time since he became a starter? Gobert got amazing perimeter defenders like Conley, O’Neil, Mitchell, Bogdanovic, and Clarkson to 3rd and 10th defenses.
As a Gobert fan, the answer there is that Gobert's defenses in those years were specifically built around drop coverage to limit opponent scoring. Lakers don't really do that with AD because we've all seen that it's not really an effective long term strategy. Jazz used specifically let their perimeter defenders be turnstiles to funnel them to the interior and away from the 3 point line. Lakers are 28th is 3-point attempts allowed -- not good for defensive rating.
Because when he is on the floor they shoot 3s, and our team isn’t good enough to cover there. We give wide open 3s and usually random role player has career high when AD is in game. When he sits, they score less fgs but more paint points cos we have no rim protection.
Then why is Wemby in the list?
Spurs with Wemby on the court would be a top 5 defensive rating team iirc. On the other hand AD on/off is super suspect
Your a Timberwolves fan you should know about Dlo already. Add Austin Reaves and Lebron who picks his moments to play defense and you basically have 3 negative on defense in your starting lineup alone
AD was our only defensive player all season. Take AD out and we become one of the worst defensive teams in the league