Jokic has proved me wrong. I thought Embid was the deserving MVP. Yeah I know its a regular season award but still. The assists total is crazy, we just don’t see legit centers with those kinds of numbers, much less leading the playoffs.
Not normal pic.twitter.com/NtvRzU0bVP
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) June 11, 2023
by Kimber80
27 Comments
It’s just stupid, it is a regular season award, I tought Jokic and Giannis were both more deserving IN THE REGULAR SEASON then Joel.
It’s just dumb to use the playoffs for that, if Embiid was your MVP before the playoffs, he had a case, it’s fine, changing now is dumb
This’ll definitely be looked at as one of the more fraudulent MVP campaigns
Simmons called it on his pod with Russillo a while back. He has PVSD.
Joker not getting the MVP this season was voter fatigue he obviously deserved to win.
That’s why all those people who think Darly Morey would NEVER trade Joel Embiid he would never trade an MVP!!!
Joel Embiid isn’t a real MVP he’s probably by far the least deserving winner in league history (even far behind Westbrook’s MVP campaign)
So I’m pretty sure Daryl Morey knows Embiid is not THAT guy and can’t lead a team to a ring. He’s basically the modern day Patrick Ewing or Charles Barkley he will never get a ring.
Daryl should do everything he possbily can to convince Portland to overpay him for Joel Embiid. Blazers are in an amazing rebuilding spot right now but they can be enticed to create a win now team
Dame+Embiid+Grant+Thybulle is a pretty lit roster that on paper should be a top 3 title fave
The top two players in WS/48 this season were Nikola Jokic and Jimmy Butler. Not even Jokic and Embiid. This stat has a strong correlation to MVP, and because he already won twice, they just ignored all evidence to give Embiid a pity award. Not surprising those are the last two players standing, it’s what the stats told us were the best two players in the regular season! And Jokic was significantly higher than Butler too.
The media just decided that Jokic didn’t deserve to win three times in a row because he couldn’t beat the champion Golden State Warriors last year when the Nuggets were starting Monte Morris, Will Barton, and Jeff Green as the other three starters around Jokic and Gordon.
All these dudes walking back on their decision is so lame. Like how much influence was placed on you in the first place for you to be so indecisive? Just pick one and stick with it. It was a close race from the start. And the fact that the playoffs are what’s causing this makes this so laughable. It’s a regular season award. If everyone has such a big issue with it then the NBA should just give it to the best player of the regular season + playoffs. I personally didn’t mind it going to Jokic, Giannis or Embiid, so why all the backtracking? It’s not like they awarded a completely undeserving player.
you dont see legit center leading the playoffs in assists cause thats not what theyre asked to do. Jokic is a unicorn & a generational talent at his position.
It’s absolutely possible for Embiid to be the MVP but Jokic to be the better player. I don’t know why this is hard for people to grasp
he just didn’t want Jokic to win 3 in a row like Bird did
Jokic shouldāve won, but silver lining: we donāt have to hear Embiid passive-aggressively bitch and whine about double standards or whatever else the narrative/excuse of the week ever again. I mean, heāll probably still do it, but hopefully people wonāt pay as much attention anymore.
Now we can get back to a real, regular, normal MVP debate. Namely: LuKa Is ToO gOoD tO hAvE nEvEr WoN tHe AwArD!!!
I think that embiid should have won this MVP and I still do damnit. Jokic is a better player tho and heās having an all time playoffs run
Embiid getting a large portion of his points from FTA is why I can never put him above Jokic. Weāve seen Jokic get battered most games and doesnāt get even half the calls little baby Embiid gets
Joel tricked yāall. The whole Sixers org put on one of the most blatant MVP campaigns of all time and itās come totally unwound in 3 weeks.
People what on Jokic for years about his MVPs because of his lack of post season success. Iām sure that was part of the āfatigueā for this years award. And guess what, this year shit clicked and Jokic about to be a champ.
Next year, Embiid will continue to get shit about his lack of post season success, which will inevitably affect his MVP consideration. And then it will click and he will make a deep playoff run, and then people will change their tune again.
What made Jokic a more deserving candidate than Embiid this season?
Itās a regular season award and Joel was better this year in regular season.
Iām not an Embiid fan and thereās no doubt the narrative helped, but he was a deserving MVP. His numbers were legitimately outstanding on a good team. That said, in no universe would I take Embiid over Jokic. It also looked like down the stretch, Jokic took his foot off the gas a bit because he didnāt want the narrative to grow and was happy to concede and focus solely on a ring. In a way, both guys got what they wanted.
Embiid was and still is a totally defensible pick regular season MVP. If you didn’t have a problem choosing Embiid for the MVP on the last day of the regular season, then you shouldn’t have a problem now. Any walking back is basically admission of negligence in some regard whether it be you not paying enough attention to him in the regular season (his passing has always been like this), letting yourself be swayed by narratives, etc.
why do people say “I know it was a regular season award, but still”….but still what? it doesn’t matter how great Jokic is in the playoffs it literally does not matter for the regular season mvp lol
you can make the argument that he deserved it for his performance in the regular season, sure we can argue all day. But every single season people look at postseason performance to retroactively argue about mvp and its fucking stupid. Same thing happened to jokic in his 2 mvp seasons.
Embiid got eliminated 3 weeks ago and weāre still talking about him? r/nba convincing themselves that Embiid doesnāt matter but yet thereās a post like this daily. Itās a REGULAR SEASON AWARD
Jokic is a generational player and deserves his MVPs; as does Joel. All the walking back and toxic discussion is just silly. Is a center going back to back scoring champ in the 3 ball era not also āgenerationalā? Multiple guys deserved the award and only one gets it. It just comes off as sixers hate to try to say Embiid didnāt deserve mvp because jokic is going to win the title. If thatās the case then donāt name the mvp till the season is over and it will always be the best player on the team that won.
Itās a regular season award and there are plenty of fair arguments for Embiid to have won: led the league in scoring on excellent TS%, led PHI to 54 wins with 3rd best net rating, provided great rim protection when needed (mock him all you want but he clearly deters scoring in the paint, as we saw in the BRK and BOS series), and monster games against Denver and Boston. I couldnāt care less about him sitting out the second Denver matchup, and Jokic absolutely coasted the last month of the season.
What was bullshit was the Jokic smear campaign on Reddit followed by ESPN playing the race card and holding him accountable for losing series to PHX and GSW with a guard rotation of Will Barton, Monte Morris (love him btw), Facu Campazzo, Austin Rivers, Bryn Forbes, and Shaq Harrison. The regular season MVP discourse needs to completely remove playoff results from the equation, both good and bad.
I firmly believe MVP should be the most valuable regular season performance in a vacuum, not the consensus best player in the NBA. The later is too reductive and overly reliant on past results. In my opinion, Giannis winning B2B MVPs immediately proceeding FMVP and Jokic on the cusp of the same is proof that it is working exactly as intended. The voters seem to understand that, but the mainstream media is too narrative driven and doesnāt watch the damn games.
Jokic purposely phoned in the last 6 weeks of the regular season to help him have an all time playoff performance. His regular season suffered to help in the playoffs and not winning a regular season award is a consequence of that. I dont think Jokic or Denver regrets that decision right now lol
These comments are plain disrespect to Embiid’s name.
I’m not a/an Embiid fan,but his regular season stats were amazing, can’t deny that.Yes Jokic(he’s currently my favourite player to watch) winning the MVP would also be fully justified.
Embiid had stats,had performance worthy of being an MVP..
These people then thought he was deserving,fine…
But Slandering him now in behind of these experts’ guilty trip is just a plain insult ..
This post is super misleading, all bill Simmons says in the tweet is in the title. Everything else is op. Probably not on purpose but itās quite confusing
We can either say playoff performance should be taken into consideration or it shouldn’t. What we cannot do is change this based on the year and player. Anyone that mentioned the playoffs during Jokic’s MVP seasons immediately got shut down.
Jokic is an amazing player, obviously. Nobody is saying otherwise. The MVP award could have gone either way, but changing your mind based on the period after the award, which has absolutely nothing to do with the criteria, is lame.
Embiid did NOT play well this postseason, but he had an amazing regular season. Anyone saying otherwise is missing brain cells.
Jokic, Embiid, Giannis were all worthy picks, why are these clowns backtracking now?
Take votes away from people who change their votes during the playoffs.
If you weren’t watching the guy before you shouldn’t get a vote.
I’m annoyed with people being so accepting of mediocre journalism and award voting.
Guys admitting they don’t watch certain teams and get swayed by other people’s opinions shouldn’t be accepted and allowed to vote on future awards. The awards matter.