The bolded. There's nothing but precedence to the contrary. To the tune of an uneducated guess of 8/10 as I stated earlier. Yes, on paper, the MVP is a regular season award. But let's be real here, historically it's been given to players who had outstanding (and not always the best btw) regular seasons, on perceived contending teams. Whether they lived up to it in the post season or not is irrelevant....the expectation for them to has always been the major caveat. There is no expectations for Jokic. None. There are for Embiid. There are for Giannis.
There are expectations for Embiid because they literally traded for a perceived superstar in Harden
There are expectations for Giannis because he has arguably the two best sidekicks in Jrue and Khris, and one of the best support casts in the league.
The expectations for Jokic would be entirely different if he actually had a healthy support cast and legitimate talent, and not rolling into the postseason with a bunch of marginal role players. Embiid would have the same expectations as Jokic had Philly not made that trade. Bron would be the only player held to a winning-standard in a similar situation, and that wouldn't be based on anything reasonable -- it would come from a place of hate.
Westbrook won MVP in 2017, yet there were no expectations for him to win in the playoffs; Kareem won MVP in 1976 and he didn't even make the playoffs.
This is the problem when discussing who's MVP for a particular season, is that y'all compare what happened in the past to the now, when every season is different, with different players, with different circumstances, all in a difference environment. Nothing is ever the same from season to season. Just because MVP winners of the past have been on contending teams with expectations doesn't mean that's always going to be the case every season. The criteria is in constant randomization from season to season, and honestly, that's the way it should be. Players should be awarded on their merits during that season, and not compared to what players did in previous seasons. Nothing will ever line up exactly to what happened in the past for someone to win, for obvious reasons that the MVPs that have already been awarded throughout history are all different (it's too late now to start trying to set a standard to the past; it'd be like finding footprints in the sand when the waves have washed them away), and because it's logistically impossible for that to happen.
And again, I'm not saying that the feel good story MVP campaign should be outlawed or poo pooed or anything like that...
Jokic's MVP campaign isn't a
feel good story. He's been arguably the most dominant and consistent player this season, doing shyt we've never seen before.
just that running your ticket on that campaign, and winning, in back to back years, is a slap in the face to players that have to balance and mesh their talents with a better supporting cast. We're rewarding hero ball and penalizing team play at this point, essentially. Whether the hero ball was justified or not..
I'm not sure what the fukk this even means.
Jokic's style of play is basically team play; it's the reason why the role players have been able to perform at a level beyond their respective abilities. He's essentially a Dr. Dish machine automatically spitting out basketballs in the right spot at the right time for his teammates to get easy scoring opportunities, all the while scoring at an historically efficient rate on high volume and not infracting on any of his teammates' games. He could literally play with any type of player of varying talent level, so to say that it's "a slap in the face to players that have to balance and mesh their talents with better players" actually goes against the very purpose of why the MVP is awarded.
Do you even realise how ridiculous it sounds that you're basically penalising him for having a weaker support cast than Giannis, while winning at a similar rate? He's doing the same thing Giannis is, but with less help, yet somehow, that should be subtracted away from his campaign all because his teammates aren't good enough? Make that make sense.
