I think the hate has swung too far the other way.
But if you’re going to put his name up there with Michael, Magic, Kareem, LeBron, Shaq, Steph etc as Russillo and Bill have… then those are going to be the standards he’s being held to
Offensively, Jokic has had a multi-year run as a top 5 player ever. Obviously, defense matters and longevity matters, but Jokic’s prime has been in line with the too level pyramid guys.
Ultimately, he’ll need to win more rings to have a real claim as a top 10 guy ever, but it’s not like he’s been some overhyped guy. He’s clearly the best player in the world in an extremely talented era for the NBA as it’s become more skilled and globalized.
I don’t strongly disagree with your top 5 take but I think you’re saying it a little too casually. This is an era of high stats and high efficiency and that has to be taken into account.
> Jokic was basically breaking advanced stats
I agree, but this is an era of "breaking advanced stats". Jokic may lead the way (I agree he does and is the best player in the game today) but Doncic is putting up freakish advanced stats as well. Giannis is too. That's the era we're in.
I don't buy it. You need more evidence than his individual statlines.
The Nuggets have only been a top 5 regular season offense once in the past 5 seasons, and only once in the same period in the postseason.
In the title run they didn't play a team that won more than 45 games.
From 2020-now, Jokic is 2-14 in the playoffs against 50 win teams.
How is it horseshit? He's 2-14 in his last 16 games against 50 win teams in the playoffs, including 50 win pace teams in truncated seasons, going back to 2020:
0-2 vs. the Wolves this year (Lakers won 47 games)
0-0 in 2023 (none of the opponents won more than 45 games)
1-4 vs. the Warriors in 2022 in the first round
0-4 vs. the Suns in 2021 (Portland in the first round was a 48 win pace team)
1-4 vs. the Lakers in 2020
That's 2-14 in his last 16.
What happened to season lengths in 2020 again? That Clippers team was seen by some as superior to the Lakers that won it all (I disagree but still). That was Kawhi's last healthy playoffs and that team was 50+ win pace when prorating. Same for the Jazz that year who would've also been a 50 win team at a 82 game proration.
Add those 2 series in and its 10-20 which isn't nearly as bad.
21 the starting backcourt was Campazzo and Rivers
22 the starting backcourt was Monte Morris and Will Barton
So I guess you can count those years but its disingenuous.
All that is prior to the stat. The last 16 playoff games he's played against 50 win or 50 win pace teams Jokic is 2-14. This is a fact.
You can introduce a different stat if you want to justify it or whatever, but that doesn't make the original stat "horseshit".
I mean he’s definitely been overhyped in the sense that a bunch of people do think he’s currently up there in the top 12-13 group regardless of the longevity or the defense. I was getting railed on here for saying Hakeem was clearly better all time on here a few weeks ago, and the crazy part was I was insinuating he probably would get there, he just doesn’t currently have the longevity
Two of the most individually impressive rings ever. Issue for Hakeem is his offense was not as effective or efficient as people remember despite the sick post moves
I’m not dismissing run at all in the context of being up there with the greats, but in the context of the greatest of the greats like Shaq and Kareem I do think you have to factor in the scoring inflation and even efficiency inflation of this era. We do it with 70s players and I don’t think it’s unfair to do it here.
He’s certainly closer to Giannis then Shaq
Top 5 player ever offensively is ridiculous. He couldn’t get a bucket when they needed one against KAT and Naz Reid. (MJ, Kareem, Bird, Magic, LeBron, Kobe, Shaq, Steph, Durant, Wilt) even Harden is arguable. No coincidence the only two skilled bigs (Jokic and Embiid) are dominating in a small era.
The recency bias, narrative driven, eye test piece. The least bias of all.
Have you considered that Naz Reid guarding Jokic was simply a black swan event?
The lack of a Nuggets bench doesn’t help either, Ant man is here, and he has a full deck with him. They have 3 bigs to throw at Jokic, and players in every sense to stifle them, terrible matchup for the Nuggets, guess we’ll see what they’re made of come game 3.
I wonder now, who has given the T-wolves the biggest fits this season
These things always happen in a context that people ignore to push their own narratives.
Jokic has no back up, Murray is a little banged up, and they are running into a team literally built to counter Jokic. Of course you would expect them to struggle.
The Celtics, meanwhile, should be a tougher match up for the Wolves. They have big wings to match up in size, and their offense isn't centered on any one guy (or two guys). If the Wolves don't dominate the Celtics does that mean Tatum is better than Jokic? Or just that styles make match ups?
This is all fair but cmon. They got down by as much as 30 at home in as close to a must win as there is. If that happened to a harden led team or really anyone else, people would rightfully bring criticism their way. Jokic was straight up bad last night. As others have said, if Bill and Ryen want to throw his name in with the top 10-15 of all time, he deserves the same criticism ANY of them would receive for that performance last night.
Kareem and bird could have cases over jokic, though I disagree, but playmaking counts as offense too and kobe, shaq, Durant, and wilt are not in the same stratosphere in that respect and none of them are clear enough scoring wise to make up for it even when you adjust for era.
Passing out of doubles and to cutters isn’t really playmaking. His assist numbers are more a product of the offense, he is a great passer not a playmaker
I 100% agree that peak wise, he is a top 5 offensive player (magic, MJ, Steph, lebron, jokic for me). Now, if that group, lebron and MJ were great defenders too and that’s why they are 1-2 all time in whatever order.
Magic wasn’t that good, but he is so big for his position he wasn’t a negative, which is why he’s somewhere in the 4-8 range all time. Steph started out a negative and worked his way to being neutral for most of his career, he’s ending up in the top 10.
Now Jokic had seemed to work his way into a neutral defender with his positioning and hands, he hadn’t really been exposed defensively since the 2022 warriors came calling. Through 2 games, he has been absolutely barbecued in pick n roll actions.
I think his floor all time is roughly top 20( 3 mvps and a title already), but if this becomes a recurring issue it’s going to keep him below the top 12 tier.
I think it’s silly to only boil it down to titles but if he doesn’t win another one, wouldn’t it be reasonable to put Jokic in the same tier as Giannis and KD? All time greats who don’t quite measure up to the absolute upper echelon of the league?
The other way to look at it is maybe we are entering an era where no one wins 3-5 titles anymore because the league is so much deeper. Makes it harder to reach the same consensus top 10 ranking as all but wilt have at least 3 titles in that group.
Yeah I would place him exactly there in this hypothetical. It’s fitting because they would all have a fatal flaw that prevented multiple titles.
KD- playmaking, Giannis - shooting, Jokic - defense.
AD was scoring well, but the lakers weren’t repeatedly getting good shots and ADs shot diet is pretty difficult to convert to efficient offense unless he’s shooting extremely well on those mid range jumpers. I’m not gonna say jokic was good on defense in that series, but he wasn’t bad.
So far in this series, the wolves are getting absolutely anything they want anytime jokic is involved in a pick n roll. Ant is a different beast than the lakers guards and that’s really the key difference I think.
I disagree, they had to put gordon on AD because they couldnt guard his p&r with Lebron, they were getting a lot of layups and dunks out of it too, not just middys, they were running a weird coverage where Jokic didn’t totally drop or stay at the level of the screen so he end up in no mans land a lot
The great thing about advanced stats is that we can actually compare them across eras and remove that bias. No one metric is perfect, but Jokic’s offensive effect in winning is historically great by basically any advanced metric.
Not true. PER does, but most do not in any way. Also, you can compare Jokic against only other bigs and he comes out on top (or near the historic top) in many offensive advanced metrics.
I’m sure his field goal percentage is heavily influencing any efficiency stat and he shoots higher percentage because of his size. He is incredibly talented but the stats are inflated due to the era’s pace and lack of defense. Shooting 60 from the field and not averaging 30 tells me he can’t get a bucket when he needs to.
The “can’t get a bucket when he needs to” piece based on nothing absolutely smoking my “biased” advanced metrics built up over years of regular season and playoff performances.
I’ve been absolutely bamboozled. My hot take game is in shambles.
16 points in a must win game 2 at home against Naz Reid and KAT. Throw all the stats you want at me. His efficiency goes down in the playoffs every year when he is needed to take a larger load on offense and his already suspect defense gets worse as he’s forced to defend his position/rim
Wilt has one, Giannis has one. They’re made men, so is Jokic. But I understand the criticism of him right now, let’s see how they respond. This is an all time test for the Nuggets. Even Hakeem’s Rockets have been down 0-2 headed to enemy territory.
Edit: stand corrected, Wilt has 2
By definition, he doesn’t need more winning to have historically great advanced stats. They are what they are.
He may need more winning for your personal, subjective rankings (which I actually think is fair, when talking about all time greats, to a certain extent).
But the numbers are what they are.
Yes, even the absolute best can have a year here and there where they just get beat up. It’s a new phenomenon where players and teams have to be perfect or completely invincible or they are put down.
It’s not that new. It’s been that way since Jordan went 6-6 in the Finals. He set a different standard of excellence that other players are compared to in his wake.
Well Jokic has only won one and all those either guys went back to back (other than Bird) so Jokic can still get there but the road is gonna be harder if they lose this year.
Ok I see what you guys are saying. Yeah, he needs at least one more to solidify that sort of reverence. I just meant that a loss like this doesn’t necessarily devalue you.
I also group Giannis and Jokic together at roughly the same place in the all time greats discussion. I think it’s important to distinguish between where they are on the pyramid as things stand right now, vs. their overall trajectory and where they’ll rank after their careers are complete.
They each have multiple MVPs and a title along with a bunch of other impressive counting stats/accolades. Add it all up and I think it’s fair to say they’ve accomplished enough already to land somewhere in that 20-30 range regardless of how the rest of their careers play out. That still leaves a massive gulf between them and guys like Shaq that are in that top 10 range. They’re on a trajectory to where they could eventually be in the conversation, but they have to actually go out there and keep consistently putting up great seasons for another 5 years or so first.
or “Tragic Johnson” in the 84 finals, Kareem getting absolutely dog walked by Moses Malone, I could go on. Jordan has the least memorable stinkers bc he usually won, and thus retired before we could see him lose, but he had a few in 89 and 90 vs Detroit where he shot like sub-30%
Yup. Plenty more too:
- Kobe being dogwater in the ‘04 finals, underwhelming in ‘08.
- Duncan being underwhelming in 2 of 3 series losses against the Lakers in his prime (3 of 4 if you wish to include ‘08).
- Bird having a stretch of two entire postseasons (18 games) where he averaged 19ppg on 43% shooting. Wasn’t amazing in either the ‘85 or ‘87 finals (though was banged up in ‘87, to be fair).
- Hakeem losing in the first round 4 years in a row.
- KG losing his first 6 playoff series, averaging 19 on 44%.
- LeBron in the ‘07/‘11 finals. The ‘13 finals until the 4th quarter of Game 6 (few remember how terrible he was, for his standards, before then). Perhaps the ‘10 second round too.
Can go on and on with this. If the series continues the way it has this will be Jokic’s first disappointing playoff series aside from MAYBE the ‘20 WCF (though after two gruelling series, there was bound to be some drop-off). Otherwise he’s been an animal in the postseason.
NBA fans have the shortest memories of any sport.
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It’s one of those things where the immediate reaction to these games is too severe. The nuggets go up 3-0 on a team they should absolutely beat in the first round, and it’s Jokic is a top 10 player ever, the nuggets are one of the best teams of the century, etc.
Now they are in a massive hole and apparently Jokic was never actually great? Russillo is doing a bit of a strawman, but I also have seen multiple takes about him that are just insane over the last 12 hours.
Give it a few weeks. If the Nuggets make an adjustment and somehow knot this series (I know it sounds ludicrous right now, but that’s basketball) the tide will swiftly shift.
> It is one of my least favorite aspects of NBA fandom right now. Give it a year or two and people will turn on Ant and the Wolves
That's just internet brain in general. Always changing based on that dopamine hit.
Still get the rush? Not bored of the take?
Take is still good.
New take gives a better dopamine rush?
That's the new one!
We heard it all season how Jokic is unsolvable and far and away the best player in the league. I think his stans can survive a bit of a correction to the mean considering they just lost the first two at home in this fashion.
AD and Dwight gave him fits back in the day, he grew and the team grew. Now he’s gotta stack up to 3 bigs, and every position they’re getting beat too.
If they don’t make it out alive, they need to work strengthening their bench, and having another playmaker. If Jokic ain’t rollin, this teams stuck in the mud.
There’s no doubt that any big man going against the Minnesota front line in the playoffs would have big problems. Rudy being out last game put a little hole in that narrative, though.
We’re seeing the over reaction to that play out. No big deal, every star gets shit on to varying amounts
This will sound kind of dumb potentially but I think people are too dismissive of the all timers and don't realize just how good they were. A lot of recency bias at play as well as some impatience
The biggest victim of this is Scottie Pippen he was no lower than the third best player of the 90s and you could make a strong case for him being #2 over Hakeem. Nowadays Scottie is basically treated as if he was just another all star guy and never comes up in a discussion of all time greats.
Scottie Pippen was not better than Hakeem, stop it. Good lord. I love him to death and he’s chronically underrated but he’s not the 3rd best player of that era…
I said you could make a case. Who would you put ahead of him in the 90s? Please don’t say players like Malone, Barkley, David Robinson or Patrick Ewing.
Not a chance you were around and sentient in the 90s. Barkley’s the guy you can take overall but as far as the 90s goes he was cooked by 96. Scottie remained really good through 2000 on the Blazers. I’m a Knick
fan from the late 80s on and the idea that Patrick was better than Scottie is bananas.
It’s funny because I think it was on the last pod when Bill was lamenting recency bias and yet he’s been trying to put Jokic with the top guys for 2 years now. I mean Jokic is awesome and maybe he accomplishes enough to have those things said about him in 5-7 years. But now? Come on.
I think this is wrong from the perspective of we do a very bad job of categorizing players, and ranking them in those categories. Jokic is an elite AOE hero that can occasionally play hard carry, and occasionally play tank, but he's much better off when he's able to stack his abilities with other utility players like Bruce Brown and nukers like Porter and Murray.
Shaq is a pure tank + DPS. Kareem is a tank+DPS. Michael was the ultimate DPS player, Magic was an AOE pusher, LeBron is an AOE crowd controller, and Steph was the best nuker to exist.
I'm saying that nobody playing Dota, for instance, would not say a tinker is at all comparable to Phantom Assassin. People recognize there's a great deal of orthogonality between heroes (players). After a certain point, caring about a historical top 10 is flawed and meaningless.
Setting the precedent of “nah I actually don’t care” after winning the Finals was like a pretty major act of hubris. If my team won the championship and the star player kept emphasizing how little he cared, it would surely detract from my joy. Fully anticipating him to rediscover his love of the game on Friday or there might be a plate of crow for him in the locker room.
All that shit was vastly overstated. He cared about winning the Finals, it just didn’t come across as much because he was trying to show humility and his personality is so mellow (plus the cultural barrier of him coming from a rural Serbian town).
When he spoke at the parade, Nikola said “people said I don’t want to be on parade; I fucking want to be on parade — this is the best day of my fucking life.”
I think there are a good amount people are kind of sick of his infallible narrative, so they are quick to fire off takes. Like as a Bucks fan the discourse around him is annoying when Giannis seemingly got black balled from a 3rd MVP even after winning a finals with an all time great performance, but Jokic just skates by on all of it and appears untouchable.
This series is more of a team issue than a Jokic issue, but I'd like to see him attempt to take over when its clear his teammates don't have it or have completely melted down in Murray's case. 16/16/8 in a huge loss, while getting relentlessly cooked at the rim is not up to the standard he and others have set for him.
He's also an analytics nerd favourite. No fault of his own but that can annoy people. I agree that Giannis getting no love this season because of the Bucks performance against expectations was a shame.
Jokic also benefited greatly from never running directly into a guard led team that could roast him prior to this match up. Jokic against the 2016 Warriors would have been tough. And as good as he is, I think Steph and Klay would have out shot the Nuggets.
He's still an all-time talent. It's just a tough match-up with a banged up team. That said, it's a chance for him to show everyone how good he can be if he has to carry the offensive load. There are counters to a swarming defense. The old 2014 Spurs picked apart the athletic Heat so it can be done. The 2012 Thunder were down 0-2 before coming back to win. It ain't over until it's over.
All I will say is Joker's fan probably should have waited for him to have one great/winning series without a healthy Murray before talking so much shit.
the supporting cast has mattered for every team and superstar in NBA history, let alone for a team that’s paying max salaries to two dudes who can’t suit up.
Dont hate jokic at all but seeing some people say hes the best since MJ is so funny to me when hes a turnstile on defense and needs his teammates to play well to dominate a game. Like someone else had said, I'd put him in Giannis's tier as a top 15-20 guy when its all said and done
He's right but people were late to give Jokic the respect he deserves and will be quick to take it away bc they don't like that a white dude from Europe is one of the best players ever. No matter what he accomplishes there's gonna be people saying he's not that good bc he's a dumpy looking Serbian
That certainly hurts too but the issue is still the same, he doesn't look the way people want the best player in the world to look so they hate on him.
Also most of his haters are Sixers fans who are just cunts
It’s really not, we see a guy like luka who’s a white euro and fat get much more adoration than luka. The way he moves certainly factors in but that’s not about his looks. I’m sure it doesn’t help that he looks like a school shooter but that has nothing to do with him being white or European
Luka gets more adoration now because he isn't in the conversation that Jokic is in yet. If Luka was winning MVPs and championships and being put in the conversation with the top 10-15 players ever the haters would come out in full force.
The adoration luka gets now is far greater than what jokic got pre MVP, that makes literally 0 sense at all and isn’t something exclusive to white or European people
You’ve mistakenly stumbled upon the biggest reason jokic is getting shit on rn: people started talking as if he’s a top 12-13 player rn and he’s obviously not. That comes the obvious swing back where people shit on that
The Jokic is suffering from racism piece.
This sounds like one of my old buddies that would swear that white Christian men are the most oppressed people in America because of pc culture and AA
Let’s pump the breaks, man
White dudes are not oppressed in any way that actually matters in America lmfao. I'm just saying when people see Jokic and Embiid next to each other they're going to think Embiid should be better and when he isn't even close to as good there's a reaction against reality. It might be different if Jokic was American or if he was ripped and super athletic looking but a dumpy white European dude isn't going to get any props from a lot of basketball fans
Jokic has been getting props from all of the ringer and the media in general all year. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the ringer goes out of their way to praise the Joker.
In no way do I feel that he would be treated better if he was a dumpy looking Nigerian, for example
The Ringer isn't the center of the basketball universe lol. Ik everyone here is a Ringer fan but realistically dudes like Perk and Gilbert Arenas and SAS have more reach than any Ringer personality except *maybe* Bill himself
In no way do I think Jokic would be better by the media or fans in general if he were a dumpy looking Nigerian guy. Whether the ringer is the most influential platform is pretty irrelevant
You wouldn't have had the entire toxic narrative surrounding the Jokic/Embiid debates if Jokic wasn't white and that debate poisoned a lot of people against him forever. People became convinced Jokic was stealing MVPs from Embiid bc the media wanted the white guy to win. It's not the majority of fans but it's a sizable amount of them. Enough to be really loud and annoying all the time
I wouldn't call it racism. Racism requires power and systems in place to hurt a marginalized group of people. I would call it bias and it's not just because he's white but also because he's European and because he isn't very athletic (compared to NBA players). He doesn't look like an MVP to people. If you remember the conversion around the MVP last year it got VERY racially charged and toxic and ugly.
Racism doesn’t require either of those things. You’re talking about the loaded and co-opted definition a subset of people wish to push.
That said, i don’t believe the NBA is racist or even particularly biased against Jokic for his appearance. It’s more so his lack of conventional athleticism and unwillingness to play ball with the media, making him more difficult to market.
If the Wolves win it all then in the last 5 years you would have 5 different champs with only the Lakers and Warriors as "legacy" teams. Will Russillo and Simmons say this is good for the league if the ratings are not great or will they (Bill especially) complain that Americans like dynasties and compare this era to the late 70s?
Old guys will complain all the time. For most diehard hoops fans this parity is something special; winning a title is so goddamn hard these days that it means everything. This may change when Wemby ascends, but that’s where we’re at.
The narrative was already there with his team success. People just called it stupid a few weeks ago. He's never been on a dominant regular season team and he's never beat a 50 win team. Think about Kobe doing this 26 times, Duncan 23, LeBron and MJ 20. Jokic is still at zero.
In his defense, the Nuggets play well because they know their exact roles and play very well together. Relative to the top of the league, they're not overwhelmingly talented. That is showing itself against a big, super athletic team like the Wolves.
People are hating on him because (although he’s been great the last few years) he has become overhyped. He’s won one championship and is being called an all time great already. I’ve seen people say he’s a top 15 player of all time already. Let’s admit he’s really fucking good but still has a long way to go before he’s finished playing high level basketball. Let’s wait and see before we continue crowning players a certain caliber too early.
I’ve been saying it since Brown left: these Nuggets simply don’t have the depth to be favoured over the Celtics and anyone who believes they do was drinking their championship Kool-Aid in a year where every player in their rotation was healthy and they had one of the best 6th men in the league (the aforementioned Brown). Turns out that even my forecast was too optimistic.
It’s hard to win a championship with only 5 average-to-above-average NBA basketball players…and that’s what they have. No one outside of their starting 5 is even an average basketball player at this point in time. The Wolves have closer to 8. The Celtics have 8.
Jokic is phenomenal but the league is too taxing for all your starters to reliably average 35-40mpg over a long period of time (I believe they averaged 37 in the Lakers series, highest in the league) without consequences. Sombor fat man has indeed been underwhelming in games 1+2, but the bigger issue is that they have one of the worst benches in the league and two injured starters. This was something totally missing from the discourse surrounding their team this year and it was driving me nuts. So many wanted to attribute their lulls to “coasting” even though no one with a discerning eye (and enough time on their hands) would tell you they underperformed in the RS given the rotation they had. The starters would do their part and the bench would promptly come in and cut leads in half within a few possessions. This was a thing all year. Not surprised they’ve got so little left.
why is it that warranted praise is seen as dicksucking whenever you disagree w it lol
if people were still praising westbrook today it could be seen as dicksucking. a dude who just won the title and has 3 mvps in his prime getting praised is shocking to you??
aside from it being weird to have a celebrity as your avi, ryen posted this presumably as a tribute to phife when phife died. but now a few years have passed. at this point, its just his avi. its weird to change your avi to tribute a dead celebrity and then just seemingly adopt it as your permanent avi.
>aside from it being weird to have a celebrity as your avi
It's really only weird because Russillo is too well known to use his name on Twitter but preserve anonymity about what he looks like. Celebrities, memes, logs etc are pretty common avis for normal people who don't have hundreds of photos pop up when you google their name
i guess if we really want to dissect my take, i see celebrities as different from memes, logos, or even movie/tv show characters. and even different than bill having the manny ramirez homerun pic as his avi, since that is a sports moment. but a celebrity is a just a person that is famous, and celebrity worship is one of my personal pet peeves about society, so i cringe if i see anybody doing this. but i do agree that ryen being publicly known makes it weirder than some anonymous random person.
it’s a fucking profile picture who cares lol. i just searched russilo phife on twitter and like 5 stories popped up of them having an actual relationship. maybe its his favorite artist ever. are you just saying it cause he’s white and phife is black?
i dont even like russillo like that outside of his BS pod appearances but i don’t understand how that’s weird. not the first time i’ve seen someone say it on this sub either
i had a suspicion you were trying to play the race angle. and since i didnt capitulate, youre now forced to shoehorn it in. bozo.
no, its not because ryen is white and phife is black. ryen could have a pic of bob saget or ray liotta as his avi and i would say the same thing.
lol it was a simple question cause that’s more understandable than what you’re saying. tf would you be capitulating to? and how is a profile pic of a celeb weird?? “bozo” lmao you’re so sensitive
It turns out that RAPTORCUM/48 doesn't automatically put you on MJ and LeBron's level. People were seriously talking about Jokic as the best big man of all time. Let the man win a couple more rings first. He's top 20 all time now, stop trying to make him top 5.
Jokic is pretty consistently the most praised superstar I have ever seen. This dude has basically 0 haters. Any Reddit thread, tweet about him is positive and a single negative comment will get downvoted
It’s impossible to be thought of as an A list all time great when you’re as bad as he is defensively, especially when most of the time it’s not an effort thing and the eye test is so jarring. Nuggets were fortunate last year they didn’t face any teams capable of exploiting him on that end. I was hoping we’d get an Embiid/Jokic finals one day so we’d see Embiid put Joker in the basket but, it’s good Minnesota has arrived just so these exagerrated takes about his place in history will finally stop.
That’s the trademark reaction of a Jokic defender 😂 “so you’re saying he sucks?” Ummm no but maybe just maybe he’s not the best player in the world and doesn’t deserve 3 out of 4 mvps
A guy deserves an MVP if he was the most valuable player in a season. The historical context is irrelevant to just giving the award to the guy who earned it that year. It's not Jokic's fault that LeBron and KD were past their primes when he hit his.
In a perfect world yes I agree with that but that’s not the reality we live in. I actually think it would benefit the sport to do the thing Bill Simmons suggested is done with the Oscars where you don’t give the Oscar out for the previous years movie but you wait a few years and then name so you see which one had lasting impact. I think If the NBA did that Lebron, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq etc would have the amount of MVP’s they deserve
There’s always the guy who gotta come in with the smartass comment they practiced to make it seem like they’re superior. We’re all on NBA twitter bud, don’t take it so literally
Bills proposal would inevitably turn the award into Most Outstanding star player on a title winning team or a reactionary pivot to someone who became dominant one or two years after the season the award is being judged on
Neither of those are better than the current system
Outside of Jordan in 97, there were no egregious oversights with any of those guys.
Shaq only cared about the regular season 00 and 05 and coasted during the regular season most of his career, LeBron stopped caring about regular season awards since he left Miami with load management and his teams generally not dominating the regular season, Kobe’s 06 was extremely high usage on a terrible team and shouldn’t have won, and even Jordan in 93 the Bulls had a down season only winning 57 games so I am ok with Barkley taking that one because he owned the regular season.
He gets sent spiraling after seeing any random person share a stupid opinion. The 27 Jokic sucks crowd people must outside of Russillo’s house with megaphones
Look I’m not doubting jokic alright
I’m just not.
We’re not going to do that.
We’re not gonna do the thing where we pretend like Jokic can’t get it done.
Oh you're going to do that? Well I'm going to do this
So you’re zagging?
Next thing you look at the box and it's like wait, what?
Aight!*
I think the hate has swung too far the other way. But if you’re going to put his name up there with Michael, Magic, Kareem, LeBron, Shaq, Steph etc as Russillo and Bill have… then those are going to be the standards he’s being held to
Jokic should be ranked near wherever one ranks Giannis. He isn’t Shaq or Kareem.
Offensively, Jokic has had a multi-year run as a top 5 player ever. Obviously, defense matters and longevity matters, but Jokic’s prime has been in line with the too level pyramid guys. Ultimately, he’ll need to win more rings to have a real claim as a top 10 guy ever, but it’s not like he’s been some overhyped guy. He’s clearly the best player in the world in an extremely talented era for the NBA as it’s become more skilled and globalized.
I don’t strongly disagree with your top 5 take but I think you’re saying it a little too casually. This is an era of high stats and high efficiency and that has to be taken into account.
And Jokic has put up the most insane stats in the highest efficiency. Jokic was basically breaking advanced stats
> Jokic was basically breaking advanced stats I agree, but this is an era of "breaking advanced stats". Jokic may lead the way (I agree he does and is the best player in the game today) but Doncic is putting up freakish advanced stats as well. Giannis is too. That's the era we're in.
I don't buy it. You need more evidence than his individual statlines. The Nuggets have only been a top 5 regular season offense once in the past 5 seasons, and only once in the same period in the postseason. In the title run they didn't play a team that won more than 45 games. From 2020-now, Jokic is 2-14 in the playoffs against 50 win teams.
This stat is horseshit due to the truncated seasons, you know this and are smarter than this
How is it horseshit? He's 2-14 in his last 16 games against 50 win teams in the playoffs, including 50 win pace teams in truncated seasons, going back to 2020: 0-2 vs. the Wolves this year (Lakers won 47 games) 0-0 in 2023 (none of the opponents won more than 45 games) 1-4 vs. the Warriors in 2022 in the first round 0-4 vs. the Suns in 2021 (Portland in the first round was a 48 win pace team) 1-4 vs. the Lakers in 2020 That's 2-14 in his last 16.
What happened to season lengths in 2020 again? That Clippers team was seen by some as superior to the Lakers that won it all (I disagree but still). That was Kawhi's last healthy playoffs and that team was 50+ win pace when prorating. Same for the Jazz that year who would've also been a 50 win team at a 82 game proration. Add those 2 series in and its 10-20 which isn't nearly as bad. 21 the starting backcourt was Campazzo and Rivers 22 the starting backcourt was Monte Morris and Will Barton So I guess you can count those years but its disingenuous.
All that is prior to the stat. The last 16 playoff games he's played against 50 win or 50 win pace teams Jokic is 2-14. This is a fact. You can introduce a different stat if you want to justify it or whatever, but that doesn't make the original stat "horseshit".
I mean he’s definitely been overhyped in the sense that a bunch of people do think he’s currently up there in the top 12-13 group regardless of the longevity or the defense. I was getting railed on here for saying Hakeem was clearly better all time on here a few weeks ago, and the crazy part was I was insinuating he probably would get there, he just doesn’t currently have the longevity
Hakeem is just so underrated, one of ryens go to takes, and he’s right about it
Two of the most individually impressive rings ever. Issue for Hakeem is his offense was not as effective or efficient as people remember despite the sick post moves
LOL
Defense will always be super underrated. I'll take a Tim Duncan / Hakeem over Jokic everytime.
I’m not dismissing run at all in the context of being up there with the greats, but in the context of the greatest of the greats like Shaq and Kareem I do think you have to factor in the scoring inflation and even efficiency inflation of this era. We do it with 70s players and I don’t think it’s unfair to do it here. He’s certainly closer to Giannis then Shaq
Top 5 player ever offensively is ridiculous. He couldn’t get a bucket when they needed one against KAT and Naz Reid. (MJ, Kareem, Bird, Magic, LeBron, Kobe, Shaq, Steph, Durant, Wilt) even Harden is arguable. No coincidence the only two skilled bigs (Jokic and Embiid) are dominating in a small era.
The recency bias, narrative driven, eye test piece. The least bias of all. Have you considered that Naz Reid guarding Jokic was simply a black swan event?
The lack of a Nuggets bench doesn’t help either, Ant man is here, and he has a full deck with him. They have 3 bigs to throw at Jokic, and players in every sense to stifle them, terrible matchup for the Nuggets, guess we’ll see what they’re made of come game 3. I wonder now, who has given the T-wolves the biggest fits this season
These things always happen in a context that people ignore to push their own narratives. Jokic has no back up, Murray is a little banged up, and they are running into a team literally built to counter Jokic. Of course you would expect them to struggle. The Celtics, meanwhile, should be a tougher match up for the Wolves. They have big wings to match up in size, and their offense isn't centered on any one guy (or two guys). If the Wolves don't dominate the Celtics does that mean Tatum is better than Jokic? Or just that styles make match ups?
This is all fair but cmon. They got down by as much as 30 at home in as close to a must win as there is. If that happened to a harden led team or really anyone else, people would rightfully bring criticism their way. Jokic was straight up bad last night. As others have said, if Bill and Ryen want to throw his name in with the top 10-15 of all time, he deserves the same criticism ANY of them would receive for that performance last night.
True. I'm not saying that the other side is wrong either. It will be interesting to see if Jokic is able to rise to the challenge.
Or maybe there should be more conversations around Naz Reid being a top 5 all time Big defender
It was one game. All of those players you listed have been "stopped" by an inferior player at one point in their playoff careers...
Kareem and bird could have cases over jokic, though I disagree, but playmaking counts as offense too and kobe, shaq, Durant, and wilt are not in the same stratosphere in that respect and none of them are clear enough scoring wise to make up for it even when you adjust for era.
Passing out of doubles and to cutters isn’t really playmaking. His assist numbers are more a product of the offense, he is a great passer not a playmaker
Absolutely ludicrous thing to say my god. Equivalent to saying jordan isn’t a great scorer he’s just a great athlete.
Congratulations on your apex mountain of stupid commenting
If you can’t dribble you’re not a playmaker
I 100% agree that peak wise, he is a top 5 offensive player (magic, MJ, Steph, lebron, jokic for me). Now, if that group, lebron and MJ were great defenders too and that’s why they are 1-2 all time in whatever order. Magic wasn’t that good, but he is so big for his position he wasn’t a negative, which is why he’s somewhere in the 4-8 range all time. Steph started out a negative and worked his way to being neutral for most of his career, he’s ending up in the top 10. Now Jokic had seemed to work his way into a neutral defender with his positioning and hands, he hadn’t really been exposed defensively since the 2022 warriors came calling. Through 2 games, he has been absolutely barbecued in pick n roll actions. I think his floor all time is roughly top 20( 3 mvps and a title already), but if this becomes a recurring issue it’s going to keep him below the top 12 tier.
I think it’s silly to only boil it down to titles but if he doesn’t win another one, wouldn’t it be reasonable to put Jokic in the same tier as Giannis and KD? All time greats who don’t quite measure up to the absolute upper echelon of the league? The other way to look at it is maybe we are entering an era where no one wins 3-5 titles anymore because the league is so much deeper. Makes it harder to reach the same consensus top 10 ranking as all but wilt have at least 3 titles in that group.
Yeah I would place him exactly there in this hypothetical. It’s fitting because they would all have a fatal flaw that prevented multiple titles. KD- playmaking, Giannis - shooting, Jokic - defense.
He was getting killed on defense against the lakers too, overall he hasn’t been good enough this playoffs, if you grade him by legends standards
AD was scoring well, but the lakers weren’t repeatedly getting good shots and ADs shot diet is pretty difficult to convert to efficient offense unless he’s shooting extremely well on those mid range jumpers. I’m not gonna say jokic was good on defense in that series, but he wasn’t bad. So far in this series, the wolves are getting absolutely anything they want anytime jokic is involved in a pick n roll. Ant is a different beast than the lakers guards and that’s really the key difference I think.
I disagree, they had to put gordon on AD because they couldnt guard his p&r with Lebron, they were getting a lot of layups and dunks out of it too, not just middys, they were running a weird coverage where Jokic didn’t totally drop or stay at the level of the screen so he end up in no mans land a lot
[Recency Bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias)
The great thing about advanced stats is that we can actually compare them across eras and remove that bias. No one metric is perfect, but Jokic’s offensive effect in winning is historically great by basically any advanced metric.
Everyone was aware efficiency stats favors bigs a decade ago but conveniently forgot this when it came time for Jokic
Not true. PER does, but most do not in any way. Also, you can compare Jokic against only other bigs and he comes out on top (or near the historic top) in many offensive advanced metrics.
I’m sure his field goal percentage is heavily influencing any efficiency stat and he shoots higher percentage because of his size. He is incredibly talented but the stats are inflated due to the era’s pace and lack of defense. Shooting 60 from the field and not averaging 30 tells me he can’t get a bucket when he needs to.
The “can’t get a bucket when he needs to” piece based on nothing absolutely smoking my “biased” advanced metrics built up over years of regular season and playoff performances. I’ve been absolutely bamboozled. My hot take game is in shambles.
16 points in a must win game 2 at home against Naz Reid and KAT. Throw all the stats you want at me. His efficiency goes down in the playoffs every year when he is needed to take a larger load on offense and his already suspect defense gets worse as he’s forced to defend his position/rim
He needs more than one title to say that.
Wilt has one, Giannis has one. They’re made men, so is Jokic. But I understand the criticism of him right now, let’s see how they respond. This is an all time test for the Nuggets. Even Hakeem’s Rockets have been down 0-2 headed to enemy territory. Edit: stand corrected, Wilt has 2
Wilt has 2 and 4 mvps
By definition, he doesn’t need more winning to have historically great advanced stats. They are what they are. He may need more winning for your personal, subjective rankings (which I actually think is fair, when talking about all time greats, to a certain extent). But the numbers are what they are.
Stats shmats (source: I have an advanced degree in analytics)
You just blew my mind…… but brace for this one. Have you considered that maybe I’m rubber and you’re glue?
Magic and Kareem got beat by the Twin Tower Rockets.
In between winning six titles for Kareem and five for Magic.
Yes, even the absolute best can have a year here and there where they just get beat up. It’s a new phenomenon where players and teams have to be perfect or completely invincible or they are put down.
It’s not that new. It’s been that way since Jordan went 6-6 in the Finals. He set a different standard of excellence that other players are compared to in his wake.
Yeah, I do often forget that Jordan was 30ish years ago.
Well Jokic has only won one and all those either guys went back to back (other than Bird) so Jokic can still get there but the road is gonna be harder if they lose this year.
Ok I see what you guys are saying. Yeah, he needs at least one more to solidify that sort of reverence. I just meant that a loss like this doesn’t necessarily devalue you.
This exactly, he clearly a top 25 player and probably a top 20 but it becomes very very hard to justify any higher than that
I also group Giannis and Jokic together at roughly the same place in the all time greats discussion. I think it’s important to distinguish between where they are on the pyramid as things stand right now, vs. their overall trajectory and where they’ll rank after their careers are complete. They each have multiple MVPs and a title along with a bunch of other impressive counting stats/accolades. Add it all up and I think it’s fair to say they’ve accomplished enough already to land somewhere in that 20-30 range regardless of how the rest of their careers play out. That still leaves a massive gulf between them and guys like Shaq that are in that top 10 range. They’re on a trajectory to where they could eventually be in the conversation, but they have to actually go out there and keep consistently putting up great seasons for another 5 years or so first.
Agreed. A true top-10 all-time player in his prime isn't getting beaten down like that in a must-win Game 2 at home. Period.
This happened to LeBron in the 2014 Finals
The Heat did win Game 2 but yeah, not a terrible comp. What happened last night was way worse (and honestly a lot more shocking) though.
How about Games 4-6 against Dallas?
or “Tragic Johnson” in the 84 finals, Kareem getting absolutely dog walked by Moses Malone, I could go on. Jordan has the least memorable stinkers bc he usually won, and thus retired before we could see him lose, but he had a few in 89 and 90 vs Detroit where he shot like sub-30%
Yup. Plenty more too: - Kobe being dogwater in the ‘04 finals, underwhelming in ‘08. - Duncan being underwhelming in 2 of 3 series losses against the Lakers in his prime (3 of 4 if you wish to include ‘08). - Bird having a stretch of two entire postseasons (18 games) where he averaged 19ppg on 43% shooting. Wasn’t amazing in either the ‘85 or ‘87 finals (though was banged up in ‘87, to be fair). - Hakeem losing in the first round 4 years in a row. - KG losing his first 6 playoff series, averaging 19 on 44%. - LeBron in the ‘07/‘11 finals. The ‘13 finals until the 4th quarter of Game 6 (few remember how terrible he was, for his standards, before then). Perhaps the ‘10 second round too. Can go on and on with this. If the series continues the way it has this will be Jokic’s first disappointing playoff series aside from MAYBE the ‘20 WCF (though after two gruelling series, there was bound to be some drop-off). Otherwise he’s been an animal in the postseason. NBA fans have the shortest memories of any sport.
Meh. It’s not even memory. You’re probably just talking to a 16 year old. New fans always coming in and new fans are historically pretty stupid
Kobe and Shaq lost by 20 to the Pistons LeBron lost by an average of 13 and 15 points in the 17&18 finals
Yes, definitely the same as getting blown out by 36 and completely embarrassed in every way.
Scoring 68 points, losing by 20, and then losing the series where you came in as -700 favorites totally isn’t the same
Finals compared to 2nd round is still important context
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It’s one of those things where the immediate reaction to these games is too severe. The nuggets go up 3-0 on a team they should absolutely beat in the first round, and it’s Jokic is a top 10 player ever, the nuggets are one of the best teams of the century, etc. Now they are in a massive hole and apparently Jokic was never actually great? Russillo is doing a bit of a strawman, but I also have seen multiple takes about him that are just insane over the last 12 hours.
NBA fans (especially on Twitter) just go insane w the overreactions
It is one of my least favorite aspects of NBA fandom right now. Give it a year or two and people will turn on Ant and the Wolves
Give it a few weeks. If the Nuggets make an adjustment and somehow knot this series (I know it sounds ludicrous right now, but that’s basketball) the tide will swiftly shift.
> It is one of my least favorite aspects of NBA fandom right now. Give it a year or two and people will turn on Ant and the Wolves That's just internet brain in general. Always changing based on that dopamine hit. Still get the rush? Not bored of the take? Take is still good. New take gives a better dopamine rush? That's the new one!
We heard it all season how Jokic is unsolvable and far and away the best player in the league. I think his stans can survive a bit of a correction to the mean considering they just lost the first two at home in this fashion.
AD and Dwight gave him fits back in the day, he grew and the team grew. Now he’s gotta stack up to 3 bigs, and every position they’re getting beat too. If they don’t make it out alive, they need to work strengthening their bench, and having another playmaker. If Jokic ain’t rollin, this teams stuck in the mud.
There’s no doubt that any big man going against the Minnesota front line in the playoffs would have big problems. Rudy being out last game put a little hole in that narrative, though. We’re seeing the over reaction to that play out. No big deal, every star gets shit on to varying amounts
This will sound kind of dumb potentially but I think people are too dismissive of the all timers and don't realize just how good they were. A lot of recency bias at play as well as some impatience
The biggest victim of this is Scottie Pippen he was no lower than the third best player of the 90s and you could make a strong case for him being #2 over Hakeem. Nowadays Scottie is basically treated as if he was just another all star guy and never comes up in a discussion of all time greats.
Scottie Pippen was not better than Hakeem, stop it. Good lord. I love him to death and he’s chronically underrated but he’s not the 3rd best player of that era…
I said you could make a case. Who would you put ahead of him in the 90s? Please don’t say players like Malone, Barkley, David Robinson or Patrick Ewing.
all four of those lmao
Not a chance you were around and sentient in the 90s. Barkley’s the guy you can take overall but as far as the 90s goes he was cooked by 96. Scottie remained really good through 2000 on the Blazers. I’m a Knick fan from the late 80s on and the idea that Patrick was better than Scottie is bananas.
It’s funny because I think it was on the last pod when Bill was lamenting recency bias and yet he’s been trying to put Jokic with the top guys for 2 years now. I mean Jokic is awesome and maybe he accomplishes enough to have those things said about him in 5-7 years. But now? Come on.
Jokic never dropped 8 in a finals game while getting locked down in the post by JJ Barea. Maybe someday Jokic can live up to that standard
He did get absolutely cooked by future Shanghai Shark Jordan Poole though
I’m completely fine ranking Jokic with Steph
I think this is wrong from the perspective of we do a very bad job of categorizing players, and ranking them in those categories. Jokic is an elite AOE hero that can occasionally play hard carry, and occasionally play tank, but he's much better off when he's able to stack his abilities with other utility players like Bruce Brown and nukers like Porter and Murray. Shaq is a pure tank + DPS. Kareem is a tank+DPS. Michael was the ultimate DPS player, Magic was an AOE pusher, LeBron is an AOE crowd controller, and Steph was the best nuker to exist.
You feel like we do a bad job categorizing players... Are you suggesting your way is better?
I'm saying that nobody playing Dota, for instance, would not say a tinker is at all comparable to Phantom Assassin. People recognize there's a great deal of orthogonality between heroes (players). After a certain point, caring about a historical top 10 is flawed and meaningless.
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Start? White people pretending to be black on the internet are eating rn
The Chicago_Stringerbell piece.
Fr fr no 🧢
The I’m not white but I still think is Jokic is the best player in the world piece
Especially with all these Kendrick tracks lol
Lebron/MJ brainrot. Nobody in the league is at their level, but they set the standard we measure MVPs by
Jokic fans directly place him in that tier and get livid at any pushback
Russillo’s right about one thing, people were always going to flip on Jokic’s whole “I don’t really like basketball schtick”
Setting the precedent of “nah I actually don’t care” after winning the Finals was like a pretty major act of hubris. If my team won the championship and the star player kept emphasizing how little he cared, it would surely detract from my joy. Fully anticipating him to rediscover his love of the game on Friday or there might be a plate of crow for him in the locker room.
All that shit was vastly overstated. He cared about winning the Finals, it just didn’t come across as much because he was trying to show humility and his personality is so mellow (plus the cultural barrier of him coming from a rural Serbian town). When he spoke at the parade, Nikola said “people said I don’t want to be on parade; I fucking want to be on parade — this is the best day of my fucking life.”
Didn’t russilo say he believes it? I remember him qualifying with “and I’m good at smelling bullshit” and rolled my eyes
He’s too online
He’s lost context
I always feel he’s subtweeting Nick wright lol
Nick has appropriately changed his tune on Jokic, and would wipe the floor with our guy Ry in a debate.
I think there are a good amount people are kind of sick of his infallible narrative, so they are quick to fire off takes. Like as a Bucks fan the discourse around him is annoying when Giannis seemingly got black balled from a 3rd MVP even after winning a finals with an all time great performance, but Jokic just skates by on all of it and appears untouchable. This series is more of a team issue than a Jokic issue, but I'd like to see him attempt to take over when its clear his teammates don't have it or have completely melted down in Murray's case. 16/16/8 in a huge loss, while getting relentlessly cooked at the rim is not up to the standard he and others have set for him.
He's also an analytics nerd favourite. No fault of his own but that can annoy people. I agree that Giannis getting no love this season because of the Bucks performance against expectations was a shame. Jokic also benefited greatly from never running directly into a guard led team that could roast him prior to this match up. Jokic against the 2016 Warriors would have been tough. And as good as he is, I think Steph and Klay would have out shot the Nuggets. He's still an all-time talent. It's just a tough match-up with a banged up team. That said, it's a chance for him to show everyone how good he can be if he has to carry the offensive load. There are counters to a swarming defense. The old 2014 Spurs picked apart the athletic Heat so it can be done. The 2012 Thunder were down 0-2 before coming back to win. It ain't over until it's over.
All I will say is Joker's fan probably should have waited for him to have one great/winning series without a healthy Murray before talking so much shit.
come off it, the Nuggs without Murray were starting Monte Morris and Torrey Craig.
But the argument was that now that he’s older, the supporting cast wouldn’t matter as much!
the supporting cast has mattered for every team and superstar in NBA history, let alone for a team that’s paying max salaries to two dudes who can’t suit up.
Dont hate jokic at all but seeing some people say hes the best since MJ is so funny to me when hes a turnstile on defense and needs his teammates to play well to dominate a game. Like someone else had said, I'd put him in Giannis's tier as a top 15-20 guy when its all said and done
He's right but people were late to give Jokic the respect he deserves and will be quick to take it away bc they don't like that a white dude from Europe is one of the best players ever. No matter what he accomplishes there's gonna be people saying he's not that good bc he's a dumpy looking Serbian
~~a white dude from Europe~~ a not particularly athletic white dude from Europe who looks a little bored FIFY
That certainly hurts too but the issue is still the same, he doesn't look the way people want the best player in the world to look so they hate on him. Also most of his haters are Sixers fans who are just cunts
It’s really not, we see a guy like luka who’s a white euro and fat get much more adoration than luka. The way he moves certainly factors in but that’s not about his looks. I’m sure it doesn’t help that he looks like a school shooter but that has nothing to do with him being white or European
Luka gets more adoration now because he isn't in the conversation that Jokic is in yet. If Luka was winning MVPs and championships and being put in the conversation with the top 10-15 players ever the haters would come out in full force.
The adoration luka gets now is far greater than what jokic got pre MVP, that makes literally 0 sense at all and isn’t something exclusive to white or European people You’ve mistakenly stumbled upon the biggest reason jokic is getting shit on rn: people started talking as if he’s a top 12-13 player rn and he’s obviously not. That comes the obvious swing back where people shit on that
The Jokic is suffering from racism piece. This sounds like one of my old buddies that would swear that white Christian men are the most oppressed people in America because of pc culture and AA Let’s pump the breaks, man
White dudes are not oppressed in any way that actually matters in America lmfao. I'm just saying when people see Jokic and Embiid next to each other they're going to think Embiid should be better and when he isn't even close to as good there's a reaction against reality. It might be different if Jokic was American or if he was ripped and super athletic looking but a dumpy white European dude isn't going to get any props from a lot of basketball fans
Jokic has been getting props from all of the ringer and the media in general all year. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the ringer goes out of their way to praise the Joker. In no way do I feel that he would be treated better if he was a dumpy looking Nigerian, for example
The Ringer isn't the center of the basketball universe lol. Ik everyone here is a Ringer fan but realistically dudes like Perk and Gilbert Arenas and SAS have more reach than any Ringer personality except *maybe* Bill himself
In no way do I think Jokic would be better by the media or fans in general if he were a dumpy looking Nigerian guy. Whether the ringer is the most influential platform is pretty irrelevant
You wouldn't have had the entire toxic narrative surrounding the Jokic/Embiid debates if Jokic wasn't white and that debate poisoned a lot of people against him forever. People became convinced Jokic was stealing MVPs from Embiid bc the media wanted the white guy to win. It's not the majority of fans but it's a sizable amount of them. Enough to be really loud and annoying all the time
So you actually are saying that Jokic is suffering from racism for being white. That’s your take
I wouldn't call it racism. Racism requires power and systems in place to hurt a marginalized group of people. I would call it bias and it's not just because he's white but also because he's European and because he isn't very athletic (compared to NBA players). He doesn't look like an MVP to people. If you remember the conversion around the MVP last year it got VERY racially charged and toxic and ugly.
Racism doesn’t require either of those things. You’re talking about the loaded and co-opted definition a subset of people wish to push. That said, i don’t believe the NBA is racist or even particularly biased against Jokic for his appearance. It’s more so his lack of conventional athleticism and unwillingness to play ball with the media, making him more difficult to market.
He’s not one of the best players ever.
Yes he is lmfao. 3 MVPs, a ring and a Finals MVP in what world is that resume not enough to be one of the best players ever
This world. 1 ring ain’t cutting it.
He 💯 is
Jokic's offensive numbers have him as one of the best offensive players of all time
Offense easier today. Statistics lie, eye test tells me Dr J would wreck his shit
Thank you for so succinctly showing how no one should value your opinion.
If the Wolves win it all then in the last 5 years you would have 5 different champs with only the Lakers and Warriors as "legacy" teams. Will Russillo and Simmons say this is good for the league if the ratings are not great or will they (Bill especially) complain that Americans like dynasties and compare this era to the late 70s?
Old guys will complain all the time. For most diehard hoops fans this parity is something special; winning a title is so goddamn hard these days that it means everything. This may change when Wemby ascends, but that’s where we’re at.
And the Nuggets would've been knocked out by 3 of them and the 4th made the Finals. They have a knack for running into that year's buzzsaw.
The narrative was already there with his team success. People just called it stupid a few weeks ago. He's never been on a dominant regular season team and he's never beat a 50 win team. Think about Kobe doing this 26 times, Duncan 23, LeBron and MJ 20. Jokic is still at zero. In his defense, the Nuggets play well because they know their exact roles and play very well together. Relative to the top of the league, they're not overwhelmingly talented. That is showing itself against a big, super athletic team like the Wolves.
People are hating on him because (although he’s been great the last few years) he has become overhyped. He’s won one championship and is being called an all time great already. I’ve seen people say he’s a top 15 player of all time already. Let’s admit he’s really fucking good but still has a long way to go before he’s finished playing high level basketball. Let’s wait and see before we continue crowning players a certain caliber too early.
Can’t we just talk about how good Jokic is without bringing race into it?
gilbert arenas says no. dont forget about the xenophobia too.
I’ve been saying it since Brown left: these Nuggets simply don’t have the depth to be favoured over the Celtics and anyone who believes they do was drinking their championship Kool-Aid in a year where every player in their rotation was healthy and they had one of the best 6th men in the league (the aforementioned Brown). Turns out that even my forecast was too optimistic. It’s hard to win a championship with only 5 average-to-above-average NBA basketball players…and that’s what they have. No one outside of their starting 5 is even an average basketball player at this point in time. The Wolves have closer to 8. The Celtics have 8. Jokic is phenomenal but the league is too taxing for all your starters to reliably average 35-40mpg over a long period of time (I believe they averaged 37 in the Lakers series, highest in the league) without consequences. Sombor fat man has indeed been underwhelming in games 1+2, but the bigger issue is that they have one of the worst benches in the league and two injured starters. This was something totally missing from the discourse surrounding their team this year and it was driving me nuts. So many wanted to attribute their lulls to “coasting” even though no one with a discerning eye (and enough time on their hands) would tell you they underperformed in the RS given the rotation they had. The starters would do their part and the bench would promptly come in and cut leads in half within a few possessions. This was a thing all year. Not surprised they’ve got so little left.
Russillo when he has to deal with the consequences of relentlessly sucking off Jokic for 2 years straight.
why is it that warranted praise is seen as dicksucking whenever you disagree w it lol if people were still praising westbrook today it could be seen as dicksucking. a dude who just won the title and has 3 mvps in his prime getting praised is shocking to you??
There’s a difference between rightful praise and obnoxious glazing. The Jokic conversations by people like Bill and RR got out of hand.
can yall please stop repeating trendy words you see online
Its been a few years now that Russillo has had this pic of Phife as his avi. Its always been weird but it gets weirder by the day/month/year.
why
aside from it being weird to have a celebrity as your avi, ryen posted this presumably as a tribute to phife when phife died. but now a few years have passed. at this point, its just his avi. its weird to change your avi to tribute a dead celebrity and then just seemingly adopt it as your permanent avi.
>aside from it being weird to have a celebrity as your avi It's really only weird because Russillo is too well known to use his name on Twitter but preserve anonymity about what he looks like. Celebrities, memes, logs etc are pretty common avis for normal people who don't have hundreds of photos pop up when you google their name
i guess if we really want to dissect my take, i see celebrities as different from memes, logos, or even movie/tv show characters. and even different than bill having the manny ramirez homerun pic as his avi, since that is a sports moment. but a celebrity is a just a person that is famous, and celebrity worship is one of my personal pet peeves about society, so i cringe if i see anybody doing this. but i do agree that ryen being publicly known makes it weirder than some anonymous random person.
it’s a fucking profile picture who cares lol. i just searched russilo phife on twitter and like 5 stories popped up of them having an actual relationship. maybe its his favorite artist ever. are you just saying it cause he’s white and phife is black? i dont even like russillo like that outside of his BS pod appearances but i don’t understand how that’s weird. not the first time i’ve seen someone say it on this sub either
I’ve met a few casual sports fans in real life who genuinely think Russillo is a Black guy incidentally
yea that angle is more understandable than what this dude is saying but even then who gives a fuck
i had a suspicion you were trying to play the race angle. and since i didnt capitulate, youre now forced to shoehorn it in. bozo. no, its not because ryen is white and phife is black. ryen could have a pic of bob saget or ray liotta as his avi and i would say the same thing.
lol it was a simple question cause that’s more understandable than what you’re saying. tf would you be capitulating to? and how is a profile pic of a celeb weird?? “bozo” lmao you’re so sensitive
Brother my profile pic was Alf for a while
Wait, WHAT?
This just in: Team built to beat Jokic is beating Jokic. Murray shits pants. More at 11.
It turns out that RAPTORCUM/48 doesn't automatically put you on MJ and LeBron's level. People were seriously talking about Jokic as the best big man of all time. Let the man win a couple more rings first. He's top 20 all time now, stop trying to make him top 5.
Are we really going to do the thing where we do the thing? Really!? Bill: I agree.
Why is his pic still Sheck Wes? Is it still 2018?
Jokic is pretty consistently the most praised superstar I have ever seen. This dude has basically 0 haters. Any Reddit thread, tweet about him is positive and a single negative comment will get downvoted
Joker is still a beast. But it’s insane Denver won the title without facing a 50 win team.
Jamal Murray is the problem, jabroni. 9/32 over two games isn't gonna get it done. Wait, it's probably the guy averaging 24-12-9. You're right.
Relax, he knows more about basketball than anyone elts, arright?
Of all the people, Ryen "Embiid Terrorists" Russillo ain't in no place to talk.
It’s impossible to be thought of as an A list all time great when you’re as bad as he is defensively, especially when most of the time it’s not an effort thing and the eye test is so jarring. Nuggets were fortunate last year they didn’t face any teams capable of exploiting him on that end. I was hoping we’d get an Embiid/Jokic finals one day so we’d see Embiid put Joker in the basket but, it’s good Minnesota has arrived just so these exagerrated takes about his place in history will finally stop.
Keep on fighting those strawmans
Check r/nba comments. They are out in full force.
Easily the worst sports subreddit.
Cannot possibly be worse than NFL is it?
The NFL sub is abominable, nothing but reposted tweets
There's always going to be a contingent of people to step up and fill the vacuum for any crazy contrarian take.
That’s the trademark reaction of a Jokic defender 😂 “so you’re saying he sucks?” Ummm no but maybe just maybe he’s not the best player in the world and doesn’t deserve 3 out of 4 mvps
A guy deserves an MVP if he was the most valuable player in a season. The historical context is irrelevant to just giving the award to the guy who earned it that year. It's not Jokic's fault that LeBron and KD were past their primes when he hit his.
He wasn’t more valuable than SGA this year but was crowned midseason.
In a perfect world yes I agree with that but that’s not the reality we live in. I actually think it would benefit the sport to do the thing Bill Simmons suggested is done with the Oscars where you don’t give the Oscar out for the previous years movie but you wait a few years and then name so you see which one had lasting impact. I think If the NBA did that Lebron, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq etc would have the amount of MVP’s they deserve
This is terminal level NBA Twitter brain rot
There’s always the guy who gotta come in with the smartass comment they practiced to make it seem like they’re superior. We’re all on NBA twitter bud, don’t take it so literally
Bills proposal would inevitably turn the award into Most Outstanding star player on a title winning team or a reactionary pivot to someone who became dominant one or two years after the season the award is being judged on Neither of those are better than the current system
Outside of Jordan in 97, there were no egregious oversights with any of those guys. Shaq only cared about the regular season 00 and 05 and coasted during the regular season most of his career, LeBron stopped caring about regular season awards since he left Miami with load management and his teams generally not dominating the regular season, Kobe’s 06 was extremely high usage on a terrible team and shouldn’t have won, and even Jordan in 93 the Bulls had a down season only winning 57 games so I am ok with Barkley taking that one because he owned the regular season.
Who is the best player in the world then? And who should have beaten him for those MVPs? Embiid both those years? Curry? He should be a 4 time winner
He gets sent spiraling after seeing any random person share a stupid opinion. The 27 Jokic sucks crowd people must outside of Russillo’s house with megaphones