He didn’t win it cause he wasn’t an advanced stats god.

And then after he had played 22 more regular season games, he was traded

I still think a large part of it was Media was frustrated they gave the previous one to Embiid. Because, they couldn’t give Jokic a threepeat without a ring or Finals appearance only for him to go on to win the championship later and Embiid was disappointing in the playoffs. So, this Luka season they wanted to make-up for Jokic not getting his third earlier. Tinfoil hat off for now

And somehow this guy got traded

We’re really doing 3 am eastern time propaganda posts for a 2 year old MVP race.

Incredible season from Luka, but virtually every advanced metric suggested his box score stats slightly overestimated his overall impact. Iirc he was very clearly the third best player in the league by impact metrics and also won 7 fewer games than both Shai and Jokic. It wasn’t even a close race, he got fewer point and fewer first place votes (4) than Wemby did this year

26-12-8 with godlike efficiency and tied for best record in the west = pity mvp according to this sub. Interesting

I’ve always said this - whether you like it or agree with it or not Jokic kinda just invalidates Luka’s MVP odds

SGA, Wemby, Embiid and Giannis when they were contenders, are all two-way players so they bring a different profile to the table

But Jokic and Luka kinda occupy the same profile. Triple-double machine all-offense and no-defense juggernauts.

Well, in this archetype it’s heavily agreed at this point that Jokic is as good as it possibly gets. Why pick the inferior version of the archetype? To a lot of voters, it’d be like picking Trae Young when prime James Harden is running around.

Again, I’m not implying this is correct, but I think it’s a thought pattern that just eliminates Luka from genuine contention frequently

All with nothing to show for it

jokic and shai were the second and first seed respectively. luka was the 5th seed and advanced metrics favored the other two. not hard to see why he didn’t get mvp

Jokic defense was the difference.

This sub is down so bad knowing the golden boy may never win an mvp.

Let it go

That MVP should’ve been his man

I think shai deserved some recognition I actually thought there was a chance he would get it but Luka probably should’ve got it given the raw numbers and relatively low western conference win amount

He was the MVP that season.

He should’ve won that year but I think the only way Luka can win MVP is if he averages 50 lol.

It really should’ve been a Shai vs Luka race that year. Jokic got a pity MVP that season lol, both Shai and Luka had more impressive seasons. The superhuman efficiency of his 2022-23 campaign wasn’t quite replicated to the absurd amount for 2024, and the counting stats were relatively similar, not to mention thats the only Jokic season I can remember in his prime where he had a stretch where he legitimately just straight up played poorly, meanwhile Shai and Luka were both just unbelievable the entire season

Luka was voted correctly. 3rd seems about right.

He’s just a lesser version of 2017 James Harden and that hurts people for some reason. That’s actually an incredible compliment.

Luka is not a dog. When will you guys realize? He doesn’t show the hustle, will, or dog mentality needed to win.

He refuses to adjust his game even one ounce. He got traded to a team that was the third seed, and went straight to playing Luka ball. Last year his fans complained he was carrying the team only for them to easily win a 4-5 playoff series without him.

This is why he has no accolades. Stop complaining.

2024 Luka is just 06 Kobe again

And he was rewarded for his efforts with a 3rd place finish in the MVP race, and we are all very proud of him.

Luka’s counting stats have always been better than his advanced stats and that’s the big reason why he hasn’t ever seriously been in MVP contention. Jokic, and more recently SGA, are both advanced stat monsters and their teams have had better regular seasons than Luka’s teams.

It’s an interesting conversation to have because I think it’s absolutely true that Luka’s game has aspects still to be cleaned up, and I’m not really talking about the usual ‘he doesn’t play defense’ garbage. I think it’s true that Luka can be a bit of a ball stopper even though his assist count is very high. It’d be more accurate to call him an all-time scorer with extraordinary passing ability than the other way around. Jokic on the other hand is very clearly a pass-first guy. SGA doesn’t have Luka’s passing ability but he also doesn’t eat up usage in the same way.

What we often talk about with ‘usage rate’ is not a measure of touches or time on the ball but rather a metric of play finishing, i.e. the % of a team’s plays that finishes with a shot/FTA/TO by a specific player when he is on the floor. It’s basically an efficiency metric when combined with counting stats analysis. Luka’s USG% was 38.0% last season; Jokic 30.3% and SGA 33.2%. It basically tells us that he finishes a LOT more plays than his MVP competitors and the increase in counting stats comes at a big enough cost to efficiency that advanced stats say he’s not helping his team as much.

The flip side to this argument is that Luka is a better playoff performer than both Jokic and SGA. Eating up usage is also a big skill for a superstar and in the gritty postseason he can do it at good efficiency and extraordinary volume in a way that beats out Jokic (who cannot initiate perimeter half-court offense the same way) and SGA (big efficiency drops in the postseason). What makes him worse in the regular season also makes him better in the postseason and I think that’s why his Mavs teams regularly overperformed in the playoffs relative to their RS position.

Honestly the only player I can think of who perfected excelling with extraordinary postseason volume while not being, to some degree, a ball-stopper is LeBron and even that was only after 2016. Take 2018. LeBron averaged 34/9/9 on 62%TS in the playoffs and even then his USG% was ‘only’ 34.9%. He put up absurd counting stats and never once in the games did it feel like he ‘stopped the ball,’ so to speak. Luka comes close in postseason counting stats but not with the same efficiency (e.g. ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ POs his USG% was an absurd 40.3%).

What I’m saying is basically that he is the best in the world at handling volume which translates very well into the slower and more gritty playoffs but he also is not really elite at NOT handling volume. He plays at his pace and is the best at doing so but regarding aspects of the game like transition, looking for quicker ball movement, etc. he can still improve a lot.

Pure robbery. Made up award for media deciding to award Jokic before season started.

Internet now decides who is MVP.

What’s your point

Skinny Luka gonna dominate this season.

He came in third as a result of being the third best player that season

Yeah but he was fat so it doesn’t count

This was the year that he should have won the MVP. Competitive in the west, comparable wins with the other MVP candidates, statistically dominants, and most importantly he was doing this with tons of crucial players on his team being injured for long stretches of the season. He had to hard carry the team to the 50 win mark and once they had everyone back they were pretty dominant up until the finals, but imo they played the best champion of the 2020s so thats not particularly unsurprising.

For every 5 points that Luka scores he gives up 5. That’s why he’s not mvp

He’ll never get an mvp unless he learns to give a little hustle on that end of the floor

3rd behind players who are now NBA champs, sounds right. Spot on voting

and 328 minutes complaining to ref’s

Because media decided long ago before the Mavs made a run at it from basically play-ins to a top 4 seed (though ended up 5 but had a shot at it) in like the last 25 games lmao. Ran the west though, and that would’ve been an insane resume if he won it all in the end.

Kawhi Harden, Shai JWill Chet, Ant Kat Gobert, Tatum Brown Holiday Horford (lol add White and Porzingis that Celtics was stacked)

Does Luka still chug mad beers

It happened in the era of inflated numbers, so what did it really mean? We saw in the Finals what it really meant. It meant very little.

Should’ve won MVP that year is a hill I will die on

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