Imagine watching basketball and thinking Embiid is better than Jokic. What a fucking joke the MVP award was this year.
2023 NBA Playoffs
- Thread starter BaseballJones
- Start date
I'll push back on this. Embiid was a perfectly acceptable MVP this year. This isn't Malone vs. Jordan.
Jokic is a problem and never thought the Lakers were getting by the Nuggets. Jokic makes everyone around him immeasurably better.
Jokic is an offensive hub who makes everyone around him better. Embiid is really good but he can’t do the types of things Jokic does….which isn’t even a knock on Embiid because Jokic is like fucking Steve Nash in a tall, slightly pudgy body
Simmons and Russillo were talking til he other day about Bill Russell having a 20/40 game or something like that.
He did.
"Nuggets seem to have the best, 4th best. 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th best players in this series"
As amazing as this sounds, I think if I’m the Lakers I’m happy to be down “only” 12 at this point.
oh yeah, I agree, Reaves bank and some Denver whiffs. This could be worse for them. They need to make this way uglier. Straight up they have no shot.
Good question, one that a younger friend posed to me: "how deep is my LAL hatred, given that Denver may be a tougher matchup"
I made a simple "additive linear utility", where I assigned 2 utilities to each of the four teams: one for losing and one for winning a series.
So 100 utils if Celts win, 1 i they lose.
LAL 4 if they win, 40 if they loose.
Etc
Then for all 8 possible scenarios, assign a probability of who wins the championship (given who gets to the championship).
Then compute weighted sum of these utilities for all Lakers Win scenarios, compared to utilities for LAL lose scenarios.
Bottom line: with reasonable measures of Laker hatred, Denver sortOfLike, and Miami disdain --- it is almost always better for LAL to loose.
That is: it takes ridiculous probabilities (say, 90% chance Denver beats Celts, and 90% celts beat laker) for the weighting to favor LAL winning.
Obviously its a simple model, but it isn't totally silly
(I could post the XLS, which is easy to tweak. Should I?\
BTW: apologies Ale ... somehow misread the "best"
I have confidence in my Celtics tomorrow to break that mold to keep the stress levels as high as possible.
I’ve been on the Denver bandwagon this whole playoffs…you can find a post of me saying how concerning it is that John Hollinger had the same exact finals prediction that I did (Boston v. Denver). Jokic is a stud…
But I don’t think the Nuggets are some impossible match-up for the Celtics. I think it’s tougher than the Lakers but only marginally
But I don’t think the Nuggets are some impossible match-up for the Celtics. I think it’s tougher than the Lakers but only marginally
I'd much rather lose to the GOAT than go down as the team that lost to Charles Berkley.
Embiid is significantly better defensively. Jokic, like Curry, is so good offensively he makes up for being kind of trash defensively.
I'm the same, Lakers finals would have me totally stressed about losing. Nuggets I'd be psyched about winning.
I'm torn between enjoying some Lakerfreude, and having a growing sense of dread watching the Nuggets and going, Jesus Christ, how the hell does a team with that guy and all that depth around him ever lose? Embiid is a guy you can gameplan for, Jokic just isn't, there's no formula to take him out of his game or deny him what he wants to do, because he's happy to do any of about 35 different things.
This is the kind of sicko content you can't get most places on the internet.
As a guy who once made my then-girlfriend a spreadsheet about the marriage penalty, to try and convince her to not get really-married legally, just have a sham wedding... I salute this kind of thinking and effort.
I'm leading a coalition of like minded people who want to see Jokic's nickname change from the Joker to the Yoker.
I always think i like Murray but then I see how he does his beard under the jawline and I’m like, I can’t like you, bro.
I have to be honest, I don't get the Reaves love. He's a slightly better Armani Exchange. Or whatever version of Armani they have in Oklahoma.