Legit though… Thunder are literally much younger, more athletic, better shooters, better defenders, and so on. People like to say Luka got hoe’d getting traded to the Lakers, recognize that the team doesn’t play to his strengths, think Lakers are better off without LeBron, but somehow his team being mid is not worth mentioning in these conversations.

I’m not clear if you are hating on Luka or just his fans right now

I’m not clear how you could read my comment (“He should be 3rd or 4th, but Luka stans will downvote anyone who says he shouldn’t be first”) and actually be unclear on this.

Luka has been awesome this year. SGA and Jokic have been more awesome.

Look at Jaylen Brown or even Tatum over the years. Dominant Celtic teams yet neither of them were dominating metrics even over that of Luka consistently. Not every dominant team has a player with impact metrics as good as SGA, in fact most don’t lol.

No one glazes over that, I just think the argument for Shai is so easy when you look at history and other metrics. Like it’s really not that difficult to explain why in a vacuum SGA is better than Luka

is Luka averaging the same attempts in OKC as he does in LAL? It’s different teams = different distribution yk, if he averages as much attempts as SGA does, he doesn’t even touch 29 points, he also would average less FTA = less attempts, at his current FTr, he’d average 1.3 less FTA than he does now, and it’s not counting LAL whistle, which brings him to 28.3~ points, which is good for 7th in the league. Now SGA if he was on Lakers and averaging the same amount of attempts Luka does, would average 36 points. The thing is, all of this doesn’t mean anything, SGA is FMVP, MVP and a champion, Luka had a good team that he got to the Finals with, that was built exactly for him and beat SGA’s OKC, even though Shai completely outplayed him in the series. He lost, and got exposed on defense, and wasn’t that good on offense either, bad efficiency and a lot of turnovers, and no, his EPM that year wasn’t even close to SGA’s this year. Yall can cope all you want tho

Although I agree with the fact that JB came big this season, EPM is not only about efficient scoring, not at all. That only plays a bit. By using tracking data, it exceeds box score results. I won’t say this stat is all-telling when it comes to value (very much like any other stat), but it pretty based in terms of impact and difference with him and SGA/Jokic is not something “meaningless” as some of our fanbase would say. Tatum started with a 5 something EPM the moment he returns, too. And eye test, if that eye is not only looking to the player with ball in his hand, will also confim: With Tatum there in the middle of defense, we got better at that end instantly. DWhite can pressure more on perimeter, less driving lanes, more timely box outs, better rotations, etc. Those things with being balanced on offense to raise the ceiling are things make the difference between Tatum and him.

To survive the season as we did, we needed JB’s aggresiveness on offense and he answered the call. That is real valuable. But actually not that close to what Tatum means to this team. JB deserves his flowers, and he is actually getting that by being on top 5 candidates pretty much all season. But there is a lot more to our success which is represented partially with DWhite’s showing up here.

Again, when these advanced metrics have two general components, being awful in one means you have to be incredible in the other in order to eclipse a guy who is good to great in one and average in the other component. It’s common sense

lol I mean obviously EPM uses net rating and is influenced by team performance, but it also has a ton of items in their metrics that try to isolate that.

But you can just look at other examples to see why that thinking is off - Jokic has less wins than the Lakers and is still above Luka by a margin. You even mentioned BOS but failed to acknowledge where Brown is

Someone like the Wolves is around both of them in wins. Ant is 152nd in net rating, Luka is 155th, yet Ant’s EPM is almost half of that of Luka’s. Ty Jerome is 6th in EPM yet 385th in net rating and on the Grizzlies.

Severely misunderstanding advanced metrics here. Pascal isn’t barely positive. He is in the 82 percentile on the worst team in the league.

If anything, that says he is a great player in a bad situation

In order to win a lot, don’t you have to be good.

Or the inverse, if you are losing a lot, you probably aren’t as good.

Okay. Everyone who votes for MVP would rather build around SGA

Brandon Miller above Jalen Brunson, Colin Gillespie over Devin Booker, Donte Divenczo over Jaylen Brown, julian champagnie over Deni Avdija

These are not low minute players and there are a lot more than a few, not gonna take the time to list them all. Most of r/nba thinks Derrick White is better than Jaylen Brown because of this metric so stop acting like people don’t take it seriously and are providing tons of context. They see this rankings and think players should get MVPs or all nba team because of their ranking in EPM