Officially yes but technically speaking bill russel would have gotten it too if the award existed when he played

Well yeah 😭 naturally

Yes, the defending MVP has the best odds to repeat as MVP, good call.

I just realized that if the Thunder repeat, SGA would likely surpass KD, Jokic, and Giannis. If he wins MVP and Finals MVP for the second straight season, he would have the best peak since LeBron from 2011 to 2013 or Curry from 2014 to 2016.

Who’s on that list?

Shai with respect to Luka kinda reminds me of Curry somersaulting CP3. Nobody saw this coming really

He also is a modern Window into what made Michael Jordan so valuable and easy to build around. A lot of people seemed to have forgotten that.

Insanely underrated is such a stupid statement. Everyone knows Shai is one of the best basketball players to ever touch a basketball.

Man I dunno. Luka took down Shai on his way to a finals appearance and never got a chance to run it back because of Nico Harrison. He was shunted to a poorly constructed Lakers team last year because of an insane trade.

Not saying Shai isn’t great but its definitely possible OKC would be even more dominate if you swapped Shai for Luka.

You have millions of fans everywhere, we don’t. We gotta band together. Sorry man.

Feels like the common denominator is hating okc and people just choosing a reason to do so

Real. You admitted you hate their shit but gave flowers to the mvp. wish more fans of basketball in this sub were like this.

I don’t like that he thinks he’s cool. He is, but man he really tries to insist that he is and I find that annoying. Thats really the only knock on him, he is an otherwise perfect player.

I have no problem with the free throws. He has the ball a lot, plays it well, etc.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why the refs don’t call more fouls on the other end.

I’d also love somebody to punk Dort. Dirty player. Not sure why players put up with it.

Pure fantasy.

He is already having the best on ball scoring season since it was first tracked outside of maybe 19 harden.

Alright chill

steph, lebron, jokic, jordan, hakeem, shaq, wilt, giannis all above him? and id wager many others too, these are just the definites. no definitely not top 5 regular season peak of all time let’s be serious.

The highlights is mostly because of his bad pr. He has some of the best handles in the league and has had a great number of players stumbling.

Watch the highlights for his 45 point game vs detroit last year.

He’s had probably the most impressive clutch season ever this season

His bag is mainly effective handles and general middy bag work which most people don’t enjoy watching more than threes and dunks though

Mf is old af. How is he in the same generation

he’s the generation above with Steph/Harden/etc. KD was drafted in 2007, Shai was drafted over a decade after

In what world is KD the same generation as shai

Shai is actually significantly better from the short-mid range. KD marginally better from long-mid range.

Nah. Bro played for the sonics. This is the new generation

NOT!!!!!

Probably misremembering but didn’t KD say SGA was better than he was?

I rewatched some of the ¹⁷⁄₂₀ finals over the summer and it’s shocking how different the athleticism was compared to now. Kinda like when a family member gains/loses a bunch of weight over a year but you don’t notice because you see them everyday, then you see an old picture and are shocked

That’s the thing about Lebron: he’s actually pretty washed at this point, if only by the standard of his own peak. There are things he certainly can’t do anymore.

In his prime, his team’s defense was elite simply because he played a lot of minutes and it’s impossible for a defense with Lebron on the floor not to be elite. On any given possession he could lockdown any player in the NBA. He was strong enough and quick enough to match up against anybody.

He was probably the best two-way transition player of all-time. Definitely better at the “pick six” than any player I’ve ever seen, which is absolutely devastating: end the team’s possession, highlight dunk, and they have to take the ball out under the basket and regroup.

Those aspects of his game are simply gone. But he’s still scoring 20ppg on 50%+ shooting.

No offense, but as self proclaimed haters you two aren’t very good at your trade

yeah…aside form very cherry picked stretches. Let me hate on SGA damn it…stop making me defend how good he actually is. 😤

More efficient certainly but Kobe played at this level before.

Lmao.

crazy that many others in that era still had better fg% than Kobe. Kobe was almost never even top 5 on his own team. maybe if he passed instead of shooting double contested shots all the time…he would have gotten more space. he dodnt get space because they knew hed shot chuck instead of passing to the open man. 🤣

I would love hear what you think Kobe is better at. I’ve been trying to compare them.

On offense in terms of pure shooting ability I’m not sure whose better, but I do think Shai’s shot selection is better and so I’d probably give the edge to him. As you mentioned Shai is more efficient than Kobe even when you adjust for era, but it’s by less of a margin than you’d think (Peak Shai is 10-15% above league average and 98-08 Kobe was around 5-7% above). For all the talk of Shai’s fouls Kobe’s game was also fueled by going to the line quite a bit. It was more ethical foul drawing, but I don’t think ethics of drawing fouls has much of a place in this kind of conversation. I do think Kobe was a better cutter/off ball player and a better passer.

For defense the things that jump out to me are Kobe is a better point of attack and post defender. I think Shai is a better help defender and rim protector. I think 1998-2002 Kobe was probably a better defender than Shai, but 2006-2011 Kobe was probably worse, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

3 ball and playmaking are probably going to improve, annoyingly

That’s coz he’s a guard.

KD has great handles but his height is a detriment at that facet

very we have Kawhi

I actually wasn’t watching bball when KD was in his prime so hard to say. But looking back though it def feels obvious to me (at least from purely scoring, not much else). I do see what you’re sayin tho

so what? You want him to be rusty for the playoffs, after not playing for 12 days?

lol. Lmao even.

I have a foul baiter on my team. I know what it looks like.

I definitely agree winning should cure all

LeBron I think was hated more, but also far more of a spectacle. People don’t want to go see SGA the way they flocked to see Bron or MJ or even Kobe

But my concerns comes from the Social Media era that SGA is playing in. Hating is cool, and chopping clips to make videos is easy.

There are a lotttttt of clips of SGA looking like a fool for a foul and getting bailed out on phantom calls. A lotttt of videos of those plays strung together. Those videos will linger and fair or not if his style of play continues like this. The flopping will be mentioned in review of his career.

And most of the best played in much bigger markets. Once negative PR comes for a Thunder player, OKC and it’s 700,000 residents get kinda drowned out by the tens of millions of everybody else.

One of the biggest tells of how different the media is to me is his dunk contests. Can you imagine how hard people would roast you for repeating dunks today?