Currently, nobody is averaging PPG in the 30s
That is because Luka is averaging above 40 and Shai at number 2 is averaging just below 30. I don’t know when is the last time this happened, but nobody is averaging in the 30s.
I would like to know what’s the biggest point differential from the 1st and 2nd place ppg leader in nba history (besides wilt) so let’s say last 40 years.
8.1 ppg …James harden and MJ are tied.
James harden was definitely my first guess. When he averaged 36+ PPG in 2018-2019, no one else averaged more than 30
wonder if people remember who number 2 was that season haha, it’s slightly unexpected
(answer: Paul George with 28.0ppg! This was MVPG, he finished 3rd in MVP and DPOY voting that year. 3rd was Giannis with 27.7ppg, his first MVP season! Embiid (27.5ppg) & LeBron (27.4ppg) rounded out the top 5)
bro’s out here giving us lil trivia treats
Subscribe to MVP facts
PG’s 3 was money that year, and he was unstoppable driving to the rim.
Then he had that shoulder injury and turned into “muh playoff P”. But people tend to discount just how good he was on the Thunder in general.
i’ll never forget when he set the Thunder franchise record for most points in a 4th quarter, dude just couldn’t miss and brought the thunder back from 10 down with 5 minutes left to win it with a 3 with 3 seconds left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ5EgaMlBcM
one of my fave thunder performances, honestly.
Why is this redacted
Man. You don’t understand illegal defense rules. They weren’t lurking in the lane. They had to stay in arms reach of their man, and they would put them on the other side of the court. You ever notice Jordan is single covered in all his post fade aways and Kobe, doing the exact same move, has two on him?
Can you imagine if Durant got to do pure, mid range isos? Or what Shai and Luka would do if the big couldn’t rotate over until they met them at the rim.
It was against the rules for teams to play a zone when he did it so the C and PF just meant he could blast around them.
It’s fascinating to me that as the league evolves, some of MJs accomplishments look MORE impressive, not less.
Luka might be averaging 50 against a 1980s defense.
He definitely does not have the motor to sustain anything close to that. But I’d love to see how 80’s players would react to the constant ref complaining.
the level of complaining he would do. lord.
he wouldnt get his 11 free throws a game back in the 80s
There was a post on r/VintageNBA a few years ago where someone determined how many standard deviations each season leader was from all other players that season as a means to give a better picture as to how abnormal a particular player’s feats were. (For example, if someone averaged 30 PPG a season but there were dozens of players who averaged 29 PPG, that’s not nearly as impressive as someone who averaged 28 PPG but only a handful of players averaged more than 27 PPG.
Anyway, the five seasons where the leading scorer had the largest standard deviation from his peers were:
Wilt Chamberlain, 1963: 44.8 PPG, 4.51 standard deviations from the mean
Wilt Chamberlain, 1962: 50.4 PPG, 4.40 standard deviations from the mean
James Harden, 2019: 36.1 PPG, 4.08 standard deviations from the mean
Michael Jordan, 1987: 37.1 PPG, 3.93 standard deviations from the mean
Kobe Bryant, 2006: 35.4 PPG, 3.89 standard deviations from the mean
Here’s the post with the data: [Spreadsheet] Standard Deviation of Season Leaders since 1955
I really wonder why standard deviation isn’t used in more stats. Even something like EFG/True Shooting on those +/- stats would really show how good someone is. The closest we really get is like “The distance from 1st to 2nd is the same as 2nd to 8th” and some such.
Great stuff. All those names make sense, but I was a bit surprised to see #6 being 2014 Kevin Durant at 32.0 ppg, still good for 3.78 standard devs. Ironically, 2011 Durant at 27.7 ppg is the lowest std dev leading scorer since 1985.
The data also highlights just how insane a rebounder Dennis Rodman was. Yes, Wilt put up huge counting stats, but everyone had high rebounding numbers back then due to pace.
Rodman was 4.79 and 4.77 standard deviations ahead of the mean in his two most outlying seasons, whereas Wilt never went above 4.25.
besides wilt
Obviously
anyone know what that point differential actually was?
18.8 in 1962
holy shit lol point differential would’ve been a solid starter 😂
Yo wtf, he came 7th in MVP voting that year.
I hope Luka averages 40 for a season.
40/8/8 could be good enough for 2nd in MVP
Lakers have to finish higher than 1st seed for him to have a chance.
At the risk of getting downvoted to hell, I really do think that pulling back a little on the complaining would help. I think people are getting annoyed as hell with it, and I’m saying that as a guy who used to cheer for Nick Nurse and Kyle Lowry in his prime.
It truly is annoying. I’ve grown to tolerate it but it still irks me sometimes.
I don’t think it should be used against him for award consideration though.
I mean if you watch him, he suffers the LeBron effect to where he’s hacked constantly. I do understand that if he were to get foul calls every time it happened the game would be unwatchable… but there has to be a better solution somehow.
Yes, the franchise with the second most awarded MVPs. Or tied for first since the 70s since Russell owns half of the Celtics 10. And the only reason it’s tied is because Jordan exists.
You must be new to Luka narratives
-5th seed should do the trick
/8/8? Best I can do is 4th
“And I’m taking all the risk here.”
He got crossed over by Curry so he’s the worst defender in the league despite what defensive analytics say
I mean, that shit was pretty funny tho
I mean if someone dragged their team to 70 wins.
nah he’s gonna get 4th because Jokic and Shai dropped 29/9/9
Behind Embiid
seriously though, if Luka averages in the 40s, and the Lakers are anywhere near the top 3 in the West, I’d say he’d win the MVP hands down. Having a ‘4’ before the average would be hard to ignore.
Mind you, it would be bananas for his to average that and him not win. But here we are putting a qualifier to that. Of course, the reason I can’t say he’d be a lock is cause how truly great both Shai and Jokic have been the last two years.
If he does and Wemby averages 34/13/5 with Spurs as top seed, I wonder who they give it to
Giannis at 28/13/6, 1 seed, DPOY-2 beat Harden at 36/7/8, 4 seed. So going by precedent it’s definitely Wemby.
This was 2019 right, this would have been back to back mvps for Harden so maybe that was a factor in voting.
It was a factor, but they also had 12 fewer wins than the season prior
It’s silly that that has any impact
This sub was shitting on Harden calling him a grifter and doesn’t deserve an MVP. They got in line with the media bullshit.
yup harden stole one of lebrons mvps
As always, it will depend on the prevailing narrative the voters endorse, not precedent.
Luka definitely has a ton of narrative momentum this season, which I could see overcoming team performance considerations if it turns out the Spurs finish meaningfully above the Lakers in wins or seeding. Not only the gaudy stats but he’s now The Guy on The Lakers, and is probably seen as being “due” for an MVP at this point in his career. Meanwhile with Wemby being so young, voters probably feel they have plenty of time to give him awards on the back end. Not saying it’s the right thing but I think it’s likely that dynamics like these will be in place and working in Luka’s favor this season.
Correction, Giannis averaged 28/13/6 and Harden averaged 36/7/8 (rounding up). Giannis did it in 33 minutes and Harden in 37 minutes.
The Giannis one made more sense than Wemby if he’s not also the 1 seed, which I don’t think he will be this season.
Lol
precedent doesn’t determine mvp
I’m not remotely a Harden fan but he should have had 3 mvps
but i thought luka was the only player slighted against and hated by media? or is it almost like the precedent has existed for years and luka fans cant accept there are payers more impactful than him ?
How many blocks for Wemby?
The 5 is blocks. Wemby gets it in this example.
If Spurs are 1 seed then Wemby is probably having a career best offensive season and as a team, they probably have a top 5 offense and defense in the league with Wemby clearly leading the team on both. It’s obviously going to be him.
It really comes down to who would be the better story, which is silly but a real factor
Wemby ain’t averaging 34 any time soon
he’s averaging 29 right now and that’s with the dogshit first 2 games he had. Actually, he’s had 3 games under 50% fg and a game with a .077 FG%. He would be averaging 30+ if he played his average. Wemby is still ramping up.
Having dog shit games is still part of Wemby’s identity tho
Can’t just remove the games he’s under 50%. But you can look at the slow start as an anomaly. His last 7 he’s at 32.1 ppg. He’ll still throw up stinkers on offense but I bet he still finishes around 30. Assuming good health.
The difference between 34 and 30 is pretty big tho. 34+ has only happened 16 times in NBA history and it’s by 8 different players. And Wilt owns about 1⁄3 of those seasons.
Drop it down to 30 and it’s 84 occurrences. Which averages out to more than 1 a season. So one is common, add 4 ppg, and suddenly it’s about twice a decade and even less when Wilt doesn’t ruin the curve.
If you ignore his worst games, he’s actually the goat
And if you remove Luka’s first two games he’s averaging 44/8/8/2 on 71 TS%
What makes you think Wemby could do that
If they reschedule all Spurs games to be against the Kings, then Wemby can average that over a season.
Touché
Clearly your username is not accurate on this subreddit
More likely Wemby averages 34 across a season than Luka averages 40, I would argue. It’s hard to outdo Jordan in a scoring accomplishment
Jordan averaged like 28 attempts per game that season. If Luka did that, he would certainly average in the high 30’s. It’s just a question of whether that’s smart. I don’t think it is. Injury risk.
Wemby would have the impact metric advantage. He’s already ahead of Luka in EPM by a tiny bit and that’s averaging just 29 points on average efficiency. 34 on an elite clip? Basically unbeatable
in EPM
I just want to point out that Actual EPM ain’t out yet, they need more sample size for that. Only Expected EPM is out which is: “These values are predictive, not actual.” using a combo of career stats and projections. So we don’t know exactly where either guy is for just this season yet.
if it’s 5 blocks, then probably.
Believe it or not - Ty Jerome
Wemby ain’t averaging that over a season. 27⁄12 is more realistic for him
I’m a Luka fan, but if Wemby averages 30+ on good efficiency while leading his team to the 1st seed on top of being by the best defensive player in the league by a Nepalese landslide (clearly the best ever). Even a 40ppg season from Luka would not cut it for me. They’ll give him the MVP due to the fact that Vic is so young and will have the next decade to win many more MVPs, but let’s keep it real, his defense alone with just average offensive game would put him in MVP conversations during many less competitive seasons.
He has more games with less than 20 points than 30+ games. He’ll probably average 27-28, his lffensive game isn’t polished enough for him to average 30+.
He has more games with less than 20 points than 30+ games.
No he doesn’t? 2 versus 4
his defense alone with just average offensive game would put him in MVP conversations during many less competitive seasons.
This kinda depends on what you would classify as average. I think the last MVP to be not at least Top 7 in scoring - except for Steve Nash, who I wouldn’t exactly call a defensive savant - was Bill Walton in 77⁄78.
Nah this is a bogus take. It’s not going to happen, but if Luka averaged 40 that’s an easy MVP for him
He won’t. It’s to hard. He’ll finish at like 36-38.
Ive seen Bam Adebayo score 83 points.
That never happened smh 🙄
U mean 36-38 games played right
No player has ever averaged 33ppg or more and won a championship in the same year (highest is 32.6 by MJ), you’re basically wishing for Luka to stay ringless
Yeah that’s exactly how it works actually, Hardenball doesn’t win chips
“my weather forecast said only 50% chance of rain on three particular days last month, and it rained every day. That means my weather forecast can’t be trusted ever again”
The logic of people who say “heliocentrism can’t win”
Luka made it to the Finals where they faced a historical Boston team that would’ve beat any subsequent champion, and his Mavs held Boston to their lowest offensive rating of the playoffs. The reason they lost is his teammates couldn’t make open shots, IIRC they were 20% on wide open threes.
He also carried a bunch of nobodies to the WCF.
What has Antball achieved?
The season Melo won his scoring title no one averaged 30
Dead ball era
Same era where Lance Stephenson once led the league in triple doubles with 5
Triple doubles used to mean a lot
We gave Russ an MVP off a year we had never seen since Oscar Robertson
Now Jokic has basically been doing that for like six consecutive years and we’re all kinda like “yeah, that’s just what he does”
It’s crazy how much has changed in 20 years.
The Bucks averaged 110.6 ppg last year, good for 29th in the league.
In 2005-06, the revolutionary Suns offense averaged 108.4
Last year, the Celtics had the best defense by points allowed at 107.2 per game
In 2005-06, the worst defense was the Sonics, allowing 105.6
I remember a graphic at one point that showed the triple double leaders for the current season and from memory Greg Monroe was top 5 in the league with his lone triple double lol
I can’t speak to Oscar Robertson who I believe didn’t even know what a triple double was, but Jokic and Westbrook triple doubles are hella fabricated and don’t indicate like sum high skill level - Jokic never plays with a rebounder and touches the ball every second of the game and Westbrook Steve adams was feeding rebounds all game + he would fight you for dribbling. It’s like okay they got triple doubles but how many players have played under those same circumstances where the team is built around their own personal stats
Op said Luka was averaging above 40 and immediately i thought that’s bullshit. Lo and behold dude is at 40.1 that is insane
The craziest stat for me: in the brazilian transmission they said Luka has 31 ppg against the Blazers throughout his career (20 something games).
Well, he came into the game with 37 ppg so far this season.
So, if he simply maintained his already great 31 points trend against the blazers, he would actually worsen his stats for the season. Absolutely mindblowing what he is doing this season.
I believe Luka averages 29 points in his NBA career, so 31 seems against any given team sounds reasonable 😂
Luka is one of those guys whose craziest stat always seems to be the next.
lol seriously. That was such a nothing comment.
I saw the title, and then saw the upvote count of the thread, and STILL had to Google just to make sure lol, and I’m a Luka fan
Curry is also at 29.9 and he’s thirty fucking eight. Next game is today versus the Magic. SkyFucker will be averaging 30 + after this game.
How many points does he have to score to raise his average to 40
EDIT: If I’m mathing correctly, all he has to do is drop a casual 111 tonight. Quietly.
If steph gets up 88 3s tn he can easily hit 37 of them i think.
That’s less than 2 threes a minute if he plays all 48… almost sounds doable lmao
Against our defense it’s not impossible
Haven’t seen the magic this year but don’t you have a good defense? Like, that’s the only thing you hear about Orlando
We had a good defense before last year. Coaching changes trying to make our offense not absolutey pathetic ended up 1. Not working and 2. Making our defense worse
Franz and Carter are the only positive defenders we have healthy rn. Maybe Anthony Black too.
I heard Kerr told Curry he better keep averaging more PPG than minutes per game or else it’s off to the bench with no dinner
That’s the craziest part for the 38 year old. 29.9 ppg on 28.7 mpg. These low minutes are going to be crucial for him to play 60+ games this year.
so he’s technically in 30s
Nope, technically he is in the 20s but if you round then it appears as if he is in the 30s
He’s 38 so he’s in his thirties is what he meant. As a joke.
Damn that went right over my head
Damn im dumb
Whoosh…
By that logic he’s in his 40’s too!
35-39 year old downvote odds on this comment - 100%
and Lebron is in 40s
Look at curry man
I’m sure he’s now at 30+ after dropping 41 🫨
Still first in BPM by a considerable margin, it’s wild
SkyFucker????????
He just broke the trend and Average 31+ in today’s game
Curry >>> Jebron Lames
Too early for this. Lebron averaged 28.9/8/7 over 55 games to Curry’s 29.9/4/4 over 7 games. You need to relax my guy
Dont need to relax my guy. Curry >>> Jebron Lames
4 to 1
Gods I remember James Harden averaging 43 points in a month.
Edit: 43.6⁄8.7⁄7.6 on 2.1 steals in 14 games, he didn’t miss a single game in that month.
Can’t be overstated how much of an Ironman Harden is. The amount of games and minutes played, with his usage/offensive responsibility in his heyday is mind boggling. Whatever complaints people have about Harden (some of which are just!), nobody can deny that he is really about that action.
He did that while partying till 4 am in the morning. Imagine if he was getting proper rest and more focused on the game.
lol you guys act like he was getting up at 8am or something. Guarantee he still got at least his 8 hours of sleep every day even if he was out until 4.
many teammates and coaches have said he was partying till 4-5 in the morning yet he showed up at practice in 7-8 am for years
Teammates have said he would leave the strip club and maybe catch an hour nap if that and show up to the game and just piece ppl up
8 hours sleep doesn’t mean much when you were up partying that late because even after 8 hours of sleep your body just isn’t where it’s supposed to be and not to mention nasty hangover.
Idk. Some people are work hard, play hard and that’s the only way they can operate.
He’d probably play worse, kind of like how Luka misses almost all his open shots
I was in nba hiatus that period but that shit is whack/unreal. Prime Harden is ridiculous
Prime Harden is like Prime Crypto or Prime AI. It was a bubble that only existed because the rules hadn’t caught up with his tricks yet.
That analogy makes no sense
Let me help you.
Sometimes things are overvalued until people figure out the scam.
And it sucked to watch him foul bait for 12 FTs a game during the entire month
the SGA before SGA
SGA has a bad whistle now. Luka is having a better whistle than Prime Harden.
Now huh
How many points is Anthony Edwards averaging?
0, ain’t played enough
33
So why did OP lie or not check their work?
Not enough games
Seems like a silly qualifier this early into the season but makes sense
Probably Because Ant’s not active for the next two months
It’s not subjective. Ant doesn’t qualify and for that reason he doesn’t officially average any number of points. It’s like if someone got 5 blocks in one game, never played another game, and you asked why everyone acts like Wemby is the BPG leader when he’s actually not.
33, ig he fails the game requirement made up for this stat
Thats actually a wild stat
Fellas, this might actually be his season.
Man, If he drops down to 37ppg and Wemby averages like 28-30 PPG its going to be a race.
I’m a Luka hater so this is more funny than sad to me, but I can acknowledge that it’s unfortunate and probably true lol
Sadly, he deserves a mvp! But Wemby is to dominant defensively while being great offensively
it’ll be funny to see luka and wemby stans fling shit at each other all season on twitter
I think it’s Wembys to lose, and I think the only true risk is him playing 65 games
Nah defense will start to matter now even if it didn’t for jokic.
?? There’s been someone as generational as Wemby defensively while still putting up 28 ppg
Idk if he’ll keep up this kind of run - but if he can maintain even something close to this for the season, he’s going to get a lotttttt of votes.
If he stays healthy. Playoff teams start out slow for a reason.
why is this downvoted. rather interesting stat tbh
It’s in the positive by hundreds of upvotes btw
Why is this comment downvoted
It’s in the positive by tens of upvotes btw
why am i sad
was downvoted when posted btw
Your comment was only made 3 minutes after the post. Give it a minute before complaining lol
Votes weren’t even public at the time of your comment lol
Why has no one upvoted my comment yet…
haha
*edit: why the downvotes?
*edit 2: wow, never change reddit
*edit 3: really, STILL getting downvoted? Can anyone tell me why this is happening? What was wrong with my comment???
Prolly bc you commented literally right after it was posted idk
why is this downvoted.
Checks times:
OP “submitted 4 hours ago”
YOU: “4 hours ago”
…
He was averaging 30 upvotes a minute, we had to change that
Never wonder why a brand new post gets down voted. Almost all posts are.
Its bots across many subreddits
Load management. It’ll gain more upvotes as the season goes on.
Now it’s upvoted 2.8k fwiw
Its 96% upvoted homie.
why is this upvoted. rather uninteresting comment tbh
it’s a bot comment with bot upvotes.
Bots. Just like how this comment will get downvoted almost immediately since I mentioned bots. The bots don’t like that and want to try and get those comments below the visibility threshold immediately when it is easy to do so.
why are you here?
This sub doesn’t actually like basketball they like the he-said she-said Really Housewives ass drama. The oh he might get traded or oh Barkley said this. Almost never any highlights posted anymore this place genuinely sucks these days
harden averaged 36.7 ppg when the next highest was curry at 28 ppg. Over a full season btw. Still got robbers
Now luka is averaging 40 while curry is averaging 29.9 at 2nd again. Curry greatest scoring champ runner up in history..?
10 years from now, Paul millsap Jr. putting up 50 a game and second is still Steph curry at 29 ppg
Steph Curry man. I hope he never ages.
Curry is known for watching other people score
Curry was 5th that season, PG13 was 2nd
Enter a 38 year-old Steph Curry
Connor McDavid and Luka are having similar seasons
Hmm. Moderately interesting!
Haha, my immediate reaction to this headline was “Because Luka’s in the 40s??”
Pisses me off to no end that Luka had to get traded to the Lakers to finally get his MVP.
and LeBron had to leave
2015
ant is at 33 ppg
Ant would be if he was playing
Averaging 30+ year olds
2.5x more than Karl Malone
Anthony Edwards was averaging over 30 before he got hurt. Wonder if he would have kept that up.
nobody averaging in the 30s? pretty sure it was 2015 with russell westbrook leading the league in scoring with 28.
Cause ants injured :(
That’s kinda crazy being 10 games into the season. Wonder how long it will last. Guess if Shai goes off tonight we get there.
Curry just made this whole post pointless.
delete this shit.
it’s November 7th
Dont say that!! Dont you understand they want the mvp announcements now!!!
Why is a “fun fact” being spun as MVP narrative to you? Are you insecure or something for shai? They happen to be the scoring leaders right now. I guess he could have said steph too but what difference is it? Luka happens to be at 40 right now, nobody in 30s, and shai/steph 29.9.
Can we wait until Christmas before making rational takes ?
Anthony Edwards is…..?
Funny that Luka being at 40 makes it look like nobody else is scoring, but the league just spreads usage around more now. Lots of guys in the high 20s but fewer true 30 a night guys than a few years ago.