Player The unfortunately low-ceilinged Shaolin monastery of Victor Wembanyama

Some people in this thread need to understand that you can appreciate Victor without bashing Duncan and you can appreciate Duncan without bashing Victor. I here people in here saying Duncan was boring which sounds just as bad as those idiot media people who used to say it all the time. It also shows how fair weathered some fans are to insult the man who was once the face of the franchise simply to up the new face of the franchise. Personally I liked Duncan's stone cold personality of being private and not expressive. I'm of the old school that it's good not to show your emotions because it helps to give an edge against your opponent.

Now I got no problems with Victor's personality either granted I don't prefer it but I accept that's just who he is and how he fuels himself competitively.
 
Dbreiden83080 said:
And yes Dan, Wemby is the best player in the NBA.. Who is the guy all GM's are taking number 1 today right now? We all know the answer..
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When GMs are asked that question, they take a guy who already is a star, but has upside and is still young. This is not about chosing the best player in his prime who is an MVP candidate.
Wemby is top 3 now which is ahead of schedule.
 
Put another way, NBA reg season MVPs who did not win the Chip

Last 20 years 15Xs the MVP did not win the Chip.

23 Embiid
22 Joker
21 Joker
20 Greek Freak
19 Greek Freak
18 Harden
17 Westbrick
16 Fluffy Curry
14 Durbetta
11 Derek Rose
10 Lebronze
09 Lebronze
08 Kirby Bryant
07 Dirk Novsky
06 Nash
 
Fireball said:
When GMs are asked that question, they take a guy who already is a star, but has upside and is still young. This is not about chosing the best player in his prime who is an MVP candidate.
Wemby is top 3 now which is ahead of schedule.
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Wemby is the best player in the NBA. When you see his insane 2 way impact I can't come to another conclusion. Just watching last night Heat players are afraid to shoot with Wemby anywhere in the area.. Never seen such fear of a player just lurking in the area.. Whereas an MVP candidate in Luka teams game plan around attacking him relentlessly on the D end..
 
Fabbs said:
Regular season MVP wins the Championship at a sub 40% clip. Joker, for all his kick ass seasons and 3 MVPs has only 1 Championship, 2023 the year he did not win MVP. (Embiid)
Fluffy Curry has only done it once, the winner-by-injury-default year of 2015. Lebron clearly played circles around Curry in the Finals.
Take out Bill Russell, Jordan, Kream and Bird and it's only 10 seasons.
So MVP of reg season is no ticket to a 'Chip.

Home Run? Wemby winning both.
Choice of MVP or Championship? I'll take legit* Championship over the sportswriters award 10 of 10 times.
*no ref aided b.s. we Spurs want a legit Chip.
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Right, my point wasn't that the MVP award will dictate who goes on to win the title. Rather, specifically as it relates to SGA vs. Wemby, the way people view this year's MVP award could change dramatically depending on how a Spurs/OKC series goes.

If OKC beats SA and SGA plays really well, you're probably not ever going to hear many people argue that it was the incorrect decision from voters. People will point to the playoff series and use that as added evidence that SGA was MVP this year.

But if SA beats OKC and Wemby goes nuclear? It's going to be an extremely contested debate for years to come. You'll have large contingents of basketball fans arguing that Wemby deserved MVP and that he was the best player in the world as early as the 2025-2026 season.

In the unlikely event that Wemby wins MVP, this playoff series becomes an even bigger deal. If Wemby somehow wins MVP but ends up getting outplayed by SGA en route to a loss it would probably turn out to be one of the more controversial MVP awards in recent memory.
 
ambchang said:
If he said it at the beginning of the season, I'd be like "dude, shut up" because he had a long way to go back then. Turned out that long way to go was 4 months, and he is definitely there now. I am not sure if he is undoubtedly the MVP right now, but he has as strong a case as anyone.
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Oh absolutely. He would have had no business talking like this at the beginning of the year and if you notice, one of his key points was team success. I know it's a shock, but how long we gonna pretend this isn't happening? He's an alien. Maybe this is how they manifest shit in this dimension. Beam me up, bro.

I want to believe. It's more fun this way.
 
I can see Wemby not getting MVP due to pre-emptive voter fatigue too, even if the Spurs end up as the 1 seed. Some voters might think "Wemby is gonna get the next 2 MVPs at least, let's let SGA have one more"
 
even Castle was feeling it last night when he said "we ain't no underdog to anybody."
 
SpursFan86 said:
Right, my point wasn't that the MVP award will dictate who goes on to win the title. Rather, specifically as it relates to SGA vs. Wemby, the way people view this year's MVP award could change dramatically depending on how a Spurs/OKC series goes.

If OKC beats SA and SGA plays really well, you're probably not ever going to hear many people argue that it was the incorrect decision from voters. People will point to the playoff series and use that as added evidence that SGA was MVP this year.

But if SA beats OKC and Wemby goes nuclear? It's going to be an extremely contested debate for years to come. You'll have large contingents of basketball fans arguing that Wemby deserved MVP and that he was the best player in the world as early as the 2025-2026 season.

In the unlikely event that Wemby wins MVP, this playoff series becomes an even bigger deal. If Wemby somehow wins MVP but ends up getting outplayed by SGA en route to a loss it would probably turn out to be one of the more controversial MVP awards in recent memory.
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Concur.
Myself i am not liking Victor talking MVP qualifications with media. They are amoral parasites imo and he should not engage. I get it when people talk the talk and walk the walk (say they are the best and prove it by actions -win) it's cool but i also agree with you 100%. If enough super low IQ sports writers do vote for Wemby MVP and the team gets beaten by OKC that will invite the negatives out in spades.

Well, Wemby is talking and the media circus is gonna be on should they as expected meet in WCFs.
 
i think it's a little bit dishonest to act like the MVP award was 50% offense and 50% defense now that Wemby is here.
Of course bball is 50% offense and 50% defense, but if a DPOY trophy does exist, and not an OPOY for offense , it's of course because MVP has always been more about offense than defense.

The problem is that there has probably never been someone like Wemby who is clearly good on offense but is above all so good on defense that it makes him really incredibly valuable, which should be the point of an MVP.
 
cediskace said:
i think it's a little bit dishonest to act like the MVP award was 50% offense and 50% defense now that Wemby is here.
Of course bball is 50% offense and 50% defense, but if a DPOY trophy does exist, and not an OPOY for offense , it's of course because MVP has always been more about offense than defense.

The problem is that there has probably never been someone like Wemby who is clearly good on offense but is above all so good on defense that it makes him really incredibly valuable, which should be the point of an MVP.
Click to expand...
its not a 50/50 thing. put the mvp award aside, when you think yourself of the 10-15 best players in the league, or what 10-15 guys are the most valuable (with respect to what it would cost to acquire them), you will notice that above all else you are listing guys who are gifted scorers or offensive creators.

other than a freakshow like wemby, how often are you going to find guys who defensively can warp a game the way jokic warps a game offensively? what defender alters a game the way curry does offensively? as good as peak lebron was defensively, lets not pretend his impact was changing games more than his offense was.

this is because a team with star offensive player will give that player the ball every possession, time in and time out. you feel them on every offensive trip. for 99% of defenders, you cant say that they are involved in the action every time on defense. you can hunt matchups, force switches, bring shotblockers out of the paint, etc. you can manipulate the other team to try to limit the chaos their best defensive player can cause, but its nearly impossible to deny the ball to a star player over the course of a full possession

so yeah... offense tends to manifest in value more often than defense, though wemby's defensive presence is gamebreaking to the degree where we are seeing a shifting of the scales
 
A big positive of Wemby's comments (and play) that nobody is mentioning is -- narratives MATTER. They impact the actual game.

The "superstar whistle" has been an open secret for years, and we've all seen Wemby hacked, pulled, and hit with no regard or respect from the refs. It's not only his dominant play-style that will "earn him respect" - it'll also be a league-wide reckoning that hey, this dude is the MVP...... Even if he doesn't win the actual award. The entire NBA ecosystem coddles the stratospheric players, LeBron has made a living of it for 20+ years now.

I've complained before about the league not "protecting its product" by letting Pistons et al hack Wemby to shit, and this is a very good way to set a tone that hey, the guy is too valuable to let that shit slide. Do y'all think the Zaza Rule would've been made if he'd taken out Kyle Anderson instead of Kawhi? Fuck no - the bigger the hit, the bigger the response. Wemby's putting the league on notice here - media people, coaches, players themselves. It's not about us.

In a totally-related point, it's only after Cade goes down with an end-of-season injury that "[Amick] The Players Association is officially calling for the 65 game rule to be abolished":

NBPA statement on Cade Cunningham - and others - being ineligible for awards this season…

“Cade Cunningham’s potential ineligibility for postseason awards after a career-defining season is a clear indictment of the 65-game rule and yet another example of why it must be abolished or reformed to create an exception for significant injuries. Since its implementation, far too many deserving players have been unfairly disqualified from end-of-season honors by this arbitrary and overly rigid quota.”
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Narratives. Matter.
 
i like the games played rule. before there used to be a debate every year about this. player A was clearly better than player B, but player B played 26 more games, and then we had to come up with a subjective measurement of how much that mattered and all that.

i think the spirit of the 65 game rule, aside from encouraging player participation, is also to discard of that question. if a player qualifies, you just compare them at face value without factoring in "well he played 6 less games, so should that factor in?" questoins.

what i dont like is that contracts for max players are tied to all-nba or DPOY stuff, and a team reaps cap benefits from a player missing out on awards while still offering the player the absolute max they're allowed to.
 
I don't want to hear any PPG argument against Wemby, especially when it comes to SGA and Luka. Wemby ACTUALLY gets fouled and rarely gets those calls. He would be averaging 80ppg if he got all the calls.
 
DaSlicer said:
Some people in this thread need to understand that you can appreciate Victor without bashing Duncan and you can appreciate Duncan without bashing Victor. I here people in here saying Duncan was boring which sounds just as bad as those idiot media people who used to say it all the time. It also shows how fair weathered some fans are to insult the man who was once the face of the franchise simply to up the new face of the franchise. Personally I liked Duncan's stone cold personality of being private and not expressive. I'm of the old school that it's good not to show your emotions because it helps to give an edge against your opponent.

Now I got no problems with Victor's personality either granted I don't prefer it but I accept that's just who he is and how he fuels himself competitively.
Click to expand...
Sorry, not sorry, but there is no player in this league, since Kobe's retirement (not even Kobe compares), that can even sniff Duncan's greatness. He's top 2-5 (AT WORST) all time. Call him boring idgaf. Not Joker, Steph, KD, etc remotely compares to Timmy. No one. The only player comparable to Duncan is Lebron. That's it. End of story.
 
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