I have a simple formula for trying to figure out things like who has been better on the year, or who is most deserving of awards, that isn’t narrative based. Imo, it’s taking what’s considered the best all in one stat, and ranking players for awards based off of that.
Formula is simple: add epm and estimated win numbers together. Early in the season, epm will have more of an influence on the rankings. Later in the season, actual output in estimated wins will have more of an influence.
Without further ado.
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Nikola Jokic: 11.7
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SGA: 11.1
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Embiid: 11.0
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Lebron: 9.5
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Haliburton: 9.2
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Chet: 9.0
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Scottie Barnes: 8.9
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Curry: 8.8
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Booker 8.5
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Durant: 7.7
It’s still incredibly early in the season, so the rankings above are obviously still liable to change. What I found interesting is Lebron being in the top 5 still at his age (and improving on where he was at last year at this point in time), Chet being in the top 10 (honestly, the biggest stand out), and that Scottie Barnes seems to have clearly taken a leap in terms of his on the court impact. At the moment, the real MVP race seems to be between Jokic, Embiid, and SGA (the two usual suspects and SGA being added to the mix).
OKC’s time, as far as being more focused on winning now instead of the future, may be happening sooner than they thought, and there could be a chance that the organization flips sometime this year or next on moves to improve the team’s play now at the cost of future assets. Both SGA and Chet seem legit in their early run this season. According to epm, on the season (a limited sample size of course), they’re currently the best duo in the league.
EPM for KD: +5.0 (offense), -0.1 (defense), +4.9 overall
EPM for Chet: +2.8 (offense), +3.4 (defense), +6.2 overall
Stat changes as time goes on. But right now, it sees the gap between Chet and KD on defense to be bigger than their gap on offense.
If you genuinely believe Chet is already a more impactful player than KD or Book, you should probably start watching a different sport. Advanced stats don’t mean shit without watching games.
Listen man a guy can be a rookie and still outperform an all time great at least for a couple of games
this adjusted plus minus stats are awful on small sample sizes
you should only “use” EPM for full seasons
I agree. I’ve done this for myself last two seasons after the all-star break.
All the discussions about these awards are pretty awful to start the year. It still has some interesting things to say. I.e. SGA, Lebron, Chet, Scottie Barnes have started off the year playing all-nba level ball (and MVP level for SGA). Of course, the data could be noisy, and things can change going forward.