Break The System: Joel Embiid’s Dominance Shows the Sham of the NBA MVP Voting Process In the First Place
We saw it coming, and it still makes you laugh and shake your head in disgust simultaneously. On Monday, Nikola Jokic was announced as the 2022 NBA MVP, beating out Joel Embiid in the media only voting.
EMBIID’S VALUE
It’s ironic that the announcement of Nikola Jokic winning MVP came less than 24 hours after Joel Embiid helped flip momentum in a playoff series in which his sheer presence alone helped save the Sixers season. Down 2-0, Embiid showed back up with a broken face, hours out of concussion protocol and shooting with a torn ligament in his thumb. The series is now 2-2 and Embiid has impacted the game on both ends of the court. His ability to move his feet, unlike Deandre Jordan, has made life much tougher on the Heat when their guards aren’t able to waltz into the paint with little resistance. On the offensive end, the Heat frantically expend energy trying to double Embiid and deny him the ball entirely. The result is the following, which was one of the coolest moments in Wells Fargo Center history.
Mentioned this in today’s story, but Butler abandoning Harris to shade toward Embiid on this play is one of the many differences he has made by simply being out on the floor the last two gameshttps://t.co/lluAQf3JqY
— Kyle Neubeck (@KyleNeubeck) May 9, 2022
Playoffs don’t factor into who wins the MVP award. But Embiid’s presence on the floor in Game’s 3 and 4 versus Game’s 1 and 2 is a microcosm of his value to this Sixers team the entire season. Embiid and Giannis continue to be the most important players on the court for their respective teams as they look to make deep playoff runs. Nikola Jokic’s season ended two weeks ago.
EMBIID’S SEASON
The NBA MVP has seemingly always been a narrative based award, rather than an award solely based on statistics, until this year of course. And if the award was still handed out based on narrative, it’s hard to overlook Embiid’s story. It started with a circus that lasted months in the season with his running mate refusing to show up for the team. Night in and night out, from October to February, the Sixers played with a $35 million black hole in their lineup. Early in the season, Embiid faced a nasty bout of COVID and the team was .500 after 30 games by the time they got him back.
In the end, the Sixers ended up with 50+ wins, a perennial contender again in the East, all while Embiid led the league in scoring at 30.4ppg. He was the first Center to lead the league in scoring since Shaq. Joel pressed himself each night, with both his minutes per game rising and his games played tallying career bests. At times he would bring the ball up the court himself because the team lacked true point guard assets given the aforementioned circus. He constantly fought through double teams to lead the league in 40 point, 10 rebound performances. And as if his offensive dominance wasn’t enough, he was the team’s most important defender as well.
Joel did everything the committee asked him to do after he was snubbed for the award last year. He played more games. Dominated more consistently. When everything should’ve fallen apart for this team, Embiid pull them out of an abyss.
It was a narrative fit for an MVP season, and it’s a true shame that this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
NBA MEDIA/ADVANCED ANALYTICS
What drives fans insane regarding the Jokic MVP decision is the asinine route we took to end up at this conclusion. Night in and night out, Giannis and Joel passed the eye test for their respective squads. And in the end, we ignored the common sense logic of witnessing dominance first hand, and instead awarded MVP based on advanced metrics very few comprehend.
Back in high school, every day we argued at the lunch table about the NBA and our favorite players. We all loved basketball and we all stated our cases for our favorites day after day. I look back and cherish those hoop talks. A day like today I think back to that lunch table and silently laugh to myself. It’s fun to imagine how much we would’ve roasted each other if someone literally banged on the table for a player based on VORP, RAPTOR, ASSFUQ or whatever other advanced metric people are using to determine players’ value.
“Hoop Talk” is dead and it ended when the StatMuse’s of the world got their hands on an entry into the discussion centered around VORP. That’s why you saw so many players and former players make their case for Joel Embiid. They played ball and they know ball. Most anybody who played at a remotely competitive level doesn’t need an Excel spreadsheet to tell them who can hoop and who can’t. Unfortunately, that’s not who votes.
Instead, we ended up with a scenario where media members based their decision off group think. They were told that the advanced stats favored Jokic so they didn’t want to stray away from how their peers were voting based off that. They had an agenda, and they force fed analytics they barely understood to make their point.
CHANGING THE MEDIA ONLY VOTE
It’s fitting Joel Embiid, the face of the Process, is the figure that’s going to shatter how we view NBA awards now. It’s how the Process all started: going against the collective norms of basketball to do something different.
NBA MVP and many other awards have become watered down non-stories. People have stopped respecting the voting process and see the sham of it all. Media members, many of whom barely watch games across the country, hold all the power. For God sake, there is a company named Tencent that holds two MVP votes. They are the exclusive digital partner of the NBA broadcasting games in China, a country where Sixers games are prohibited from being shown.
We let fans, the media, and coaching staffs decide the NBA All-Star teams which is a nice little fun event. And then, with millions of dollars on the line for players regarding individual awards and All-NBA teams, we go with a strictly media formula. Whether it is changing the dynamic of the voting system or including playoff results within the voting process, it is clear that change is inevitable.
Some of the ballots were revealed shortly before the playoffs began and it was evident Jokic was going to be the runaway winner. And in the two weeks since, Joel Embiid’s play coupled with Jokic’s exit have completely broken the award system. People will no longer care, or ironically, will not hold any value in the Most Valuable Player award.
Joel Embiid broke the system from within, and in a way, that might be even cooler than winning the award itself.