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Playoff MVPs
After the Pacers finished off the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals last week, Pascal Siakam was voted Conference Finals MVP ahead of Tyrese Haliburton. This caused something of a stir. I think it's silly even to have MVPs in the playoff rounds, but I decided to look into it.
For each Pacers victory, I ranked the top eight players by the sum of their game score plus +/-. I assigned eight points for the top player, seven points for the second-best, down to one point for the eighth.
Haliburton topped his teammates in Games 1 and 4; Siakam was third and second in those games. Siakam was the leader in Games 2 and 6, with Haliburton finishing fourth and second. (The Knicks won Games 3 and 5.)
Adding the points together, Siakam finished with 29 (6+8+7+8) and Haliburton finished with 28 (8+5+8+7). So, those who voted for Siakam were not wrong.
In the Western Conference Finals, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander easily led his team in all four victories. No controversy there.
In Game 1 of the Finals, Obi Toppin from the Pacers' bench is now in the lead for Finals MVP. He came through with a strong 3-point shooting night in the unlikely Indiana win. Using the same metric as with the Conference Finals, he has 8 points for the Finals MVP Chase. Haliburton is in second place. Siakam, considered the second-best player on the team behind Haliburton, had a dismal +/- and is sixth.
Can Tom Thibodeau win a championship?
On the June 6 Bill Simmons podcast, beginning around 53:40, Simmons and Zach Lowe discussed the replacement for fired Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. Thibodeau has a reputation for overplaying his starters, wearing them out, and not allowing his bench players to get into a rhythm. That criticism aside, Lowe compared him to recent (and fired) NBA championship coaches like Mike Malone (2023 Nuggets), Mike Budenholzer (2021 Bucks), and Frank Vogel (2020 Lakers), saying none of them are elite like Rick Carlisle and Erik Spoelstra in making in-game adjustments. However, like them, Thibodeau can "absolutely" win a championship with the "right talent, right year, right circumstances" because he can raise the floor of a team.
When Lowe said "right talent," my mind went to "superstar." Malone had Nikola Jokic, Budenholzer had Giannis Antetokounmpo, Frank Vogel had LeBron James (with Anthony Davis).
It is rare for an NBA team to win a championship without a very special player. Forty-one of the last fifty Finals-winning teams had at least one player who was an MVP that season or a previous one. Two had first-team All-NBAers who were future MVPs (Bill Walton, 1977 Trail Blazers, and Larry Bird, 1982 Celtics). The 1975 Warriors had Rick Barry, and the 2019 Raptors had Kawhi Leonard, among the best players who never won the MVP. The 2024 Celtics had perennial All-NBA first-teamer Jayson Tatum. The 1989 and 1990 Pistons were led by Isiah Thomas, who had been a five-time All-NBAer.
Only two title-winning teams, the 2005 Pistons, coached by Larry Brown, and the 1979 Supersonics, coached by Lenny Wilkens, had no players who had been a first-team All-NBAer or named to 2021's 75-member 75th Anniversary Team.
I decided to look at Thibodeau's talent over his 13-season career. The only players he's had who were ever selected First-Team All-NBA were Derrick Rose (who also won an MVP) and Joakim Noah. They each earned the honor once and never made any other All-NBA team.
Thibs's Bulls teams, 2010-15, included a young Jimmy Butler for four seasons, and a still-great Pau Gasol for one. However, it's hard to fathom who could have beaten LeBron James and his Heat and Cavaliers teams of this period.
Since then, the best players Thibs has coached are Karl-Anthony Towns, Julius Randle, and Jalen Brunson. None have ever been selected for the First-Team All-NBA or made any All-NBA team more than three times, and they've all been in the league a long time.
They're very good, but not elite. That is, they're not MVP-caliber, which is what you need to win a title.
I don't know where Tom Thibodeau will go next, or when. Wherever he winds up, I hope he has a truly great player and a solid roster. Then we can see if Thibs really can coach a team to an NBA title.
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