Draymond Green picked the exact morning his Warriors play Luka Doncic’s Lakers to go on his own podcast and declare that Luka Doncic will never win an MVP: “This is the last possible year he can win it.” Hours later the two teams met in the season opener for both franchises, Draymond’s Warriors against the guy he’d just buried on a podcast mic hours earlier. The timing is shameless, and it’s also one of the better pregame mind-games tricks Draymond’s pulled since his last viral podcast take.
This was never really about Luka.
Draymond built the whole thing around LeBron James, saying in the same conversation, “Same thing happened with Bron, you can’t tell me he only should have 4 MVP’s.” That LeBron comparison is doing the real work in this argument — Draymond’s actual claim is that MVP voters go numb to greatness once it stops being new. He laid out the mechanism himself: if Luka suddenly started to “go average 34 points a game,” voters would shrug it off as just Luka being Luka instead of rewarding him for it. Voter fatigue, basically, and Draymond picked Luka to test the theory on. He made the identical argument about Jayson Tatum in that same sit-down, which is the tell — this isn’t a Luka problem specifically, it’s a theory Draymond’s been shopping around, and he’s testing it on two guys who play nowhere near his own locker room.
Stephen Curry has the same deadline tonight.
Curry is opening his 18th NBA season the same night, chasing the same MVP voters, with the identical “we’ve seen this before” shrug waiting on him that Draymond just described for Luka. Draymond didn’t say a word about that part. He picked the Dallas version of the argument because it costs him nothing, instead of pointing at the same voters who’ve been slow to credit Steph sitting a few feet from his own locker. Draymond’s whole podcast segment runs on the idea that greatness stops registering once it’s old news, and nobody in that building has been doing this longer than the guy he plays with every single night.
Here’s Draymond actually saying it, in case you think this is getting exaggerated in the retelling:
https://twitter.com/Fullcourtpass/status/2112881458285101161
Luka didn’t bother going on a podcast to answer back. He took out a full-page newspaper ad instead.
https://twitter.com/UnderdogNBA/status/2112915399172030722
None of that means Draymond’s wrong about the fatigue being real. Luka Doncic led the NBA in scoring last season at 33.5 points a game and still finished fourth in MVP voting, well behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s league-best 64 wins in Oklahoma City — proof voters already reward winning over raw numbers exactly the way Draymond’s describing. That part of his argument holds up whether or not you buy the motive behind it.
Draymond’s actual MVP pick this season, for what it’s worth, is Jalen Brunson, a chip-on-the-shoulder story and not a numbers one. Make of that what you will. A guy who thinks voters reward a narrative over a stat line sure found himself a narrative to reward.
Convenient that the MVP deadline he announced landed on Luka Doncic, hours before tipoff, and not on the guy three lockers down chasing the exact same shrug every single night.
