Coby White Was Royally Screwed
The Chicago Bulls' rising star finished second in the NBA's Most Improved Player voting behind Tyrese Maxey. But words, numbers and pictures tell us Coby made the bigger leap.
BEING THAT IT’S CROWDSOURCED and thus its accuracy is always in question, we journalists are discouraged from using Wikipedia as a research tool. If we do so, as NBC News points out, we could end up amplifying garbage like this:
Robbie Williams eats domestic pets in pubs for money.
David Beckham was a Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century.
Tony Blair worships Hitler.
Conan O'Brien assaults sea turtles while canoeing.
Sienna Miller has modeled nude.
That said, I’m comfortable with Wiki’s breakdown of the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award, so I’m throwing journalistic best practices out the window and dropping it here:
The NBA's Most Improved Player Award (MIP) is an annual award given to the player who has shown the most progress during the regular season compared to previous seasons. The winner is selected by a panel of sportswriters throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom casts a vote for first, second and third place selections. Each first-place vote is worth five points; each second-place vote is worth three points, and each third-place vote is worth one point. The player with the highest point total, regardless of the number of first-place votes, wins the award. The criteria for selecting the most improved player was initially open-ended, but the NBA clarified in later years that it was intended for an up-and-coming player who improved dramatically and not a player who made a comeback.
Last night, the league announced Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey took home the 2023-24 MIP trophy. Here’s the voting breakdown, as per NBA.com:
Listen, Maxey is a worthy winner. The 23-year-old University of Kentucky product played at an All-Star level for the majority of the season — which explains why, y’know, he was an All-Star — and became Philadelphia’s de facto on-court leader while Joel Embiid was on the shelf for 43 games.
But Coby White was better at getting better, and is thus more worthy. And this isn’t my Chicago Bulls brain whining about the snub. This is about the stats and the visuals.
Numbers-wise, let’s see what StatHead.com tells us about the whole thing:
MAXEY vs. WHITE - 2022-23
MAXEY vs. WHITE - 2023-24
BETWEEN THE 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, White made notably larger leaps in the two of the three major statistical categories. And the margin in the category Maxey exceeded White was razor-thin:
Points
White: +9.4 vs. Maxey: +5.6
Rebounds
White: +1.6 vs. Maxey: +0.8
Assists
Maxey +2.7 vs. White: +2.5
Right about now, the Sixers faithful is thinking, Dude, Maxey’s Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) improvement was +2.1, while White’s was +0.4. Tyrese was way better at making his team way better.
You can’t argue with Philly. (And speaking as somebody who lived in Manayunk for a couple of years, arguing with Philly never ends well.) But if you do indeed want to get into it with the City of Brotherly Shove, you have the perfect talking point in your back pocket:
MIP is an individual award.
Discussion over.
NOW LET’S GO to the videotape. Last season, Maxey was a beast, while Coby was a big ball of meh.
This season, Maxey was still a beast, but so was Coby.
Twelve months ago, Maxey was head and shoulders better than White; today, they’re on the same plane. If 2022-23 Maxey morphed into, say, 2011-2012 Chris Paul, then sure, give him the award, no complaints from anybody. But Maxey evolved into, well, Maxey, while White evolved into, that’s right, Maxey.
No disrespect to Tyrese — who, admittedly, I love to watch — but the numbers and the eye test agree that Coby was robbed.