[OC] and the results are in for… LVP. LEAST Valuable Player (2023-2024)

While the media may focus on the MVP award and other prestigious honors, reddit has the distinct honor of awarding the LVP trophy. [**The LEAST Valuable Player**](https://movieweb.com/home-alone-movies-ranked-franchise/). It’s a tradition that dates back to 2017, with [Monta Ellis](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/64yxyp/forget_mvp_who_should_win_least_valuable_player/) winning the trophy in what would be his last year in the league. Other winners include: [Jamal Crawford](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8ai7pl/the_results_are_in_for_least_valuable_player/) in 2018, [Solomon Hill](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/b8xut2/the_results_are_in_for_least_valuable_player/) in 2019, [Isaiah Thomas](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/hukwu8/the_results_are_in_for_least_valuable_player/) in 2020, [Aron Baynes](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/nhp7j2/and_the_results_are_in_for_the_least_valuable/) in 2021, [Facu Campazzo](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/uiye0u/and_the_results_are_in_for_the_least_valuable/) in 2022, and [Will Barton](
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/132s7l3/oc_the_results_are_in_for_lvp_least_valuable/) last season. Notably, most of those players won the LVP and never saw meaningful minutes again.

Who will join that illustrious list? Before we get to that, let’s remember the criteria and caveats:

— Obviously, the worst players in the league are the ones who sit at the end of the bench and don’t get any playing time. However, this award focuses on players who log a decent amount of minutes and consequently affected their team’s play the most. Simply put: the more you play, the more damage you can do.

— And that actual “damage” is important. If you’re on a tanking team, no one cares about your poor play; it may even be a positive. We also tend to ignore young players (under 21) who are still developing and can’t be expected to be solid players yet.

— Similarly, we don’t want to judge players within the context of their salary any more than the actual MVP does. We also do not weigh in injuries either. We want to focus on players’ on-court performance instead.

— We also wanted to note that this yearly column can come across as a little mean spirited, which is not our intention. Even the worst player in the NBA is in the top 99% percentile at their sport and making more money than most of us could dream about. And to be fair, even the worst player in the league probably costs his team only a couple of games. Hardly anyone has a VORP (“value over replacement player”) worse than -2, so they shouldn’t be the scapegoat for an entire organization. In many cases, they’re simply played too much or played in the wrong role. But when the stakes are this high, it’s fair to criticize players or their teams for that negative impact.

So with all that said, let’s take a look at the dishonorable mentions and the official top 5.

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######**(dis)honorable mentions**

Remember that our criteria ignores salary and injury, which may be named the “**Ben Simmons** rule” from now on. He’s probably the most overpaid player in the NBA, but that would be a different award than ours. The same could apply to **Bruce Brown**, who took his fancy new $22M contract and promptly regressed back to 32.3% from deep this year. Hopefully he gives Nikola Jokic a nice Christmas gift for helping him cash in.

Our rule that “the more you play, the more damage you can do” helps spare some veterans. 35-year-old **Ish Smith** was one of the worst players this year per minute, and 38-year-old **P.J. Tucker** averaged an incredibly low 3.9 points per 36. Alas, both played fewer than 750 minutes total, limiting the damage.

Others who received consideration based on advanced stats — like **Davion Mitchell**, **Jordan Clarkson**, and **Georges Niang** — but their fan bases defended them, citing the context of their roles. Other names who got votes included: **Andrew Wiggins**, **Taurean Prince**, and two Mavs in **Tim Hardaway Jr.** and **Grant Williams**. In many of those cases, we’re talking about players who need to hit their shots to be effective — and didn’t do that enough this year.

So who will be on the ballot instead? Let’s find out!

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######**OFFICIAL “LVP” BALLOT**

**(5) C Nikola Vucevic, Chicago: 34.3 minutes per game, +0.1 BPM**

We’re going to list players and their “box plus minus,” an advanced stat that attempts to evaluate a player’s impact per 100 possessions. It’s not a perfect stat though and has some biases, including boosting rebounders like Nikola Vucevic. On paper, Vucevic’s averages (18 points, 10 rebounds) shouldn’t put him on this ballot, but user u/bullpaw channeled his inner Karl Rove and wrote a great campaign speech:

*”Consistently takes the most shots on the team nightly with a blistering 52.8% TS. He shoots 27% from three on 5 attempts per game with by far the most wide open shots in the league because defenders don’t respect his shot at all, and out of 131 bigs that qualify, he’s bottom 30 in percentage around the rim. He’s always had brick hands as a Bull, but it’s been even more pronounced this year. He consistently fumbles at least 1-2 passes a night leading to a turnover.”*

*”Putting his dreadful black hole offense aside, he’s also one of the worst center defenders in the league, if not the worst starting center defender. He’s statistically been the worst rim protecting center in the league for the past few years, and as a result we scheme our entire defense around keeping opponents out of the paint at all costs to protect Vooch. We overhelp any time someone tries to drive, and as a result we give up the most 3 pointers in the league.*

*As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also consistently the lowest effort player on the team and has multiple occasions over the past two seasons where he’s complained to the coaching staff that he doesn’t get enough touches.”*

*”Joakim Noah is my favorite Bull of all time and Vooch is the complete antithesis of what I loved about Noah.”*

Vucevic actually boosted his numbers down the stretch after bullpaw called him out (rising up to 54.0% TS), but that’s still a low mark for a big. In fact, you can argue that he was outplayed by backup Andre Drummond this year.

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**(4) PF Jalen McDaniels, Toronto: 10.8 minutes per game, -9.0 BPM**

Jalen McDaniels (brother of Jaden) didn’t play enough to rank much higher, but his brickwork deserves a shoutout. You could hear the rims clank from all the way in Canada. This season, McDaniels only made 65/189 from the field (good for 34.4%) and only 12/71 from deep (16.9%). His BPM and on/off (-9.2) were particularly bad as well.

McDaniels defenders can argue “sample size” here, but there’s no denying the ugliness of this particular sample. He would have ranked last in win shares/48 if he played enough to qualify. And even if you aggregate his impact with a stat like VORP (value over replacement player) he ranked 7th worst despite the limited minutes. These are the types of numbers we usually see for rookies; in fact, 4 of the 6 players who ranked worse were under the age of 21.

If you glanced at the current standings, you’d presume Toronto had been tanking all season long, but it was more of a late surge up the lottery for them. In the preseason, their over/under was 36.5. Missing on McDaniels is one of the reasons they had to pivot and dive into the abyss.

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**(3) PG Spencer Dinwiddie, BKN/LAL: 28.3 minutes per game, -1.9 BPM**

Famously an advocate of bitcoin, Spencer Dinwiddie’s value hasn’t gone up and done in the same way. Sadly, it’s been more like an NFT. At one time, Dinwiddie averaged 20.6 PPG over an entire season. Injuries and shooting difficulty have sapped his effectiveness since then, particularly around the rim. He shot 39.1% from the field for Brooklyn, and only 37.6% since joining the Lakers late in the year (including 40.8% from two-point range).

What also “helps” Dinwiddie’s candidacy is the fact that he’s logging a lot of minutes and had a lot of impact. He played in 76 games and started 52 of them, including 48/48 in Brooklyn. The Nets’ season was a stinker for multiple reasons, but Dinwiddie was among them. On their sub, Nets fans described his play as “disinterested.” That’s never the type of word you want to hear from your starting guard. To make matters worse, that disappointment was especially impactful for this franchise. Toronto had time to pivot and try to protect their draft pick (top 6 protected), but Brooklyn never had theirs to begin with due to the prior James Harden trade. They had every reason to try and win, but they simply couldn’t. As a result, both Dinwiddie and his old coach Jacque Vaughn are no longer in town.

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**(2) SF Cam Reddish, L.A. Lakers: 20.5 minutes per game, -3.2 BPM**

Give Cam Reddish this: he *looks* the part. With his 6’8″ frame and perimeter skill set, it’s easy to understand why he got Paul George comparisons in high school. It’s even understandable why his draft peers voted him as the best prospect in the class (over Zion Williamson and Ja Morant). If you had to cast a star basketball player for a movie, Reddish may be at the top of the list.

That is… until you yelled “action.” Reddish flashes moments here and there, but he’s never sustained a stretch of production. Even in college, he only shot 35.6% from the field. In 5 years in the NBA, he’s been under 40% from the field in 3 of them, including this year for the Lakers. His per game averages — 5.4 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.0 assists — look even worse when you consider he started 26/48 games. Reddish has some merit defensively, but his marginal impact on offense washes that away. If Reddish and/or Taurean Prince played better this year, the Lakers may have avoided the play-in and may have avoided Denver in round one.

—

**(1) SG Jordan Poole, Washington: 30.1 minutes per game, -4.1 BPM**

For a player who had been scapegoated and treated like a literal punching bag in Golden State, a move to Washington must have felt like an enormous sigh of relief. And an enormous opportunity. Jordan Poole loves taking shots — and he’d get all he could handle in D.C. It was the equivalent of a kid in a candy store or Kevin McCallister getting left *Home Alone*. Only, in this case, instead of a kid taking bubble baths and ordering ice cream sundaes, you come home to realize that he flooded the house and spread feces on the walls.

Poole was *that* stinky in his debut year for the Wizards. Given his flashing greenlight, there was some thought Poole may be able to average 25 PPG this year, but he only mustered 17.4 PPG due to his inefficiency. He shot 49.2% from two, 32.6% from three. His best quality was his free throw percentage (87.7%), but he only mustered up 2.8 attempts per game, a 2+ decline from the previous year in Golden State. Overall, his true shooting of 52.9% is brutal for an “offensive” player. Defensively, he’s always been a sieve (and was again with -1.9 BPM on that end). Whatever advanced stat you pick, BPM, VORP, on/off, it’s awful.

Really, the only question about Jordan Poole’s candidacy is whether he should qualify at all. After all, our bylaws state that players on tanking teams aren’t strongly considered. Therein the question remains: were the Wizards’ *trying* to employ Poole as a tank commander? And if so, wasn’t his year an indirect success?

I’m skeptical, for a few reasons. For one, the Wizards acquired Poole on a multi-year contract; if they thought he was trash, I doubt they’d have done that. And if they were destined to win 15-20 games, I doubt they’d have fired Wes Unseld in midseason. This was never going to be a playoff team, but there were enough competent and veteran pieces (Tyus Jones, Deni Avdija, Kyle Kuzma, Daniel Gafford) to flirt with a play-in if Poole had been the best version of himself. Instead, he put up a season that may be arguably the worst ever by the “go-to” player on a team. For that infamous achievement, he deserves this recognition.

by ZandrickEllison