Who's the MVP?

[gradyandrew]

I think Kawhi is hands down the best player in the league, but Russ will win the MVP. Hopefully Kawhi gets the DPOY as his consolation prize, but I can also see Draymond winning it.

[nazrmohamed]

I like Kobes idea. Co-Mvps cuz I think Harden played just as good as Westy. Came up short on the double doubles but came up big in the win column and he was just as dominant. I know the system helps but dude balled this year.

[Koopa Troopa]

Leonard deserves it but you have to give it to Westbrook. Hes taking a bunch of bums to the playoffs with historical stats. Take him off the team they go 0-82

[n8 the gr8]

I like the idea of co-MVP this year. But based on my definition of MVP (I always go by: whose team would lose the most games by them being removed) I think Westbrook would get it.

[cragganmor]

westbrook. the guy is having a historical season, carries his team each and every night. the rox w/o harden are a better team than okc w/o westy.

[shakespeare]

Westbrook did it again at the buzzer.

[nbafreak724]

Shut it down. Westbrook is the Bestbrook. MVP right there.

[thewatcher]

Now that his season is officially over, I'm going to cast my vote for Westbrook. He's such an interesting person, he's been an enigma, (by choice), but seeing his humility and respect for my very first childhood hero, the Big O, made this an easy choice, in case you missed it, worth watching:
http://www.nba.com/video/2017/04/21/rus ... sation-nba

[shakespeare]

6th seed and defeated 3-1 in the opening round?

Nowadays, we're not asking much of our MVPs.

The last and only time in modern NBA history that a most valuable player shot 42% was Iverson in 2001. But he carried the Sixers all the way to the Finals.

[H20Knick]

6th seed and defeated 3-1 in the opening round?

Nowadays, we're not asking much of our MVPs.

The last and only time in modern NBA history that a most valuable player shot 42% was Iverson in 2001. But he carried the Sixers all the way to the Finals.

its a regular season award though shakes.

if steve nash was deserving of 2, i have no problem with Westbrook winning one this year. I dont think any player was more valuable to his team. There are at least 4 Rockets who would be the 2nd best player on the Thunder. Maybe even 6.

[n8 the gr8]

its a regular season award though shakes.

if steve nash was deserving of 2, i have no problem with Westbrook winning one this year. I dont think any player was more valuable to his team. There are at least 4 Rockets who would be the 2nd best player on the Thunder. Maybe even 6.

When I start going down this line of thinking I actually think it's closer. That's not to say that Westbrook's cast is better, but that the difference between their casts isn't as great as the difference between their seeds/records. If I were to take one guy off of either team (outside of Harden and Westbrook) I'd take Sam Adams. I know the stats aren't gaudy but to me he's the best defensive player in the series, I'm really high on him.

I'm not going to go down the roster guy by guy but to me Harden has made solid guys better. Oladipo has the tools to be the 3rd best player in the series but he didn't play up to his potential. Harden and D'Antoni made a bunch of role players look like borderline stars.

[H20Knick]

When I start going down this line of thinking I actually think it's closer. That's not to say that Westbrook's cast is better, but that the difference between their casts isn't as great as the difference between their seeds/records. If I were to take one guy off of either team (outside of Harden and Westbrook) I'd take Sam Adams. I know the stats aren't gaudy but to me he's the best defensive player in the series, I'm really high on him.

I'm not going to go down the roster guy by guy but to me Harden has made solid guys better. Oladipo has the tools to be the 3rd best player in the series but he didn't play up to his potential. Harden and D'Antoni made a bunch of role players look like borderline stars.

They won 1 more game than this in 2014-2015 though. 55-27 this year, 56-26 then. Third in the West both seasons. If Harden advocates really want to make this about Harden winning more games, then go hand the trophy to Kawhi Leonard.

Guys with 22+mpg in 14-15 (In order of mpg): Harden, Ariza, Beverley, Howard, Motiejunas, Terrence Jones, , JSmoove, Corey Brewer
Guys with 22+mpg in 16-17 (In order of mpg): Harden, Ariza, Gordon, Beverley, Anderson, LouWilliams, Capella, Troy Williams

They replaced Howard (16ppg), Motiejunas (12ppg), Terrence Jones (12 ppg), Josh Smith (12 ppg), and Corey Brewer (12 ppg) with Eric Gordon (16.2ppg, career 16.6ppg), Ryan Anderson (13.6ppg, career 13.2 ppg), Lou Williams (14.9 ppg this season in HOU after 18.6 spending the first 2/3rds of the year in LA, career 12.8 ppg), Clint Capella (12.6 ppg, career 9.0 ppg, but he only played 8 mpg as a rookie), and Tony Williams (9.7 ppg vs 6.2 career).

I.e. They have better scorers and they're scoring more, but none of the players they brought in are scoring any better than they did before they played for Houston. It's not like Harden and D'antoni have taken some scrubs and turned them into snipers. Eric Gordon had no problem scoring. Lou Williams was the Lakers best player, Ryan Anderson was basically born to sit in the corner and shoot 3s. Now you have no more Harden vs Dwight beef splitting the locker room in half and Josh Smith is gone. So, while Harden's assist numbers are fantastic, a lot of it has to do with the fact that he has the ball the whole game and a bunch of cold blooded scorers around him. Russell Westbrook does not have that. Harden has taken a team, equally as talented as one 2 years ago, and gotten them back to where they were 2 years ago, just with better individual stats. The fact that OKC only lost 8 more games this year despite losing one of the top 5 players in the league and a former MVP is way more impressive to me.

[shakespeare]

its a regular season award though shakes.

Solid, as usual, but it's just me stirring the pot, being difficult. I don't understand how myself and a couple others made the exact same argument for Harden a few years ago when he led the Rockets to the '13 playoffs with absolutely no other star players on the roster, but everyone spoke of the low seed. Westbrook's current team is light-years better than Harden's '12 team, and Houston actually won 2 games in the playoffs against OKC that season.

Don't get me wrong -- Westbrook is very deserving as well, so is Kawhi, but if Harden didn't win the award based on the same arguments then what changed? Is it the triple-double factors? Gotta be. All Westbrook has to do is average a triple-double for the rest of his career and make the playoffs and he's MVP every season? If he didn't average the triple-double, I'm willing to bet we're not having this discussion.

At the same time, the year Curry won over Harden (who was clearly the MVP as the majority of players later agreed), it was all about the wins. I don't really buy that Westbrook had no help, either. Harden was/is surrounded by role players the same as Westbrook. They're ALL role players, both teams. But I'd take Oladipo and Adams over anyone on the Rockets.

For me, it's not Harden vs Westbrook: I believe LeBron had the MVP season. His numbers and percentages are significantly better than any other candidates. But I also believe Harden continues to be short-changed, to the point where the arguments once made against him are now made in favor of Westbrook.

That doesn't make sense.

[shakespeare]

I don't think any player was more valuable to his team.

When you get time, show me how Westbrook was more valuable to this season's OKC team than Harden back in '12 during his 1st year with the Rockets.

Before Harden's arrival, Houston failed to make the playoffs with a core of Dragic, Lowry, Parsons, Courtney Lee, Kevin Martin (all of whom were gone except Parsons when Harden signed). They signed Lin and Omer Asik.

[H20Knick]

When you get time, show me how Westbrook was more valuable to this season's OKC team than Harden back in '12 during his 1st year with the Rockets.

Before Harden's arrival, Houston failed to make the playoffs with a core of Dragic, Lowry, Parsons, Courtney Lee, Kevin Martin (all of whom were gone except Parsons when Harden signed). They signed Lin and Omer Asik.

Well Shakes! Thanks for asking!

I think PER has a lot to do with it. Or it least it correlates well to how voting actually goes. Lets take 2012-13 for instance. The top 3 MVP vote getters were LBJ, Durant, Melo, Paul. If you look at their PER, Lebron was 1st, KD was 2nd, Melo was 4th. (Chris Paul was 3rd in PER.. he was 4th in MVP voting). So the top 4 guys in votes were the top 4 guys in PER.

That's not always the case though. Let's move to 13-14.
MVP Votes:
1. Durant (1st in PER)
2. Lebron (2nd in PER)
3. Griffin (11th in PER)
Again, the winner in PER wins the MVP. Griffin was all the way at 11 in MVP voting, but it's not like he got any 1st place votes, 5 of the guys in the top 11 in PER didn't make the playoffs, the remaining 3 guys were Paul (his own teammate), Westbrook (the 1st place guy's teammate) and Steph Curry, who finished 6th in MVP voting. Moreover, lets look at their actual values. KD's PER was 29.9, Lebron's was 29.4, the net was 26.97 for Kevin Love. Obviously a huge gap between the top two and everyone else, and go figure, that race was really Durant vs Lebron the whole way.

Now, things APPEAR to get interesting in 14-15, but a deeper look shows the exact same result!
MVP Votes
1. Steph Curry (3rd in PER)
2. James Harden (5th in PER)
3. Lebron James (8th in PER)
The top two guys in PER were Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook, neither of them made the playoffs. So Steph Curry was the highest PER who made the playoffs... and he won. The next highest guy in PER was Kevin Durant, who also missed the playoffs and only played 27 games (yet somehow still qualifies for PER). So the next highest eligible guy who made the playoffs was.... James Harden. So again, the top two guys in PER who made the playoffs, led the MVP voting and the guy with the higher PER won. If you're wondering, the 6th guy in PER was Hassan Whiteside, who didn't make the playoffs. The one guy who made the playoffs and got snubbed? Chris Paul with the 7th highest PER. But Lebron is Lebron so he's going to finish high no matter what apparently.

So let's move on to 15-16.
1. Steph Curry (1st in PER)
2. Kawhi Leonard (7th in PER)
3. Lebron James (4th in PER)
Now, this to me is the most fun of the cases. Curry destroyed everyone in PER. 31.56. Durant was next at "only" 28.25. Damn you John Hollinger for developing a statistic that can let boban marjanovic end up 3rd, but I guess you could try to use the Value Added stat instead. I like simple stats though, so i'm sticking with PER. Anyway, back to the story, Kawhi is the outlier of all outliers. His PER was 7th (counting Marjanovic). But lets look at some of this. 2 and 4 were Durant and Westbrook. This hurts because they split an argument of who is more valuable between them, so they end up falling together. Lebron was tied with Westbrook for 4th. But he falls til AFTER Kawhi? Why is this? You can bet your ass it has everything to do with the Spurs winning 67 games and the Cavs winning 57 games. Unfortunately for Lebron, at this point, people knew that Kyrie Irving was really damn good at basketball and they probably thought that team should've won more than 57 games in the east with Irving and Love. They should've. Meanwhile 67 games is a whole lot of wins. Also, 40-1 at home, the greatest home record in the history of the NBA. See, this is my problem with the "Harden's team won more games". That argument only really ever comes into play if the team doesnt just win more games, but wins a ton of games in general. You get bonus points for being the best player on a historically great team. The 2016 Spurs finished tied for the 7th best record in NBA history. The Rockets this year aren't a historically great team, so the record isn't really going to come into play.

I also think people just expect more wins out of Lebron's team considering that he's the best player in the game. The bulls won more than 60+ games in all but one of their championship seasons. 51 wins from lebron's team this year is not impressive. He almost disrespects the regular season award because he doesn't always play hard enough. If you think he does play hard enough, then I ask you why his PER isn't higher than everyone elses and how he only has 60+ win season since he was a hungry lone wolf during his first tour in cleveland.

This brings me to 2016-2017...
NBA PER
1. Russell Westbrook 30.70
2. Durant
3. Kawhi 27.62
4. AD
5. Harden 27.43
6. LBJ 27.11

If Westbrook loses, it would be the first time the winner of PER didnt win the MVP in the last 5 years ( i didnt look before that, but maybe its gone on for longer). Kawhi won more games than Harden AND has a higher PER than Harden. Harden's team doesn't have the sort of "all time great" success to get the jump that Kawhi got in the past (which only got him to 2nd. It still wasn't enough to break the Per winner = MVP winner correlation). Additionally, Lebron's PER is lower than Kawhi and Harden AND his team is worse than Kawhi's and Harden's. So no way he's going to win MVP unless people just think he needs more hype.

With these stats in mind, I'm picking Westbrook for MVP. Kawhi will finish 2nd. Harden will finish 3rd.

[H20Knick]

While I have a second

2011-2012
MVP Winner: Lebron. Per Leader: Lebron

2010-2011
MVP Winner: DERRICK ROSE (9th in PER). Per Leader: LEBRON (3rd in MVP votes behind Rose and Lebron)

2009-2010
MVP Winner: Lebron . Per Leader: Lebron

2008-2009
MVP Winner: Lebron. Per Leader: Lebron

2007-2008:
MVP Winner: Kobe (7th in PER). PER leader: Lebron (4th in MVP to Kobe, Paul, and KG)

2006-2007
MVP Winner: Dirk (2nd in PER). PER leader: Wade (12th in MVP)

VERY Interesting things here. The most recent time that the PER winner didn't win MVP was the year Lebron won PER but was the most hated man in basketball and DRose powered the Bulls to the best league in the eastern conference, over Lebron's super team. No doubt that happened for the story. I dont think there is any story that big this year. Hell, there might not be a bigger one ever again.

The time before that, you had Kobe getting back to the top of the mountain, and I think this wreaks of legacy MVP. They realized it was absolute bullshit that Kobe didnt have an MVP to his name. So they gave him one.

The 06-07 one is obvious. I hated this era of basketball. We were fresh off 2 for Steve Nash, so the NBA was in the midst of its "score a lot of points, no more defense please" era and Nash and Dirk were the flagships for this movement. With due credit, Mavs won 67 games, the first time a team had done that since 2000. So that does play a role. This is a "best player on the best team" pick that we dont see as much anymore. Steph backed his up with that PER.

[n8 the gr8]

That was good work H20. Actually has a lot more explanatory power than other people I've seen that tried to predict mvps.

I'd take Oladipo and Adams over anyone on the Rockets.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks that, thought I was going crazy.

[Koopa Troopa]

Um Adams is good but Oladipo was awful.

Ill take Lou Williams, Eric Gordon over him. Those two (or even one of them) woulda been great for Westbrook. They had nobody who could hit an outside shot.

Hell Ill take Ariza Nene and Beverly over Oladipo. Not his fault that OKC thought he could be a no.2 but no, hes 6th man status at best and I think im being generous there.

You guys realize in the playoffs he averaged 10 ppg on 34 percent shooting in 36 minutes per game...

You want that?

[n8 the gr8]

Oladipo absolutely laid an egg in the playoffs but I'd still take him on my team any day.

[shakespeare]

I'd still take him on my team any day.

Same.

I like what Gordon and Williams bring to the Rockets table. Ariza, too. But Oladipo and Adams are the only two players (besides Westbrook and Harden, of course) on both teams that I'm trading for.