How To Fix The NBA’s MVP Problem
The biggest problem facing the NBA’s MVP award is the same one facing its 2017 frontrunner, Russell Westbrook:
It’s asked to do too much.
The award is the best known of its kind among the big four American sports. It is also the least understood. The ambiguity around “valuable” is a big part of the problem, but so is its overall burden — one award has to honor the most “valuable” player AND the best player AND the best offensive player AND the player who best captured our attention in a given season.
How do we solve this problem? Expand the league’s award slate. The NBA hasn’t had a significant award expansion since 1982, a move that unintentionally created one of our current MVP problems.
Going into the 1982–83 season, the NBA faced a crossroads. The league had a new two-year deal with ESPN for weekly Sunday night games, yet its challenges — both financial and popular — were great enough that Sports Illustrated’s season preview was called “Can The NBA Save Itself?” and included this cheery forecast from Commissioner Larry O’Brien:
“The future of the league is at stake. Right now, there is a dark cloud hanging over the season.”
The NBA’s solution? Innovate. The league added the three-point shot in 1979–80, the dunk contest in 1984, and the three-point contest in 1986. It ended tape-delay broadcasts, caught some luck with star players arriving in key markets, and promoted longtime executive David Stern to commissioner in 1984.
Oh, and one more thing. It invented two awards: Defensive Player of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year.
The awards were pushed by communications executive Brian McIntyre, who joined the league office in 1981 after three years with the Bulls. (He also pushed the Comeback Player of the Year, which became the Most Improved Player award when the Comeback award kept going to players who had overcome drug addiction.) While in Chicago, McIntyre observed that fans lacked adequate appreciation for NBA skills not on the stat sheet.
“You would talk to college coaches who came into the NBA, and they would say, ‘My God, the amount of work and preparation defenses play here, you don’t really see (in college),’” McIntyre explained via phone last month. “It just wasn’t getting the credit.”
McIntyre saw the same dearth of fan appreciation for the sacrifice of talented players who came off the bench. Unselfishness and a team-centric attitude is central to basketball, yet these traits remained veiled to the average fan. He helped change that before the ‘82-’83 season by pitching the two awards.
“I ran it past Stern,” said McIntyre, who retired in 2014. “He took it into the commissioner, and boom, we did it.”
The plan worked. The first two Defensive Player of the Year awards went to Bucks guard Sidney Moncrief, whose defensive skills went relatively unnoticed among fans because he wasn’t in the league leaders in steals or blocks.
Yet the new honor had an unintended consequence that was not felt for probably 10 years: with no award for offensive greatness, game-changing defensive players stopped earning serious consideration for MVP. That meant dominant defenders like Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo received fewer MVP votes than mid-level All-Stars like Jermaine O’Neal and Peja Stojakovic.
Dar-Wei Chen at this website studied this phenomenon this season, noting that Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994 was the last league MVP known as much for defense as offense. That year, Hakeem joined Michael Jordan as the only players to win MVP and DPOY in the same season.
Chen observed that from 1956 to 1965 (based on Basketball Reference data), only 41% of an MVP’s value came from his offense. That number increased as defensive play — but not offensive play — received standalone honors.
In the 1968–69 season, the NBA debuted the All-Defensive Teams; from 1966 to 1975, 55% of the MVP’s value came from offense. The next 10-year period included the creation of Defensive Player of the Year, with an MVP’s value rising to 62.5% offense. For the most recent period Chen studied, 2006 to 2016, the value of the MVP was nearly 73% offense.
Kawhi Leonard is shifting that discussion, as the faction that supports his MVP candidacy notes that he is a “two-way player” while Westbrook and James Harden are not. But the numbers don’t support the narrative: current MVP vote totals collected by SBN’s The Dream Shake show Leonard a distant third in the voting behind Westbrook and Harden.
Therefore I propose a new system of awards, one that would clear up a great deal of the annual MVP debate. The NBA needs to take after MLB, the NHL, the NFL, and man, even the Grammys, and create a more diverse set of awards to honor individual excellence. With Westbrook, Harden, LeBron, and, Kawhi duking it out for MVP supremacy, we need a new system more than ever.
Here are the awards I would like to see:
Best Offensive Player — Forget “of the year.” This award is for the best offensive talent, period. Voters should consider stats, both traditional and advanced, as well as the emotional experience of watching the player.
Best Defensive Player — The defensive version of BOP. Basically just the DPOY, rebranded for continuity.
Best Player — Again, forget narrative, “meaning,” impact, and any other unmeasurable metric. In a giant pickup game with every player available and the highest possible stakes, who do you take first?
Player of the Year — This is where your “narrative” factor from the MVP comes into play. Who owned the season? Who did we spend the most time discussing?
Most Valuable Player — This award aligns with the current MVP award and includes all of its ambiguity without the added burden of standing in for the game’s best player, its best offensive player, or its most talked about player.
When I assigned these five awards two years ago, from 1991 to 2015, the most contentious MVP votes during that time benefited greatly from the hypothetical awards. Here are five examples:
I ran the idea past McIntyre, and asked if the league views the ambiguity around “valuable” a problem or a benefit.
“You would have to talk to the current people, but my feeling back in those days was that a little debate never hurts,” McIntyre said. “Why define it?”
McIntyre’s feeling is that my idea relegates the MVP recipient to a second-tier status.
“You’re not the best offensive player, you’re not the player of the year, you’re not the person they talked about the most,” he said. “You have just as many arguments, just with more awards.
“But hey,” he added, “it makes for an interesting article, so throw it out there.”
I will! Without further ado, here is the hypothetical NBA award slate of 2017.
Best Offensive Player — Russell Westbrook and James Harden
Explanation: Westbrook is self-explanatory. He averaged a triple double AND led the league in scoring. Yet if Westbrook had the same season he did even just last year, the benchmark for offensive brilliance would be Harden, who finished two-and-a-half points shy of Westbrook in points per game while leading the league in assists and offensive win shares. Harden’s performance also helped transformed the Rockets — the team finished second in points, third in assists, and made the most threes in a season in NBA history.
Between the two of them, the advanced offensive stats mostly favor Westbrook: 1st in PER (Harden was 5th), 1st in assist percentage (Harden was 2nd), 1st in usage (Harden was 4th), 1st in offensive box plus-minus (Harden was 3rd), and 1st in VORP (Harden was 2nd).
Regardless, these two guys played a statistical cat-and-mouse game all season, creating new bar after new bar for offensive insanity. They share this award.
Best Defensive Player — Kawhi Leonard
Explanation: For the first time in his career, Leonard — the two-time defending DPOY (and two-time defending hypothetical BDP) — made more news for his offense than his defense. No matter. In a league dominated by offensive perimeter gurus (Russ & Harden, Steph/KD/Klay, Bron/Kyrie, Isaiah, DeRozen, Jimmy Buckets, John Wall, and others), the 6’7 Leonard pulls tougher assignments night-in and night-out than any of the L’s marvelous defensive centers.
Leonard is so good defensively that he inspired an article by Matt Moore of CBS arguing that the Spurs were better defensively without him because opponents neutralized him by using their best player as a decoy. Many readers took offense to this thesis, but I thought this solidified Leonard’s credentials even more.
Unfortunately for Draymond Green, Kawhi seems destined once again to snag both the real DPOY and the as-of-now imaginary BDP. Green is a wonderful defensive talent. He is more versatile than Leonard 1 through 5, and is the defensive anchor for the league’s best team. But Leonard is more devastating 1 through 3 at a position that demands nightly greatness. I’ll take The Claw.
Best Player — LeBron James
Explanation: I am a Michael Jordan historian. I am a Michael Jordan superfan. So believe me when I tell you that I have never seen anyone do in two straight NBA Finals what LeBron did in 2015 and 2016. First he comes 1.2 assists per game shy of averaging a 35-point triple double while leading an undermanned (and that’s generous) Cavaliers team to a 2–1 series lead on Golden State and an eventual six-game loss.
Then he becomes the first player ever in any playoff series to lead both teams in total points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks, all while erasing a 3–1 deficit against a 73-win team and becoming the first team since 1978 to win Game 7 of the Finals on the road.
For six straight seasons, LeBron James has been the reason his team made the Finals, with three championships in that time. Until he shows an inability to win when the stakes are highest, he is still my pick for Best Player, and my goodness, it’s not as if he’s slacking: 2017 was one of his finest statistical outputs, with career bests in rebounds and assists while making 55% of his shots and 36% of his threes.
He did all this while tying Allen Iverson as the oldest player (32) since the NBA-ABA merger to lead the NBA in minutes per game in the regular season, and did so in a season in which he could reasonably expect to play another 20 playoff games. As I type this, he has the Cavs 8–0 in the playoffs while averaging a 34–9–7 in more than 42 minutes per game.
So, seriously, chill with the “LeBron is resting” critiques.
Player of the Year — Russell Westbrook
Explanation: All hail the Brodie!
From the time his partner Durant bolted for the Bay, Westbrook re-tooled as a one-man war chest. He would have made news as the league’s leading scorer, as OKC’s new leading man taking the Thunder to the playoffs, or certainly as the NBA’s new triple-double king.
Instead, he did all three, and would have three-peated as the All-Star MVP if the game was not in Anthony Davis’s home town.
Most Valuable Player — Russell Westbrook
LeBron’s got his award. Kawhi’s got his award. Russ has two awards. And James Harden has one.
We are now free to assign the MVP to whomever we deem most valuable, however we wish to define the term.
Rather than choose the best player on the best team, or the best player overall, I’m going with the player who simply epitomizes what “value” means to me: Russell Westbrook.
As stated, he had one of the greatest individual seasons in NBA history. It was kind of amazing to watch NBA fans “ho hum” Russ’s triple-double chase, (which seemingly only Oscar Robertson properly appreciated), and then to also watch them practically forget that he was doing it while leading the league in scoring, becoming only the third player in NBA history to average a 30–8–8, after Oscar (four times) and Jordan (once).
Getting more philosophical with it, and more to the point of “value,” Westbrook lost his best teammate and a former league MVP, and took that as a personal challenge to both lead his team and show his worth. In that respect, this was his 1994 Scottie Pippen season, and Westbrook showed as much heart, toughness, and value this year as Pip did then.
Naturally, Pippen got squat for his efforts. Aside from the All-Star MVP, the Bulls star finished third in the MVP voting and an absurd fourth in DPOY. If I had my way, I would have given Pippen the MVP and the Best Defensive Player, with Shaq winning Best Offensive Player, David Robinson winning Best Player, and Hakeem winning Player of the Year. A much more reasonable spread that actually tells the story of what was a changing-of-the-guard NBA season.
Next month on June 26, after the conclusion of this year’s NBA Finals, the league will host an all-encompassing award show, which it announced last November as “the first time that all recipients will be honored on the same night.” That’s not exactly true. In June 1983 when Moncrief won the NBA’s first-ever Defensive Player of the Year and Bobby Jones of the 76ers won the NBA’s first-ever Sixth Man of the Year, they received their honors at a league-hosted awards banquet in New York. Those two awards achieved Brian McIntyre’s goal — fans today have a better collective understanding of talent, achievement, and standing among NBA players.
The awards show next month will likely see Westbrook hoist the 2017 MVP trophy. He leads Harden 517–367 in total points and 42–18 in 1st place votes. Kawhi, as we said, is third in the voting at 140 points and four 1st place votes, followed by LeBron with 108 and two.
If only there were an award for each of them.
Jack M Silverstein is a sports historian with Windy City Gridiron and author of “How The GOAT Was Built: 6 Life Lessons From the 1996 Chicago Bulls.” Say hey at @readjack.
