Make the NBA MVP Award Great Again
Why MVP votes should be cast AFTER the Finals
“This season’s NBA MVP race will be absolutely fascinating. There has not been a race this wide open in a long, long time — maybe ever.”
Remember when I wrote that on October 20, 2016? I sure do. I was damn right too — LeBron James, James, Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard, and even Steph Curry have all had MVP-type seasons and are all going to receive 1st place MVP votes when the ballots are cast today. And ya know what? No matter how much film voters watch, no matter how many advanced analytics they crunch, no matter how many FiveThirtyEight-type charts they study, the voters, in all likelihood, are going to get the MVP wrong.
Yes, when James Harden (my preseason MVP pick) or Russell Westbrook is announced as the MVP at the NBA Awards Show, everyone watching is going to think “yeah that’s cute and all, but [insert LeBron James/Kawhi Leonard/Steph Curry] took his game to a whole other level, kicked ass all playoffs and won the championship, so that MVP Award is somewhat tarnished.”
When the voters get the MVP vote “wrong”, it’s normally because they are too subjective — they allow the media to sway them or they might be biased towards a player they cover or disdain another candidate (see LeBron James circa 2010–11) — or they suffer from voter fatigue — they got tired of voting for Michael Jordan and now get tired of voting for LeBron James every year. Although voters deserve much of the blame for getting MVP vote wrong, the NBA could all but get rid of that subjectivity and voter fatigue in one easy move — allow the voters cast their ballots AFTER the NBA Finals.
Think about it — the whole point of the MVP award is to decide which player is the best player in the NBA that season, right? So why the hell aren’t the playoffs — the most important part of the season — allowed to be incorporated into that vote!?!? Yes, the regular season is great and all, but in today’s NBA, players are put on resting cycles, they openly chase stats, their effort levels wane depending on the time of year and whether the game is nationally televised, etc. The regular season matters, but only like 60% of the time to the best players. The playoffs matter 100% of the time (unless you’re last year’s Houston Rockets) and are the stage where the true superstars separate themselves from the rest of the pack.
Plus, when you only consider the regular season, you begin to grade players on an unfair curve — we see the way LeBron plays in the playoffs and complain when he only averages 26–9–9 because we’ve witnessed him average 30–11–9–2–3 in the Finals against one of the greatest teams in NBA history; we see Steph Curry have the greatest shooting season ever last year and barely even consider him for MVP this season because his numbers are slightly down. It’s real stupid and it unfairly impacts players’ legacies. Why not eliminate the subjectivity, the voter fatigue and the curved scale by voting after the Finals?
If the voters got to wait until after the Finals to vote, some of the major MVP travesties could have been avoided:
1993 — Charles Barkley over Michael Jordan
Guess who squared-off in the 1993 Finals? Barkley’s Suns and Jordan’s Bulls. And guess who was clearly the best player in the series? Micheal Jordan. MJ was far-and-away the best player in the NBA in the 1992–93 season; Barkley was the 2nd-best. However, voters had grown tired of picking MJ as the MVP, so they got too cute and the 2nd-best player in the NBA walked away with the MVP Award. Sad!
1995 — David Robinson over Hakeem Olajuwon
Hakeem The Dream actually finished 5th behind Robinson, Shaq, Karl Malone and Patrick Ewing, and barely ahead of Barkley. Guess what happened in the playoffs? Hakeem beat Malone in the 1st Round. He took down Barkely in the 2nd Round. He absolutely eviscerated the “MVP” David Robinson in the Conference Finals:
And to cap things off, he mollywhopped the MVP Runner-Up — Shaquille O’Neal — in the NBA Finals. Hakeem Olajuwon was the best player in the NBA in the 1994–95 season — the voters just needed the playoffs to realize it.
1997 — Karl Malone over Michael Jordan
Guess whose teams faced-off in the 1997 Finals? Malone’s Jazz and Jordan’s Bulls. Guess what happened? Jordan kicked Malone’s ass and everyone who voted for Malone felt like an idiot. Much like 1993, voters put on their hipster hats and made a trendy vote instead of the right vote. (Side note: imagine those voters’ #outrage when they later found out that their trendy choice once tried to hit on his teammate’s wife by saying he was “hunting for little Mexican girls” 😳).
Anyways, here’s the moment the Malone voters realized they’d made a grave mistake (Malone had just missed 2 free throws with the score tied 82–82 and under 10 seconds remaining):
2007 — Dirk Nowitzki over Tim Duncan (or LeBron James)
Most NBA fans remember this MVP controversy fondly because it involved the “We Believe” Warriors upsetting the 1-seed Mavericks in the 1st Round — and not just upsetting them, but blowing them TF out. Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes made Dirk look like a bum for most of the series. There’s no way he was the best player in the NBA that season because he shrunk when it mattered the most — and against an 8-seed for that matter.
On the other hand, Timmy Duncan had his typical boring, but productive season and won another NBA Title. LeBron also had a memorable playoff run — including the legendary 29 of his team’s last 30 points in a win against the Detroit Pistons in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. When it mattered the most, Duncan and LeBron were the league’s best players in 2007, not Dirk.
2011 — Derrick Rose over LeBron James (or possibly Dirk or Dwyane Wade)
After LeBron took his talents to South Beach, the voters needed a hero to throw their support behind. Fortunately for the Dan Gilbert-esque voters that refused to even put LeBron James on their MVP ballots or penalized him for The Decision, Rose had an amazing breakout season and stole the award. In the playoffs, the Heat dismantled the Bulls in the Conference Finals and it was clear that LeBron and Wade were still much better than Rose. Interestingly enough, both of them — particularly LeBron — were outclassed by Dirk in the Finals. Had the vote been after the Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron would have won easily. But after his meltdown in the Finals, Dirk probably snags the award (with Wade getting a considerable amount of votes as well) . . . Rose would have finished 4th.
2015 & 2016 — Steph Curry over LeBron James
We were robbed of a couple potentially wild MVP votes these past 2 seasons. In 2015, Curry won the award pretty handily and LeBron came in a distant 3rd. However, if you recall the Finals that June, LeBron nearly won the Finals MVP despite only winning 2 games in the series; Curry, on the other hand, did not receive a single Finals MVP vote. If the voters cast their ballots post-Finals, would Curry still have won? Tough to tell — I’m guessing LeBron would have won.
Either way, that vote would have made the 2016 MVP vote even more entertaining because Curry had one of the best regular seasons ever — yet, when it mattered most, it was LeBron, not Curry, who delivered in the Finals . . . and then some. Would that performance alone have been enough to disregard the amazing season Curry had? Who knows — but getting a snapshot of the voters’ thoughts after the Finals would have been a lot more satisfying than always having to add a “Well, LeBron was still the best player in the league that year” disclaimer to Curry’s MVP seasons.
If the MVP vote was cast after the Finals this season, we wouldn’t have to worry about which of the deserving candidates was most deserving because the award would sort itself out in the playoffs. Guess who faces one another in the 1st Round? The stat gods — Harden and Westbrook. Whichever player has a more MVP-like series will most likely win the series because the teams are relatively similar in talent. Thus, we’d be able to cross off one of the stat gods from the race. Who will the winner of the Russ/Harden showdown play in the 2nd Round, you ask? Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs. Boom! We’ve got another head-to-head matchup. And guess who the winner of the Kawhi vs. Russ/Harden series will likely face in the Conference Finals? Chef Curry and the Warriors! And the winner of the Western Conference Finals — who do they get to face in the Finals? Probably LeBron James and the Cavs.
There ya go — MVP race solved. Whichever player of the 5 viable MVP candidates has the finest post-season run would be crowned MVP — it would be almost, dare I say, objective. We wouldn’t have to listen to every talking head on sports shows say explain what the the phrase “most valuable” means to them anymore — the MVP vote would be great again.
Finally, in addition to adding a more objective standard to the MVP voting, the playoff matchups between candidates would be infinitely more dramatic. Think about everything at stake by the time the Finals roll around — it’d be amazing.
Anyhow, here’s the HasBeenSports MVP vote:
5) Stephen Curry
Chef Curry was just barely eliminated by Kawhi in my March Madness MVP, Elite 8 column. And his post-Durant injury resurgence could spell trouble for any other title contender in the NBA, but it’s not enough to get him above #5 for regular season MVP.
4) Kawhi Leonard
Kawhi finishes 4th in the HasBeenSports MVP race — I think he’s going to win the MVP next season when he adds a little more playmaking to his game (i.e., assists). He’s still a worthy MVP candidate this season — hell, if it makes him feel any better, Zach Lowe (the best basketball journalist in the business) voted for Kawhi for MVP.
3) James Harden
All season, I maintained that Harden could top a Russell Westbrook-Oscar Robertson imitation with his own Tiny Archibald imitation (lead the NBA in points and assists per game). And boy, he came ever so close — 2nd in the NBA in points and 1st in assists per game. Thus, because Russ led the league in scoring and averaged a triple-double, Harden was always going to finish behind Russ in my book. He drops below LeBron because of the “Best Player on the Planet” argument.
2) LeBron James
I thought that Kevin O'Connor made an excellent point about LeBron’s excellence on The Ringer NBA Show podcast the other day (although I was disappointed he ultimately chose Harden over LeBron)— people sometimes forget that LeBron does so many intangible things that make his teammates better and make their jobs much easier. People sometimes dive so far down the advanced analytics rabbit hole in this MVP debate that they ignore the performance right in front of them. LeBron literally sees everything on the court and can make passes that no human outside of Magic Johnson could ever dream of making. Those passes are also pinpoint passes right into shooters’ shooting pockets — remember when he talked about having to learn where Kyle Korver likes to catch the ball before he shoots? His presence on the court is immeasurable — think about all the layups he causes guys to miss because they don’t want to be the next victim of a LeBron chase-down block? Or think about how demoralizing it must be to see him driving at you on a fast break at full speed? These attributes have to count for something — unfortunately, analytics haven’t found a way to quantify them yet, and so these things go largely unnoticed by today’s voters.
1 ) Russell Westbrook
As I’ve stated all season, if Russ averages a triple-double, he deserves the MVP Award. He did — and, as a man of my word, he is the 2016–17 HasBeenSports NBA MVP. Furthermore, when I think back to this season someday, the Year of Russ will probably be the first thing I think of — and that will always count for something in my book.
Thanks for reading! Check out more of my articles at HasBeenSports.
