Nick Wright: It Will Take James Harden A Historic Season to Beat Giannis for MVP

His standing reach is only 9½ feet and his center, Brook Lopez, is gobbling up a monster 4.9 rebounds per game.

This man is working his ass off to raise his arms above his head and close his hands around that basketball.

 

aside from fat Antoine Walker it was a fair argument for both sides.

Giannis did amazing historic things this year and he's probably the defensive player of the year. harden did amazing historic things this year, and while Giannis is the better defender they treat harden like he didn't play any defense this year. the "both sides of the court" argument is false as harden led the league in deflections and was second in steals, and first in post defense (opponent points per shot in the post). so harden did it on both ends too, Giannis was better on defense than harden, and harden was better on offense than Giannis. both historic.

its actually closer than most around here want to admit. so how do you choose? well Giannis' team has the better record and higher seed, but in the weaker conference. since harden had less help this year I'd objectively still vote for him. however its people's opinion that he doesn't play D and cheats to get to the line, and somehow benefits from MDA's system even though everyone else in the NBA plays that system/pace too. if you believe those myths then its an easy case for Giannis.

 

Props to Nick for being fair. It’s tiring to see such hate by the NBA brass and Media.

In fairness, Harden uses the hate to motivate himself even more. I think Harden knows it’s a popularity contest, and all he has to do is look at his paycheck or his bank accounts to realize how special he is in the Basketball world.

 

Compare this year's stats to last year's. Giannis is having a virtually identical year, improving his scoring less than ONE ppg. The Bucks' improvement this year is due to Budenholzer, not Giannis.

Meanwhile, Harden's MVP shot suffers because the Melo experiment got us off to a bad start and out of the top 2 teams. Starting with the 11th game for both teams (Melo played in our first 10), the Bucks have only won 3 more games than us.

 

It’s hilarious that they needed to downplay Harden’s season to make a stronger case for Giannis.

 

Jokic this season. Westbrook last season and season before that.

 

In no way am I detracting from Giannis’ season, he’s having a great season. At the same time it’s a season that has been done before, quite consistently actually. It’s not special, just really good.
As far as parameters for MVP, yes Giannis meets criteria, or rather typical criteria in normal years. My issue is the moving of the goalposts (that tend to negatively affect Harden), you can’t say Russ had a season that hasn’t been done since Big O as a lower half playoff seed beats Harden that year, who by the way had better numbers than Giannis this year.
Be consistent, Harden is doing something that has literally never been done before, while being efficient, defending well above average and leading his team to at minimum a top 3 seed in the West where it is significantly more difficult to win. Ask Lebron

 

Giannis is NOT going to win DPOY this season, fake narrative.

There are at least 3 players more deserving with better DRTG.

Alphabet is top 5 defender but not best this season.

Harden is THE best offensive player this season by a landslide and arguably the best offensive player EVER or at least since Wilt.

 

In fact, Embiid is having almost an identical season to Giannis this year

 

Giannis plays under 33 minutes a game this season, but nevertheless in the time he’s on the court the Bucks outscore the opposing team by 9 points a game, on average (that 9 point cushion, almost twice what Harden leads his team to playing 4 extra minutes a game, explains why the Bucks don’t feel the need to stretch his playing time any further). And if you look at what Giannis is doing in those minutes, it FAR exceeds what he was doing a year ago, statistically. It’s not even close. See PER, BPM, and WS/48 at bbref, if you don’t believe me.

Also, considering most of the improvement from the Bucks this year came on the defensive end (19th ranked to number 1 ranked) and considering that Giannis is very clearly the Buck’s best defensive player and he is just entering his prime, it makes no sense to draw conclusions about his improvement from last year to this year looking only at fantasy numbers. Even if his per possession stats were identical (and they’re not), you expect a young player with his tools to improve on defense, and that is evidently what has happened.

 

Jokicn and Westbrook led their teams in FG% and were their team’s best defensive player?

Try again.

 

Well he did blow a $100 million so I'll take his word for it.

 

Coach Bud should be at the podium as Giannis hands him his MVP award...Giannis is not the biggest catalyst for the Bucks ascending to the top of the EC

 

right now these media clowns are finna to give MVP, COY, and DPOY all to MIL. and they may not even make it past the 2nd round lol

 

I get that Giannis is the better defender and by a decent margin, but every metric I find that separates out the offensive and defensive side still show Harden as better overall when you total the two.

Box plus minus, RPM, TPA

Hardens offensive numbers in these stats are just about twice that of Giannis, yet most only classify Harden as just a little better offensively.

Kinda seems as if in the MVP comparison that not only is Harden’s defense underrated, but the offense is as well.

 

Isnt harden the league leader in per, bpm, and vorp?

 

Don't forget Harden is the best post defender on the team most nights!

 

It was set up in August who can and will win it, whats there to discuss... if it wasnt Giannis it would be LeBron or someone. Nobody talks Lillard, they dismiss Harden all the way. Now ask yourself who got what shoedeal

 

Identical?

30.9 PER vs. 26.1 PER
.294 WS/48 vs .195 WS/48
10.8 BPM vs 4.2 BPM

Embiid has been awesome. Giannis is on a different level.

 

BPM and VORP (which uses BPM), yes.