So, sounds like you're most in favor of option (3) in the original post, of the options I listed. "Taking the supporting cast into account" is another way of saying "figure out how much value this player actually added to his team."
I generally think 8 is the best because the most valuable has got to be the best player esp since you can just trade for the other guys you need. Westbrick doesn't really fit into 7 or 8 because everybody acknowledged Harden was putting up better stats, they just voted for the triple double superstar who stood up for his team after their best player abandoned them. It was an emotional vote that actually had no factual basis esp. after Westbrick got exposed for padding his stats.
i would tend to say whose season you would most want to have if you were starting a team (that was strangely going to play the same season again). i suppose that is most value added to a random team. i say random team to somewhat mitigate anyone who might be considered to be part of a great system or very specific circumstances that make them look more valuable to their own team than their talents would make them for any random team. that also means that the best player doesn't necessarily get the award if they didn't have the best season (i.e. lebron taking the regular season off the last few years).
It's a combination of dominating on an individual level while fostering team success. Ultimately, voters should pick who they think has a stronger case overall, and not base their voting off any one criteria. With that said, any player not on a playoff team should be automatically disqualified, and there better be some damn good reasoning/weak competition to pick anyone on a team higher than a 5 seed.
Yea you can see it that way. Realistically, if you’re just going with best player on best team, Durant/Curry was the MVP last year but honestly on a 4 all-star team there ain’t no MVP unless they win 80 games
The cynical side of me would say that these awards means very little objectively. It's a voting system. Voting has no general criteria. It's all about how the voters FEEL. This is why I don't get upset like many people here feel about Harden's "snub." It's like two fans of two different teams arguing which star player on their respective teams is better. You know it is going to be a totally biased endeavor. That said, if I were to set the criteria of the Most VALUABLE Player award, The "value" has to be about how much he adds to the team he plays for and the team has to be a good enough team. The ambiguity then is in two variables: (1) How do you measure value to the team? (2) How do you define "good enough team"? #1 seems to be easier as there are plenty of advanced stats to look at. But there is no one single number that can trump everything else. So there is still human judgment. #2 is much harder. I would say that the team has to be one of the top 5 teams in the league. I don't think it has to be the "best" team. In fact, it is conceivable that the MVP might not even be the "best" player of his team if there are more than one player on a team who bring fairly close values to the team in very different aspects. (One example would be Draymond Green vs. Steph Curry on the Warriors before Durant joined them.) I used to think the the MVP should be the best player in the league for that season. But the team context makes a lot of difference. "Value" should be in reference to the team, not just a value in vacuum.
Howard Beck said it best, MVP is a mix of "individual excellent" AND "team success." However, talking heads add "Narrative" to the mix and that mucks things up.
Yeah, narrative would only be one of those things to help voters break a tie after applying "individual excellence" and "team success." Instead, narrative can now actually replace one of those well-established, main two criteria, letting voters ignore history.
Yeah, ignoring history and precedence is an issue. Something Howard mentioned last year. Basically this is the case of moving the goal posts.
