Maybe, but both of their teams won about the same amoutn of games and both had significant help from other starters. It would be more difficult to say one was clearly more valuable. On the other hand, If you have Kobe taking the team to the playoffs with Walton as their third leading scorer, then it's easier to assign a lot of value to Kobe. (That was Dirk's MVP year i believe)
so are you saying kobe or manu are more valuable than dwight howard? if you really want to define most valuable in the terms of who is most valuable to their team, it's dwight howard. he is their #1 guy offensively, and he is their #1 anchor defensively. nobody is #1 on both sides of the ball for their teams and play at the level that dwight does. michael jordan won the MVP in 87-88 and his team had the 7th best record in the L, #3 in the eastern conference. he won it b/c he had a ridiculous year statistically. it's understandable for people not to vote for dwight b/c statistically, he is not out of this world. lebron still puts up the best stats and it's down from last year. rose and kobe will be the top 2 candidates this year, with rose winning.
Wtf, I wasn't even talking about this year. I was responding to RV6 about the year Nash won it instead of Kobe.
Once TD, KG and Shaq got past their primes Kobe was on an average team when Nash and Dirk won. Your team has to win a lot of games for you to be considered. After that LeBron's teams had great records and his numbers were better than Kobe's. Kobe won when he had top numbers on a top team. Find me another year where he should have won based on how they usually give the award out.
I didn't prove your point. You proved mine. MVP goes to the best player of the best teams. The year kobe was in that role, he got his mvp, what's there to argue?
The year i'm talking about the lakers were a 7th seed who won 45 games. that's definitely winning, it sure isn't losing. I'd understand if he put up insane numbers on 27-55 team..you could argue they cant be that much worse without him, not enough room to fall...but at 45 wins? Putting up 35 a game? After odom there was a huge drop off in talent. Smush, mihm, Cook, kwame, Walton, Devean George... the suns were only 9 wins better that season with Barbosa, marion, Diaw, Bell, Kthomas. Even Tim Thomas was available for a quarter of the season. We're not on the same page here. i get how they give the award out. Earlier in this thread i even wrote they give it to the MVP of the best team, so I get that. I understand that's their current criteria and I always understand their choice based on that. I just don't think it should be that way because it puts too much importance on what should happen in the playoffs and it's not a playoff award. That's why i said something is wrong with it. It's like arguing the seedings based on divisions. i understand how it works and why the top 3 in each get seeds 1 to 3, yet i can still say there's something wrong with that because they may not truly be the best team in each the division because the schedule isn't weighed enough like it is in baseball.
But it's not based on the playoffs. It's regular season wins. I don't understand the logic here. Kobe was the best player of his team for about a season, in which the Lakers were also the best team in the league. Therefore he was MVP for that season. He didn't exhibit the same performance the next few seasons, so he doesn't deserve the mvp over others.
I would have phrased it differently. Something like... You know an active player's image around the league is completely misaligned with his true place in history when people try to compare him to the GOAT, yet he's only won a single MVP award.
isn't that true for every year? was there a year where the MVP came from outside the top 4 teams of the league? or to someone who wasn't clearly the best player on his team?
I never wanted to determine MVP through hypothetocal switching. I always said MVP = clearly the best player from the top 4 teams with most wins during the season. I believe that's the same criteria which has been consitently used every year. Or at least the results are consitent with that criteria.
i've stated many times. michael jordan won the MVP in 87-88 and his team had the 7th best record in the L. however, he also had a ridiculously out of this world year statistically.
I think you mean the lakers didn't exhibit the same performance...Kobe performed better in the past and didnt get it. A team that's loaded, like LA, can have the MVP. Another team that isn't, like Cleveland, can also have the MVP. It doesn't make sense to automatically go to the best team's MVP because most of the time they'll have more talent around them. Anyway, that's just my two cents. i think they should give it to the true most valuable player, regardless of record, within reason of course. Then make the finals MVP a playoffs MVP award.
lebron put up historic numbers. he would have won if the cavs had the 4th or 5th best record in the L anyways. the best record only made it a runaway.
Sorry, im not following your comment. Are you saying they were the best team without being loaded, so they deserved to have the MVP? I'd probably agree with that, but i'd have to take a closer look at the other teams.
The Bulls were 3rd/4th in the east (tied with Atlanta). In fact, the Bulls then would be like the Magic of now record and position wise. Except Dwight Howard is not putting up the absolutely disgusting numbers that MJ put up. So if you factor that in, MJ getting the MVP award was not all too surprising.
