James Harden is gonna get screwed over again in MVP Voting

It doesn't, but when the point is made to highlight that he is a ex rocket's coach as if his opinion should carry more weight, context is needed

 

Can somebody please get that man on the phone?!?!

 

I'd believe it if he weren't so negative on national tv about Harden and the franchise on national tv every chance he gets.

 

Well, even though i like him as a person, McHale was a bottom tier coach, his opinion is probably comparable to those of bottom tier analysts like Broussard, Beadle etc...

On the other hand zero surprise that Arnovitz is going with Harden since he's one of the few good writers still there.

 

I was actually shocked that Arnovitz chose Harden. From hearing him on Zach Lowe and other pods he always seemed like the snoody elitist type that would choose Kawhi cause "there are two sides of the floor after all".

 

Adam Spolane voted for Harden

 

Does this mean sports radio 610 has 13 votes? If so, WTF to the 4 non- harden voters. Houston needs all the support it can get from our local media since the national media is giving us the finger.

 

McHale is still highly respected. You're buggin if u think that his opinion is on the level of people like Broussard and Beadle.

 

that d-league team looked pretty decent last night without westbrook.

 

These people don't actually have votes

 

Reading the article, I think its just a fun office voting thing.

 

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/e...ce-ever-one-man-does-stand-out-from-the-rest/

Matt Moore voted for Harden.

 

NBA player rankings: Who played like an MVP the most this season?

Spoiler

Is the 2016-17 MVP race among Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard really one of the best in decades? And what can game score, the metric we've used in our player rankings all season, tell us about which players sustained MVP levels the most throughout the year?

Let's take a look in our final rankings of the season.

Historical context

What if you could take every game played by an MVP over the years, throw them into a blender and spit out a number representative of an overall MVP performance? What exactly would that look like?

MVPs come in all shapes and sizes, and because of that, there's no simple threshold that screams, "That was an MVP-caliber game!" Unlike triple-doubles, where thanks to Draymond Green, 114 of the 115 ones league-wide this season have consisted of points, rebounds and assists, an MVP-caliber game can mean so many things. From LeBron James to Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan to Shaquille O'Neal, no two MVPs look alike.

It's one of the reasons we turned to game score throughout the season as our way to rank player each week, judging apples and oranges on the same scale. Unlike more nuanced metrics such as real plus-minus (RPM) that are rooted in play-by-play data and adjust for pace and lineup permutations but rely on large samples to parse through the noise, game score is an all-in-one stat holds up relatively well with small sample sizes.

Using game score, we took all 3,041 games played by MVPs since turnovers became official in 1977-78 and determined the average game score by an MVP. From there, we determined which players this season reached MVP production most often and compared this season's crop of MVP contenders with the stars of yesteryear.

If you're judging MVPs through the lens of game score, the spectrum is spectacularly wide. On the high end is Michael Jordan, who took home the hardware in 1987-88, emphatically checking off nearly every box in game score's calculations en route to his first MVP award. He led the league in scoring, shot better than 53 percent from the field and contributed more than five boards and five dimes per game. He led the league in steals and averaged more blocks per game than over half of the league's starting centers. If you're looking for the pinnacle of all-around MVP performance, look no further.

On the other end is Steve Nash's first MVP season in 2004-05, when his average game score of 16.1 ranked just 19th in the NBA and third on his own team behind Amar'e Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. The discrepancy between Nash's first MVP season and Jordan's first MVP season is so wide that Nash's best game would have ranked as Jordan's 37th best game of the season.

Most games at or better than MVP average
Player | Games
Russell Westbrook | 51
James Harden | 45
LeBron James | 40
Anthony Davis | 40
Karl-Anthony Towns | 35
Giannis Antetokounmpo | 34
Jimmy Butler | 33
Kawhi Leonard | 31
DeMarcus Cousins | 30
Kevin Durant | 29
Avg. MVP game score: 22.38

This year's crop

So where do Westbrook, Harden, James and Leonard stack up? Taking Jordan, Nash and every other game played by an MVP during the regular season, you land on an average game score of 22.38. Westbrook reached that benchmark in 51 of his 80 games, easily the most of any player this season.

In fact, the only players to hit that mark in more games in a season are Michael Jordan (on six occasions, the most of which was 62 in 1988-89 when he didn't even win the MVP award) and Shaquille O'Neal (52 in 1999-00). If Westbrook were to do in it in Oklahoma City's final game on Wednesday night, it would mean the only player in modern history to deliver at an MVP level more routinely is the one recently voted by ESPN.com as the greatest player in NBA history.

By the same token, Harden, who has traded places at the top of our cumulative season rankings the entire year with Westbrook, has been nearly as impressive. His 45 games at or above the average MVP game score are just two shy of Stephen Curry last season, when Curry became the first unanimous MVP in league history, and 17 more than Curry in 2014-15, when Curry won the MVP in a close race with Harden.

James has been at or above MVP levels in more than half of his games, and Leonard, whose more subtly spectacular game doesn't necessarily jump out of the box score and is likely undervalued by game score, has done it in 30 of his 73 games.

MVP contenders' game score rank
Player | Avg. GS | Rank*
Russell Westbrook | 25.2 | 4th
James Harden | 24.2 | 12th
LeBron James | 22.8 | 17th
Kawhi Leonard | 20.6 | 28th
*Among 39 MVPs since 1977-78

If that seems like a lot of players regularly playing like your typical MVP candidate, well, it is. Perhaps most surprising of all is how far down that list Leonard sits after what's arguably the greatest offensive season by a Spurs player in the Gregg Popovich era. Though he ranks ninth in the league in average game score and last among the four primary MVP contenders, he'd still rank ahead of 12 previous MVP winners, including seasons by Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan and Julius Erving, among others.

Leonard's season and where it stands statistically (even if game score undervalues his contributions and is oblivious to the fact he's the best player on a 60-win team) serves as the perfect example for where the NBA stands in terms of top-shelf talent.

Players with game score of 20 or more
Season | Total
2010-11 | 1
2011-12 | 3
2012-13 | 2
2013-14 | 3
2014-15 | 4
2015-16 | 5
2016-17 | 12*
*Most in any season

When we last checked at the midway point of the season in January, there were 11 players with an average game score of 20, which would have made this season's class of stars the deepest since 1990-91. Instead of shrinking back to levels of previous seasons, that group instead swelled to 12 thanks to Curry finding his rhythm in the second half. The end result? As many high-performing players as there were over the past three seasons combined and more stars than at any point over the past 40 seasons.

Whether you're in the corner of Westbrook, Harden, James or Leonard, there are legitimate cases to be made for a handful of stars. And while weaving MVP narratives with cherry-picked numbers can be done for any of the aforementioned supernovas, the odds here are on Westbrook, who delivered a season that, according to game score, would rank among the very best of any MVP winner.

Cumulative rankings*
Player | Avg. Game Score
1. Russell Westbrook | 25.2
2. James Harden | 24.2
3. LeBron James | 22.8
4. Anthony Davis | 22.6
5. Kevin Durant | 22.0
6. Isaiah Thomas | 21.3
7. Karl-Anthony Towns | 20.8
8. Jimmy Butler | 20.7
9. Kawhi Leonard | 20.6
10. Giannis Antetokounmpo | 20.4

Best of the rest

-If it were any other season, we might be talking about the MVP merits of Isaiah Thomas, especially if the Celtics go on to clinch the No. 1 seed in the East. Since the NBA went to its current playoff format, there have been 10 instances in which a player averaged 29 PPG for a team that finished with the No. 1 seed. All 10 times, that player finished in the top-two in MVP voting, winning seven times including each of the last four instances. Thomas could very well become the first 29 PPG scorer on a No. 1 seed to not win the MVP since Michael Jordan lost out to Karl Malone in 1996-97.
-The proverbial "best player on a bad team" award for 2016-17 goes to Anthony Davis, who finished No. 4 in average game score. He was one of four players -- along with Westbrook, Harden and James -- to finish with a game score better than the average MVP. How rare is the type of company Davis kept? The last time more than three players performed at or above an MVP level was 1992-93, when Charles Barkley won the award over a group that included Michael Jordan, Karl Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon. Davis set career highs in scoring and rebounding and was a better player across the board after the All-Star break despite the Pelicans working in DeMarcus Cousins. Though the Pelicans ultimately couldn't recover after digging an 0-8 hole, Davis had perhaps his best season as a pro.
-The award for "best game in a losing effort" goes to Devin Booker, whose 70-point explosion in March's blowout loss to the Celtics registered a 54.5 game score. It was the highest game score of any player this season and more than 10 points higher than any other player recorded in a loss. In fact, it was the highest game score by any player in a loss in the last 35 years, easily outpacing Michael Jordan's 47.9 back in 1989 in a loss to Booker's future team. Before Booker, players with an average game score of 50 in the last 35 years were 16-0.
-Not listed above in the top 10: Stephen Curry. He is in 12th heading into the final day of the regular season. While it might seem like quite the fall for the two-time reigning MVP, he has statistically been better than when he won the MVP in 2014-15. He also leads the NBA in overall plus-minus and has delivered the second-most prolific 3-point shooting season in NBA history, behind only his unanimous MVP campaign from a season ago. We've used this stat before, but it bears repeating, as Curry might be the most important player moving forward into April, May and June: When Curry finishes with a game score of at least 20, the Warriors are 30-3. That's the best record of its kind and indicates that when Curry's on his A game, Golden State might be untouchable.

 

Glad that he sticks with Harden.

 

This is correct. However the contention isn't that he chose Westbrook. The tweet makes it sound like it means a lot that he chose Westbrook because of his Houston ties and an implied bias for Harden. In reality it's far more likely he'd be biased to lean another direction. But he absolutely could prefer Westbrook regardless.

 

lol @ 610 sports. Had me hype for a second. Just a second.

Honestly, I truly believe the National Media's pushing Westbrook but the silent majority will right the ship.

Westbrook about to cancel that Firework celebration... I'll wait.

 

He's currently running away with the MVP award based on the confirmed votes so far.

What a joke. Harden doesn't win in 2015 because his team isn't good enough and he doesn't win this year because his team is too good.

Whatever. We will see how much that triple double is worth when they get their asses kicked in the first round because we earned home court advantage.