James Harden is gonna get screwed over again in MVP Voting

LMAO! wait a gawd damn minute! They marketed this list like Russell was #1 with the picture and the headline, then pull the rug out from unsuspecting Russ hardliners and put Harden at #1? Savage Level: 9000!

How are you going to compile a list of the greatest individual NBA seasons, put James Harden at number one, but start the paragraph with: "I don't know if James Harden is the MVP?"

 

Maybe he sees Westbrook and Harden as the MVP finalists. The criteria he is probably using is individual performance as the qualifier, then position of the team as the "tie-breaker".

 

Pretty good? This type of sportsball analysis fills my soul with warmth Quick! Somebody disseminate this through the proper channels!

 

Here is my (bad and lengthy) argument on why I believe Harden should win the MVP or at the very least finish no less than number 2. It’s a very reasonable and simple argument, yet it still has a lot of steps. First, I need to define what I believe a MVP is or to be clearer: how to qualify as an MVP candidate.

It’s simple to qualify as a MVP player or candidate.

1. You have to make the playoffs and have your team record over .500.
   1. You have to be the best player on your team.
2. Sometimes there are 1a and 1b players on the same team.
3. You must have played at least 86% of the games.

Simple, right? Remember: these aren’t rules for everyone. Anyone can decide their qualifications for an MVP player. These are just mine. Maybe to someone team record didn’t matter at all.

So which players qualify?

1. Stephen Curry – GSW – 1b
   
2. Kawhi Leonard – SAS
   
3. James Harden – HOU
   
4. LeBron James – CLE
   
5. Isaiah Thomas – BOS
   
6. Gordon Hayward – UTA – 1a
   
7. Rudy Gobert – UTA – 1b
   
8. DeMar Derozan – TOR – 1b
   
9. John Wall – WAS
   
10. Russell Westbrook – OKC
    
11. Marc Gasol - MEM
    
12. Giannis Antetokounmpo – MIL

So, these are the 12 guys who met my personal thresholds. You see guys like Kevin Durant, Kyle Lowry, Draymond Green, Paul George, or Anthony Davis all aren’t qualified because they either didn’t play enough games, weren’t the best player on their team, or didn’t get their team enough wins. Still, in the case we are stuck with two players who qualify and also play on the same team then I have made my own tie breaker to see who deserves it more. And look, we have two Jazz players right now! Tie breaker for whichever player on the team deserves it the most out the two is that you need to be better in the majority of these nine categories. PER, Win Shares, WS/48, Games played, BPM, VORP, RPM, points generated, and net rating on NBA.com (advanced.)

Mind you… these aren’t the most important stats, and just because a player may be very high in all these stats it doesn’t paint the entire picture. You can’t just use advanced stats to paint an entire picture. I know it seems weird because I haven’t even mentioned raw numbers yet like ppg and rpg, but I dunno. Context is always missing and in order to fully appreciate and understand basketball you still need to watch the games! Still, I want this to be as simple as possible. Throwing too many things in may make things too confusing and just too hard to decide. Stuff like USG%, uncontested rebounds, ts%, turnovers, and clutch stats... it’s too much and there’s always context behind it that’s missing. Maybe one day in the future I’ll be able to make a better way to choose my personal MVP, but at the moment I’m fine with this way. Anyways, in this case Rudy Gobert wins over Gordon Hayward since he leads in more categories.

So now we’re down to 11 players who qualify for MVP candidacy. How do we shrink this? Here is my 2nd set of thresholds. Understand, that I could have just applied these thresholds at the beginning, but it’s still nice to recognize all the good players in the league/playoffs as a lot of these guys can and likely will make All-NBA teams. For example: Marc won’t finish as a top 5 MVP candidate, but he likely will be 3rd team all-NBA for the center position. Giannis may make 3rd team all-NBA over Butler or George for the forward position. Also doesn’t mean that these are the only All-NBA players. Draymond isn’t on the list but he definitely is All-NBA. Now, onto my 2nd set of thresholds.

1. Team must have home court in the playoffs.
   
2. Team must have won at least 49.2 games. (.600)

These are the players who qualify

1. Stephen Curry – GSW
2. Kawhi Leonard – SAS
3. James Harden – HOU
4. Lebron James – CLE
5. Isaiah Thomas – BOS
6. Demar Derozan – TOR

These are the top 6 MVP candidates. Rules iz rulez. Jazz possibly may win 50 games, but Clippers could finish with same amount of wins so it’s possible they end up with the 5th seed. Toronto plays the Knicks next so I threw DeMar a bone. So now what? Do the tie breaker again. Same ninr categories. PER, Win Shares, WS/48, Games played, BPM, VORP, RPM, points generated, and net rating on NBA.com advanced.

PER: Kawhi Leonard
Win Shares: James Harden
WS/48: Kawhi Leonard
Games played: James Harden
Net rating: Stephen Curry
BPM: James Harden
VORP: James Harden
RPM: Lebron James
Points generated: James Harden

Well, there you have it folks. Out of nine categories (that I chose, so it’s completely fair to argue against it and say it’s arbitrary.) James Harden ended up taking 5 of the nine. Kawhi took 2. S

And just to make a final reminder. This isn’t a definite case for Harden to win the MVP. It’s just how I broke it down. And guess what, if Westbrook ended up winning .600 games and getting home court in the 1st round then he would have taken the majority of these categories. (PER, Games played, BPM, and VORP. Likely even points generated.) The obvious argument is that it’s unfair to blame Westbrook for having a bad team around him, but at the same time it’s unfair to punish other players for actually winning. Notice how Derozan and Thomas didn’t get one single category despite being on 50 win teams. Man, the fact that Harden got categories in his favor despite going up against two guys who are on 60 win teams and Harden is on a 53 win team just shows how deserving Harden is of an MVP.

 

ESPN claiming Russ took over the MVP race after a day where neither played....

 

Not to menation just lost to the freaking Suns by 21 points.

The rockets just beat that same team by 7 with no harden, Ariza and Ryno.

3 starters.

But hey who cares Russ is going to avg. a triple double so it's doesn't matter that he lost by 20 to one of the worst teams ever.

 

Yep lol, just saw that too...

"The race between James Harden and Russell Westbrook has been tight all season, but according to our ESPN Forecast panel, the Thunder's triple-double machine has stormed ahead in the MVP battle."

Spoiler

EDIT: don't click on that ****, i don't even know why it got posted as a link

 

Haberstroh: Kawhi is my MVP. Best perimeter defender in NBA and averaging 25.8 PPG on 61 TS% on a 61-win team. He checks more boxes than anybody else. Here was the tiebreaker for me, and a blind spot for most all-in-one metrics: LeBron, Russ, Harden, Paul George vs Spurs in clutch: 7-27 FG (25.9 FG%) and combined -37. Lost 7 of 8. Kawhi guarded all. WHO DOES THAT? Russ/Harden/LeBron have incredible, deserving MVP cases. But Kawhi's differentiator (defense) is also hardest to quantify w/ round numbers. Should clarify: Kawhi didn't guard all on EVERY clutch possession. Meant he defended each of those guys in tight moments. And many others.

Harden had first 25x25 season in NBA history. (25+ PPG, 25+ PPG via assists). Not as sexy but definitely more unprecedented than 10-10-10
(Russ ain't averaging 10-10-10) But that is the hallowed triple-double.

___________

Oscar Robertson says Russell Westbrook has to be the NBA MVP

Former teammate & UCLA alum Earl Watson says Russell Westbrook a surefire MVP



Alan Hahn(MSG) No idea if he has or had a vote.
COY: Erik Spoelstra (Scott Brooks, Mike D'Antoni)
ROY: Joel Embiid
MVP: There's no argument, Westbrook has had a historic season. That makes him MVP. What he did this season is something no one has done in 50 years. Averaging a triple-double, in the playoffs, will win the scoring title. What else do you want him to do? Take him off the Thunder, they're in the lottery. He's the best player in the league this year, not just on stats but performance & how important he is to his team.

Al Trautwig: LeBron James!




https://twitter.com/Peter_Bukowski/status/851106165148790784
https://twitter.com/Peter_Bukowski/status/851108253044023297

 

The more people that have Kashi as #1, that's more people that have Russ at #3.

I thought Habostroth would have Harden as his MVP.. I'm assuming Harden is at #2 for him?

 

Please stop it with that trash Kawhi, if he wins MVP, i will stop watch the NBA alltogether. The dude is so dam overrated.

 

He's been on the Kawhi bandwagon all season. He should have Harden at #2. He's been 1 of the main ones discounting Westbrook's triple doubles because of how he inflates his rebounding totals. He was the one who came on ESPN and announced that Westbrook was leading the league in uncontested rebounds at over 8 a game and also had a little video to go with it showing how his bigs box out for him.

 

I'd be disappointed if Kawhi were to beat Harden, but at least he fits the criteria of what an MVP should be unlike Mr. 6th Seed and Less Than 50 Wins Westbrook

 

It's over at this point. Harden won't win MVP. Just have to hope that we sweep the Thunder in round 1 and then stick it in the voters faces all year long.

 

The Rockets have the 3rd best record in the entire league. The two teams with better records than the Rockets both have multiple all-stars or HOF players on their rosters while Harden has none. It's a bit unfair to expect Harden to single handedly lead this team to a better record than teams that feature several hall of famers. Many of the so called experts had the Rockets finishing no higher than 7th in the west this year. OKC was said to have a better team and most of the pundits had them finishing as a higher seed than us.

If you go back to the Rockets first matchup against OKC earlier in the season, the Rockets ended up losing that game and the narrative that was being shoveled by ESPN at the time was that Westbrook makes his teammates better while Harden was not capable of doing so. Fast forward to today, the Rockets have beaten the Thunder in three straight meetings, the team record is better and the Rockets are the 3rd seed while OKC is 6th, and the media narrative seems to have magically shifted from James Harden not making his teammates better to James Harden simply having a better team than Westbrook does. All of the talk about Harden not making his teammates better has been swept under the rug and little credit is being given to him for leading a team with no all-stars to the third best record in the NBA.

The overall consistency of the media throughout the season has been nothing short of piss poor. You better believe that if OKC had the 3rd best record in the league now then analysts would be using that as a primary argument in favor of Westbrook.

TL;DR
Rockets lose, it's Harden not making his teammates better.
Rockets win, it's because Harden has a better team than Westbrook does.
My question is where is the consistency in this line of thinking?

 

Ive said from the beginning that i wouldnt be salty if kawhi won. Id disagree but i wouldnt be salty

and spurs are 7-1 without leonard

 

Leonard is more worthy as an all-round player and wouldn't be mad if he won MVP.

 

I would.

 

Agreed. I would not like it if kawhi wins it. But I would understand it. I would hate it is westbrook wins it. Someone trully padding his stats should not win it.

Westbrook is fastly becoming the player I dialyse the most. The New Kobe.

 

ESPN's forecast of the MVP had a 50/50 split with Westbrook and Harden 1 week ago. This week they have Westbrook ahead 82% to Harden 18%. In ONE weeks time that sea change. Recency bias at PEAK levels.

ESPN's network/platform/authors going all in on Westbrook. Echo chamber feeding itself and likely influencing voters.

ESPN has all but 'endorsed' Westbrooks as their winner via their coverage.

 

Westbrook was always going to win. Just needed to ensure the triple double average.