James Harden is gonna get screwed over again in MVP Voting

Whatever nonsense guys keep yelling on TV, the thing that continues to shock me is how obviously things have changed since 6 months ago. Before the season, by all accounts this was a .500 8th seed team full of one-way players (ESPN, blogs, even Clutchfans popular opinion). Suddenly, this team is no longer "over-achieving", they're doing exactly what everyone expected and OKC is overachieving......? Trevor Ariza and Eric Gordon are all stars? This is called humans' inability to maintain perspective.

 

Skip has lost his mind. Ariza is an All-Star?! Yes, he played like one yesterday, as did Lou Williams. Hell, even Sam Dekker rose from the dead in that game. But I'm sick of this argument that Westbrook has no help. Kanter is a good offensive player. Adams is a decent big. Oladipo is a very good shooting guard. Taj Gibson is a solid 3. Maybe he's not good enough to start(at least on a championship team), but he can play. There is plenty of talent on that OKC roster. Does it gel the way the Rockets' talent does? No, but that doesn't mean Westbrook has no one to play with.

It just seems like at this point, a lot of folks have made up their minds that Westbrook is their MVP. Either because they picked him before the season started and/or because of the triple double average. So no matter what Harden or the Rockets do, they'll move the goalposts to accommodate Westbrook and his case for the award. Suddenly team records no longer matter(unlike in 2015 with Curry). Harden's own historic statistical performance is irrelevant. And apparently the Rockets kicking the crap out of the Thunder on national TV is a complete non-issue. That just means that Russ doesn't have any teammates who can step up.

 

guys lets not totally under rate our team.. yes we dont have an all star or super star.. but we have a solid team.. how many teams have had two freaking top running sixth man candidates coming off the bench.. Pat is one of the top contenders for defensive player.. Capela has pretty much made Dwight obsolete.. I think alot of credit goes to harden for making them look this good.. but lets not call our team scrubs and role players.. they are definetely solid players, who are all playing their role well..

 

Is this to imply that he had one to begin with? We're talking about Skip Bayless, right? He's a professional troll. If he's saying Harden isn't MVP, that pretty much means Harden has it locked down.

The only person who's opinion may be worth less is Charles Barkley.

 

LMAO! Harden is trending upward! It was all, "No it's Westbrook period!" to, "Maybe we should have a Co-MVP!".

How long until it's, "Harden's final form deserves MVP!"?

#soon

 

We have a great team. In fact, it's amazing how good they are.

And yet....somehow...them being good is a bad thing.

 

Yeah, i mean:

Capela - Adams
Anderson - Gibson
Ariza - Roberson
Gordon - Oladipo
Beverley - McDermott (no sense comparison i know, but who cares)
Nene - Kanter
Dekker - Sabonis
Lou - Abrines

What is the difference there really? Lou over Abrines pretty much...i think our bench is a bit better overall, but for most i see two different kind of roster, not one particularly better than the other...we have more shooters, they have more athleticism/rebounding/paint presence.

As today a lot of people if not the majority would actually pick Adams over Capela, Gibson over Ryan, Kanter over Nene and Oladipo over Gordon...so, three starters and the sixth man...

 

So if Russ doesn't have a good team, why in the hell are there 3 additional max contracts on that roster?

 

Is our team better than OKC's? Yes. However, this roster is still just Harden and a bunch of role players. Westbrook had KD and Ibaka last year. He had major help. How come Harden and a bunch of role players is about to finish with the same record that OKC had last season? If Harden was playing with a KD and an Ibaka then I think he's winning around 65 games, maybe even more.

 

Why are OKC fans and media not calling for Sam Presti's head? He surrounded Westbrook with the worst roster in NBA history apparently!

 

But Pat missed the first 11 games of the season along with a handful of others. Capela missed over a month with an injury. Anderson and Gordon have missed some time(Ryan may be out til the playoffs, BTW). Nene doesn't play in hardly any B2Bs. And Lou didn't arrive til after the All-Star Break(the Rockets were already 40-18 at the time).

In fairness, OKC has had plenty of injury issues themselves this season. But what is the one consistency for the Rockets all year long regardless of who's in or out of the lineup? James Harden. He's the one who's shown up every night even when he's been banged up himself. He's the one who's kept this machine rolling no matter who he's dishing off assists to. Do we have a better team than we thought going into the season? Absolutely. Hell, Montrezl has had a pretty solid year and he can't even get any playing time, including yesterday when Anderson was out and Capela was in foul trouble. But this would still be a lottery bound ballclub if it didn't have Harden.

 

rockets have better shooters
thunder have better defenders / bigs / rebounders

it's a wash.

the thunder have the 11th best defensive rating in the league. and thats with the worst perimeter defender in the league in russell westbrook.

if westbrook actually tried to play defense instead of leave his man open to stat pad his rebounding stats the thunder would possibly be a top 10 defensive team.

 

Westbrook has nothing but scrubs yet OKC handed Oladipo and Adams big time extensions this past summer. Why would OKC give scrubs so much money? I thought Sam Presti was considered to be 1 of the smartest GM's in the NBA? Hmmm....

 

Stop trying to make some sense

 

By over-exaggerating the talent level of our role players, you are kind of taking away credit that should go to Harden. That is what Skip is doing by calling Ariza an 'All-Star'. If the team is stacked, your MVP chances go down. It's that simple. Same reason why Curry or Kawhi (despite still being in the conversation) ain't winning MVP this year. There's only limited amount of credit to go around among players, coaches, and the GM. It is truly a zero-sum game in a sense.

So, if people prop up our role-players to take away credit from Harden, that's not a positive thing for us. Because most importantly, Harden winning MVP has serious ramifications for our FA prospect.

I think someone here said it best : "Do you want to play with James Harden, or with the league MVP?"

The reason why I want Harden to win this year's MVP is not because I'm some ardent Harden supporter. It's because it will do wonders for our organization going forward. I think Morey knows this too, and has been taking shots on twitter at Westbrook MVP narrative.

 

Steph Curry had help
LeBron James has/had help
Kevin Durant had help
Kawhi Leonard has help
John Wall has help.

Everyone gets help.

Sorry Jim, you have too much help!

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He's winning too much! Only on a 54-57 win pace! So let's give it to the guy on a 44-47 win pace!

Spoiler

73-9
67-15
59-23
66-16
46-20(66 game season)
62-20
61-21
66-16
57-25
67-15
54-28
62-20
58-24
60-22
58-24
56-26
67-15
*Past MVP winners since 1999-00

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Screw everything else, triple-double! He's the MVP!

DYK: Oscar Robertson finished 3rd in MVP voting despite averaging a triple-double?



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Voters/media can go f_ck themselves.

 

Borderline bad..... it has some good defensive players but not on Offense. Oladipo is above average on O. Others are just average or below.

The record or the roster does not tell the entire narrative.

GSW had a historic 73 win season and still did not win it all IIRC.

Regular season records are achieved with great chemistry by good players and couple of great ones.

I dun think there is a metric system for guessing how a talented roster should perform as OKC has never had a great coach.

IMO Brooks was alright but not close to great.

Seriously just hand out a new award to WB....... Best Individual Player Award BIP

 

Great point. Having the MVP, which makes your team better sharing the ball etc is probably going to help the organization in the long run, recruiting players etc...even though, the players already know this, they voted Harden as their MVP two years ago, and i'm pretty sure they're going to do it again this year, just watch.

 

Technically, isn't Kanter the only one with a max contract? And he's getting paid less than Ryan Anderson.

 

The argument for WB are getting old, since they always forget to mention Harden's numbers and when they do they either A) say it's a wash or B) it's just not a triple-double. The supporting cast argument is flawed as everyone should know by now. Yes the Rockets roster is better, but guess what: MVPs make their teams better and therefore win more. Harden took a bunch of scrubs in 2015 to the 3rd seed, Westbrook has better teammates now given the injuries in 2015 to our team yet is still only a 6th seed and way behind us. So between Harden and Westbrook, it's pretty easy who wins. Co-MVP would be a sham.