The rockets can't get caught up in the mvp hype. The rockets the number 4 seed and mvp rarely get picked from number 4 seed! The bench players have to be ready
Most of the people I hear on the radio are saying Harden's having an incredible year, "but ... I'm going to vote for Giannis". Mainly because of some combination of : 1) his team has more wins 2) he plays on both sides of the court 3) he and his team have done it for the entire season whereas Harden and the Rockets started out slowly I don't have any problems with people voting for Giannis, but to me Harden is the MVP for reasons that don't matter. My biggest qualm about stuff like this is you have a bunch of people that really don't watch any of their games, who stick to the same ol' "he/they don't play defense" narrative, or who just figured out how to filter numbers on basketball-reference.com making these decisions. In some cases, you have dinosaurs who like to wax nostalgic about "how it used to be" and give Giannis the vote because of that. Well, guess what? Back in the 80's and 90's, guys that played from the 60's-70's were talking crap about Jordan, Dominique, Shaq, etc., too. And they were wrong, as well. "How it used to be" doesn't really matter. Judge them on today's game. In many cases these guys try to back themselves up with stats -- which they're obviously not used to doing. I was listening Justin Termine and Eddie Johnson on the radio. Eddie still tries to use FG% to say people can't shoot anymore. I would love for someone to explain to him why FG% isn't necessarily a great way to compare players' shooting ability to yesteryear's players because of the 3pt shot. Then he downplays todays' players shooting ability from 3 by saying back when they played they didn't shoot the 3 and if they had practiced it, they would have shot it just as well. This is probably true, except you guys didn't realize the advantage of shooting the 3 back then because you were still clinging to "the right way to play" and "the eye test" as sole measures of basketball ability. No one challenged "the right way to play". No one innovated. They just accepted what they were told and played on. I mean check this tweet out as an example of someone that gets paid and has a vote (keep in mind the tweet was from a month or so ago, so GIannis' stats have changed since then) : Spoiler It's an example of someone with a vote who has just discovered a stats search engine. In this case something akin to a kid with a lighter and a stick of dynamite. Or maybe Prometheus setting his own ass on fire. Nevermind that Wilt averaged around 37/22/5 and again 34/25/5, Oscar averaged around 31/12.5/11, Elgin averaged around 35/20/5, and Kareem around 28/17/5. The problem, of course is that Termine probably put exact numbers into the search engine when he decided to become a stats guru and Giannis' assist number removed some of the greatest seasons ever from the results (or in the case of Oscar, Giannis' rebound number). Like I said, I have no problems with Giannis winning even though Harden would be my vote. I just hope somehow we get the votes to come from people that actually have a clue, can look at stats objectively, know what really happened during the season, and not live in the past.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument you're making here. It's easy to use basketball-reference and pick out new "records" that no one thought about before to hype up a current player. However, Giannis is having an all-time great season. I think one can easily make the case that it's top 20 all time based on the criteria of quality of play and team success. The per game numbers don't really do it justice, particularly when stacking it up against players who played in a different era where they were on the floor for 100+ possessions a game. If you look at points + rebounds + assists (the three primary box score stats), but on a per possession basis, for players who've played significant minutes in a season, Giannis ranks third all time this season. To me, that's a notable stat. The two players ahead of him? Harden this year , and Russell Westbrook two seasons ago. In fact, the top 8 spots are all from players in the last decade (which maybe suggests something about how the game has become more star dominant, stylistically). Some may quibble with looking at points+rebounds+assists. That used to be the easy way of ranking the best players, but now we know better. One has to also consider things like efficiency, and defense, and team success if we want to really distinguish the great players of the game. It just so happens that Giannis checks all those boxes too.
Maybe I was being a bit ambiguous. I don't deny he's having a great season -- my issue was the person tweeting the very specific stat line not having been exceeded. The tweet specifically said his numbers were something that have never been done before (at the time), and not on a per possession or per minute basis, but per game. Literally? Yes. If you search for his exact numbers, it's true. But my point was, there have been crazy stat lines that far exceeded Giannis' (and Harden's) numbers on a per game basis like the tweet said. I was simply stating that the guy tweeting needs to relax his criteria in the search before proclaiming "Giannis on pace to be only player to ever avg at least 27.4p/12.6r/6a". Oscar's 30/12/11 is one of the greatest stat lines ever, but Termine's use of a search engine would exclude it because the rebounds didn't exceed Giannis' 12.6 rebounds. Anybody that says Giannis' numbers aren't bonkers is being disingenous or that Giannis isn't deserving to win the MVP is wrong. Like I said, I'd vote Harden, but I don't have a vote.
That last game versus OKC really cemented his loss. But even if we won it, Giannis would still be MVP. Hardens got that MVP swag though and I’m looking for this to manifest in the playoffs. Let’s get it!
I think you're right. It would have been closer, though. Particularly if he hit the game winner to get us the #2 seed. That kind of thing will stick in voter's heads.
Yes, I agree - Giannis would still win but it would be closer. I've been looking at the vote tally at Giannis appears to have a giant lead at the moment. A win at OKC would have merely lessened the lead. It sucks that the season ended like that, but I like what I'm hearing from the team. Absolutely none of them are even talking about the loss to OKC and they appear to be singularly focused on the playoffs.
Why can't Paul Millsap with Denver get mvp? Giannis is in a small market so we know he ain't getting mvp. Jokic was arguably one of the most dominant during all star, what about him? Shiet, Klay Thompson could get the award especially if iguodola got a finals mvp. It's all hype!
We only outline the votes for Harden so I for one nearly missed the landslide lead for Yannis. Thought Harden had a legit chance.
Even if you were tracking the votes for Harden, everyone who liked Harden didn't have a vote. There have been only 2-3 guys voting for Harden all year that had votes in previous years.
Sure. I am no expert in this, I think not everyone is a perennial voter too. Is it worse if they select more people for voting? They delayed the outcome to post postseason. There had to be more time to count votes. I dun mind 90% of all "important bball people" voting.
Seriously, whoever voted Westbrook in '17 and didn't vote Harden this season, I hope something happens to you. Nothing deadly, but something you can feel for a while. I have zero respect for hypocrisy... unless you sincerely admit you were wrong when given facts, maybe.
It’ll be hilarious when once AGAIN the actual NBA players that know a thing or two about playing the game this year will make Harden the Players MVP. It’s not what we want but it says what is important that ultimately the media creates a narrative and picks winners and losers.....
MVP voting should be from a mix of media, players, coaches, and front office 50% players 30% coaches 20% front office and media panel similar to how they do the ASG...fans get 50% of All Star votes, so players should get 50% of MVP votes
