Suns Lose to Hawks. Polish the MVP Trophy for Nash

It's pretty cut and dry stupid when the basic logic behind the voters' choices doesn't hold. Basketball is a TEAM sport, and good teams are often good because they have multiple stars and good players. If Nash was putting up the same numbers now on a team without Amare and Marion, he would probably only get outside consideration for the award, with no serious chance of winning it. That doesn't mean that he would be less valuable as a player, just that his teammates aren't as good.

Nash has received bonus points before on the logic that he missed games, and his team lost some of those games. Yet, if someone else was injured and his team did badly without him, it would be counted as a negative.

Yes it is. The voters have no objective criteria, and they don't even TRY to make their decision objectively. They just follow along with cliches like "he makes his team better."

Yeah, the "legitimate" reason was that he was on a team with a top record. Even though there have been two other All-Stars on the team.

How do you define "great?" Top 5? Most people wouldn't rank Nash that high.

 

what did marion do before nash?

amare i already stated his strength, but how did they play so well last year without amare? he didn't get outside consideration for that, he won it...

so it is cut and dry but the voters have no idea what that cut and dry is? i already know what you think about what type of player should get it, is this the standard set by the nba? because if so, i stand corrected

you said nash was on a good team, so what do you constitute as a "great" team?

nash is great because he makes players around him great and he makes his team a great team.

is he strictly a better player than say kobe or tmac? hell no. this is where the discussion is based on, what does the MVP stand for, however, being the man you are saying THIS IS WHAT THE MVP STANDS FOR and people are lazy for not looking into that "diamond in the rough" fact is the truth of the mvp. like i said if there is a criteria written by the nba, i stand corrected, but seeing nash had won by a different set of standards before this year leads me to assume that the nba doesn't have it black and white as you say

 

well the 2 years before nash he scored 21 and 19. the two years since nash has been there he scored 19 and 21. and his assists went down after nash. he's also an extremely versatile defender who averaged over 2 steals and 1 block and 9 rebounds before nash got there. he's a really good all-around player. also nails his ft's very well. i don't know where you get that he was nothing before nash. his fg% is up and some of that is certainly nash but it's also just having better overall talent around him as well.

like most stars, nash doesn't make people better, he just makes them open and then gives them the ball. except in nash's case, he doesn't even have to draw double teams like other guys like kg, td, yao, tmac, kobe, lebron, wade, etc b/c the suns system gets people open. the come down, run a pnr and either you have to let amare abuse some 6'3 pg or you have to help and leave a 40% 3 pt shooter open. nash is spectacular at making the right read and getting it to the right spot, but so was john stockton and no one ever though he was mvp-worthy. nash just passes for 3's and big dunks instead of 18 foot jumpers by antoine carr so it's more fun and garners more attention. if nash took tmac's spot on the rockets and played just as well but ran an offense that scored 96 ppg and didn't have great athletes and shooters, no one would think of him as an mvp. the suns help him just like he helps them.

dirk is better without nash. the mavs are better without nash. where was the magic there? did he just develop it over night or is more likely that when it seems someone developed into an all-time great overnight and it just happened to coincide with a switch to a new team and system, that just maybe the new team and system had something to do with it?

 

ok so i ran a little thing with some of the top players in the game and compared them based on PER, Net Production, and Roland Rating, which seem to be the 3 best stats that try to give a comprehensive look at a player that i know of. maybe someone knows some other statistical guru people besides Hollinger (PER) and 82games.com (Roland and Net Production) and what they've come up with but for now this is what i have. at the end i just averaged the 3 categories and this is how everyone ranked.






it seems i overrated kobe a little with respect to duncan and garnett, but everything else is right about where it should be. nash about 7th (after you take out yao for not playing enough), dirk and wade separating themselves from the pack significantly, and the stats even seem to have taken into account lebron's i-don't-give-a-crap-ness, arenas not being much for defense, and tmac's phoenix like rise from the ashes.

 

He was already an All-Star. If you're going to try to say that he couldn't lead his team to playoff success or a championship, don't even try it. Lots of stars play on teams that range from average to crap. It doesn't mean they're to blame for it.

They lost Amare and still played well, but the impact was felt. They got 54 wins (down from 62 the year before), a good final record but hardly anything eye-popping, nor proof that Nash is so awesome when there's so many other good players on the team.

It's not like it was Nash single-handedly carrying the team:

-Marion was Marion as usual. Sure, he benefits a lot from Nash's passes, but it goes both ways. Nash wouldn't have had as many assists if Marion wasn't there to finish them with thunderous dunks. Nash also doesn't do anything for Marion's rebounding, which was at the second-highest percentage of his career.

-Boris Diaw had a career year, a massive improvement over the pure crap he was during his first 2 seasons in the league (and probably a fluke year, given his drop this season). The Suns basically got a good player out of nowhere for that year. This had the effect of mitigating Amare's absence (not completely, but it helped).

And no, Diaw was NOT magically transformed by Nash's godly passes. He wasn't even a bigtime scorer. Diaw's biggest strength was his passing. 6.2 apg at a frontcourt position (often PF) is pretty damn good. Diaw was versatile: he didn't score much but was efficient when he did shoot, he had above-average rebounding for SF-type player, he had the aforementioned passing, and he even got the Suns a block a game.

-The Suns had excellent scorers off the bench in Eddie House and Leandro Barbosa.

Unfairly. BTW, he STILL had Marion and all those other guys I mentioned.

All opinion. I have not seen objective evidence that he's any better than a lot of star players in the league.

 

was marion an allstar before nash? didn't get recognition until nash got there.

cuban wasn't showing nash the door with a foot in his ...
nash was marginal in dallas, ok, convince me.

so why did you think that stockton never won? maybe because he was playing when jordan was playing, and everything people saw was jordan this jordan that. if steve nash was playing in the jordan era, i can't even see how he would ever be considered for mvp simply because jordan was jordan.

but now is a different day with different stars. and the suns have been doing too well. as stated of course nash is not the ONLY valuable person on that team, but his contribution is most valuable to their success in that system as well as the league.

if nash doesn't win, and dirk wins it, fine, or kobe, in fact i thought kobe should have won it last year. but i can see how nash has won it. and if he wins again this year, it would come as no surprise nor would i be upset about it

 

Played in the 2003 All-Star game, and has played at around 20 or above PER since his second year in the league.

He played at around the same level as he did when he got his first MVP, hardly "marginal."

Yeah, there's only been guys KG, Lebron, Wade, Dirk (who has done better without Nash), Kobe, Duncan. With the recent shortage of superstar talent in the league, it's no wonder Nash has won back-to-back MVPs.

So do you think team record (highly dependent on everyone else on the team) determines value? I wonder how Nash would do in Paul Pierce or Dwyane Wade's place. He's such a valuable player after all, there's no way the Celtics or Heat would do bad if they had Nash!

 

hardly eye popping? they won their division, 3rd best team in the west, what is a great team? only the 1st seed is a great team?

you don't answer the question, YOUR objective view of the MVP is best player, anything contrary to that is simply nonsense
does the nba have cut and dry rules for voting?

 

i agree, to say the mavs are better without nash takes a greta big leap of faith for me. i don't know how anyone in dallas would think terry is better for their team than nash is.

 

It's good but below what a dominant, "sure" contender would get. Which is what the Suns were not. Relatively few people considered them likely champs compared to other teams like the Pistons, Spurs, and Mavs. Look at the records of NBA champions going back over a decade. The best teams won in the high 50s, and often had over 60 wins. Wins in the low 50s is typical of a good teams with little chance of winning a title. BTW, don't bother bringing up the exceptions in an attempt to refute me, I'm quite aware of them.

Who cares? You don't even have a definition for "great."

I didn't say that, but it's irrelevant anyway.

The alternative that the real MVP voters use, which fails basic logic and consistency is nonsense.

 

KG, lebron, wade, dirk kobe and duncan play at the same level that jordan did? unbelievable!

 

yes, he was an all-star in 2003. so nash has turned an all-star into an all-star.

i won't even count his first 2 years to be fair since they sucked. from 2001-2004, he averaged 16.4 ppg, 7.8 apg, 3 rpg, and .9 spg with 2.7 TOpg and a 20.9 PER. nice stats to be sure, but nothing to write home about. he was a nice point guard. one of the better ones. but nothing legendary. and even the points and assists were no doubt helped by dallas' don nelson crazy pace relative to the rest of the league.

but even jordan only won 3 MVP's during stockton's heyday. they could've found room if they wanted to. nash is playing when sure fire HOFers like duncan, garnett, kobe, lebron, dirk, and wade are playing but no one seems to care about them.

 

what is your definition of great? answer the question

so you should call the nba and set those rules

 

I didn't say that.

But KG, Lebron, etc. play at the level of KG, Lebron, etc. Which means that Nash had a ****load of competition for the MVP. If the MVP voters didn't all jump on the Nash bandwagon, it SHOULD have been a repeat of the Stockton scenario, only with the voters saying "I can't see how Nash is the MVP with so much superstar talent in the league."

 

hey man i dont think anything is going to his head. he is the typical guy who is on the nash bandwagonn.

i have nothing against nash. but i don't see why he has to win 3 times in a row when there's other comparable and deserving talent on other teams.

 

i think you would agree with me that if the rox ever had a PG like nash with those stats, they would be sitting real real pretty today, and it wouldn't even be close

 

Why do you keep repeating this IRRELEVANT question? I don't give a damn what stupid word people like to tack on to their MVP choice. It's all semantics.

What I want to see (and will realistically never get) is an objective, logical method at determining the MVP. Look at the statistics, and find a way of combining all the numbers into one overall rating. Make it known that the whoever comes out on top is just what the numbers pick, whatever the quality of the system is (although they should pick a system which isn't complete garbage like the "Efficiency" rating currently used on NBA.com).

Anybody who wants to say that a player is "great" or that the their guy is better because the numbers don't tell the whole story is just relying on subjective opinion.

 

well they went to the finals for the first time ever last year without nash and they never went to them when they had nash.

they lost nash in free agency, meaning they got nothing in return, and 2 years later were in the finals. how valuable can you really be if you're that replaceable?

if tmac left after this year for nothing, would we be making the conference or nba finals? would the lakers even approach the playoffs if kobe just left for nothing. the spurs without duncan? would minnesota win 15 games without garnett. miami without wade would be lucky to crack 20 wins. but the mavs added a few more pieces and bam, were almost the best team in the league, and now might be the best team in the league. they replaced nash with jason terry, a nice but hardly an all-world player, and have been getting better. even if you argue avery has helped, you still shouldn't be able to replace someone truly as valuable as nash has been made out to be and get better.

 

yes, if we replaced rafer alston with steve nash, we would be freakin' awesome, but that's hardly the point. if we had tim duncan or kevin garnett instead of juwan howard, i suspect we might be alright as well. or if we teamed tmac up with kobe or wade we might be pretty good. saying that replacing our crappy players with good players would help us is not news.

 

it's irrelevant to your brain because you don't process semantics when you are the one spewing out like it means nothing.