Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and the Meaning of MVP
By Phil Daniels
Last week, I argued in a very controversial column that LeBron James should win the MVP award over Kevin Durant. My argument was rather straightforward and can be summarized in five bullet points:
- The NBA fails to concretely define the criteria for the Maurice Podoloff Trophy winner. The only criterion is that the MVP is awarded annually to the “most valuable player.” Value is not defined. Scope is not limited.
- Kevin Durant has nominally superior statistics to LeBron James for the 2013-2014 season.
- Regardless of any statistical advantages over one NBA season, LeBron James has proven over at least a five year sample size to be the best player in the NBA.
- Because “most valuable player” is not defined, a voter is given de jure free rein to vote for MVP candidates as she sees fit.
- Because LeBron James has proven to be better than Kevin Durant but for the 2013-2014 NBA Season, I find it prudent to award the MVP to the best player, not the player who played arguably the best in an individual season.
Immediately after Fansided published the column, I received an incredible amount of feedback—some positive but a majority negative.
Some readers who agreed with me acknowledged the ambiguity of MVP voting criteria. Others argued that you could actually make a case quantitatively in terms of efficiency statistics and Real Plus Minus that LeBron James had a better 2013-2014 season than Kevin Durant. A couple of commenters pointed out that they would take LeBron James over Kevin Durant in a vacuum—that is to say ignoring such things as age and future production—and in light of such a hypothetical draft choice, how could Kevin Durant win MVP if he isn’t even the most desirable of current NBA players? Finally, a couple of people simply tweeted me the viral Lil B “Fuck KD” track.
With regard to the readers who criticized my belief that LeBron James should win the MVP Award, I tried to respond to as many individuals as possible in the Comments section, but I almost certainly failed to reply to everyone. As a result, I will copy and paste notable criticisms in bold and italics and address them below.
“You are just a fanboy writing an article. This is poorly constructed and very biased. You’re disappointed because your favorite player nowadays is getting beat. Fair and square.”
My favorite player is unequivocally Dirk Nowitzki. When I was in high school, I drove around town in aNissan Frontier with a large rear window decal that simply read “Dirk Nowitzki.” I wore my then long hair in ridiculous, bordering on unkempt fashion with a white headband whenever I played pickup basketball. I wore #41 on a couple of travel teams. To this day, if you ever catch me at a beach, you will likely see me wearing either the P. Diddy designed Nowitzki jersey; a Peja Stojakovic black away Kings jersey; a Cedric Ceballos Phoenix Suns jersey; A Z-Bo Memphis Grizzlies home jersey; or one of several Jason Williams jerseys (White Chocolate—not the NBA player who shot a limo driver or the NBA player who crashed his motorcycle).
Long story short: I am neither a LeBron James fanboy nor a Kevin Durant hater—I even wore the Nike Zoom KD III‘s in Varsity Red/White-Black today for pickup.
“You and every other LeBron lover are complete morons…1st KD is more valuable to his team then James is to the Heat.”
I don’t have much to say about this one. I personally would rather have Serge Ibaka than Chris Bosh. Likewise, at this point I would also take Russell Westbrook over Dwyane Wade. But regardless of ranking and comparing All Star caliber players on a largely irrelevant and hypothetical hierarchy, neither the Heat nor the Thunder would have a shot at the Larry O’Brien Trophy without LeBron and Durant respectively, so who is “more valuable to his team” is virtually a wash so long as the team’s only goal is an NBA Championship.
“You are using flawed logic when you say that the NBA doesn’t explicitly state that voters can only take into account the current season when choosing an MVP. The NBA doesn’t need to explicitly state this. It goes without saying.”
This piece of criticism truly perplexes me. Something “goes without saying” when it is a mere social formality. It goes without saying that you should not verbally abuse your grandmother. It goes without saying that you should not wear a crop top to court. And it goes without saying that you should not lie to your physician. But it does not “go without saying” that you should intentionally misconstrue the concrete instructions and qualifying criteria provided to you by the NBA when voting.
If you receive a ballot for a State Representatives race, and the ballot reads “choose no more than four candidates,” you do not limit yourself to one candidate as a matter of supposed principle. Similarly, if you are voting for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player and the only instruction provided is to list who is “most valuable,” you don’t voluntarily limit the scope of your decision. If the NBA wants voters to only consider statistics during the 2013-2014 season, then the NBA has the burden to explicitly state that limitation. Do I think the NBA’s intent is for voters to choose who had the better individual season? Absolutely! But this is the very Association whose ambiguous end of season awards instructions resulted in Marc Gasol somehow winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2012-2013 while bizarrely not making the First Team All NBA Defensive Team. Until the NBA revises its explicitly and ambiguously defined rewards criteria, nothing just “goes without saying.”
“Why are you taking into account statistics from past seasons? Literally everyone knows that the MVP is only about an individual season’s worth of productivity!”
First, I would dispute or in the alternative demand evidence that literally every NBA voter knows the MVP is only about an individual season’s worth of productivity. But even if that is somehow the case, this sounds like a classic case of the logical fallacy argumentum ad populum. Just because voters have historically interpreted an ambiguously worded instruction in a specific way does not mean that all future voters should too interpret the aforementioned ambiguity in similar fashion.
Illogical appeals to the masses aside, I do not believe that it is possible to maintain intellectual honesty and also claim to be voting for the NBA MVP based on solely an individual season’s worth of productivity. Such a belief seemingly presupposes a voter’s ability to somehow blindly ignore prior accumulated knowledge. Assume the following hypothetical: assume LeBron James puts up his actual numbers from 2013-2014— 27.1 pts / 6.4 assists / 6.9 reb/ .567 FG% / 29.45 PER / 7.72 Real Plus Minus / 17.27 Wins Above Replacement. Assume, however, that Kevin Durant has an off year and is not in MVP contention. Now, assume that Phoenix Suns reserve point guard Ish Smith shockingly was the one that tallied Kevin Durant’s 2013-2014 statistics—32 pts / 5.5 asts / 7.4 reb / .505 FG%/ 30.2 PER / 6.65 Real Plus Minus / 17.36 Wins Above Replacement.
Kevin Durant is almost assuredly going to win the 2013-2014 MVP by a sizable margin, but in the above hypothetical, do you still think that Ish Smith would win the MVP over LeBron James? If so, do you think he would win the MVP by the same margin that Kevin Durant will win it this year? Or do you think that Smith’s season would be written off as the biggest outlier in professional sports history? Personally, I suspect that Smith would win Most Improved Player, snag a spot on First Team All NBA, but finish second to LeBron in MVP voting. Why? Because the MVP truly is not based on a single season of productivity!
In the above hypothetical, historical aberrations matter. More generally, however, historical trends matter. The fact that Steph Curry in 2013-2014 put up virtually identical numbers to Derrick Rose during Rose’s 2010-2011 MVP season in Chicago matters with regard to where you rank Curry in this year’s NBA ballot. In turn, the observation that this is far and away Kevin Durant’s best season as a pro, but this is not LeBron’s best professional season aside from efficiency metrics is an important piece of MVP analysis that should not be neglected. Durant is a far more compelling MVP candidate because of his historical evolution as a player, as opposed to simply because he scored a bunch of points and had a high Player Efficiency Rating.
In all candor, if you want the MVP award to be based solely off an individual season’s metrics, then why does the NBA even bother with human voters? They might as well just let a John Hollinger algorithm decide the winner.
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Ultimately, I am of the school of thought that, absent clearer criteria, the best player in the league should win the MVP. I am also of the school of thought that the best player in the league should be determined by the largest possible sample size. In light of LeBron James’s 4 MVPs, 2 Championships, and being the favorite to win a third title this season pursuant to sports books worldwide, it seems apparent to me that LeBron is the best player and, consequently, my MVP.
It is important to note that I am hardly alone on an island with this ideology. Grantland’s Bill Simmons recently wrote the following:
"On paper, giving an MVP vote to someone who isn’t actually the league’s best player — like Barkley over MJ in 1993, or Malone over MJ in 1997, or West over Reed in 1970, or even Nash over Kobe in 2006 — is one of the 12 best ways to make me irrationally angry. If you’re the best player, you’re the best player. There shouldn’t be any qualifiers or caveats."
In the interests of not coming across as a Simmons acolyte, he actually went on to carve out an exception allowing the second best player in the world, Kevin Durant, to win this season’s MVP. Simmons explained:
"But here’s the difference with 2014 Durant: For six solid months, a pissed-off Durant in fifth gear night after night after night has been better than LeBron Shifting Gears Depending On The Night. That’s a fact. And 2014 Durant is better than 1993 Barkley or 1997 Malone was, and 2014 LeBron isn’t as consistently dominant as 1993 MJ or 1997 MJ. Also a fact. Throw in Durant’s unbelievable offensive burden, Westbrook’s injuries, Scott Brooks’s bizarre coaching and OKC’s up-and-down supporting cast (Ibaka excluded) and it’s no contest. Please, if you’re reading this 10 years from now or 50 years from now, you need to understand — we didn’t get bored of voting for LeBron, and we didn’t briefly lose our minds. Let me know if you saw someone else average 35 a game with something in the neighborhood of 50-40-90 splits for four solid months, with the amount of attention defenses were giving him, no less. Incredible. Amazing. And he’s only 25. Can he get 10 percent better? Jesus."
His analysis is accurate. Kevin Durant was nothing short of otherworldly in 2013-2014. But LeBron was nearly as good, and by virtue of his collective resume is still the best player by default. Absent the NBA expressly changing its codified MVP criteria, I just cannot justify personally giving the second best player in the NBA the Maurice Podoloff Trophy. To be sure, this does not mean that I abhor Durant winning the MVP. He is a perfectly just and deserving winner—only I would not have voted for him.
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So, Durant is presumably the NBA’s MVP. Now what? Now, we start treating Kevin Durant like an actual MVP. No more coddling. No more excuses. Durant now gets to experience the LeBron James treatment circa 2008-2009.
Prior to LeBron James winning his first MVP, he was largely immune to criticism. When LeBron’s Cleveland Cavaliers were swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2006-2007 NBA Finals, LeBron was not blamed for Cleveland’s Championship loss. The narrative was in effect that the Spurs were the vastly superior team and James was an incredible but young burgeoning superstar without the supporting cast necessary to realistically win the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
Fast forward to the 2008-2009 NBA Season, the year that LeBron James was first named MVP. He averages 38 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists in an Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Orlando Magic. And despite those gaudy numbers, the media and fans alike unrelentingly criticized him for both unsportsmanlike conduct and a perceived refusal to take clutch end of game shots. Immediately after LeBron won the MVP, the proverbial kid gloves came off with regard to his critique.
Move ahead to the 2009-2010 NBA Season, where LeBron won his second MVP. The Cavaliers concluded an injury-ravaged season with a second-round loss to the Boston Celtics. James and his Cavaliers were aggressively booed by their home fans, LeBron himself was labeled a quitter. You win an MVP; you become the bastion of ultimate team accountability, regardless of exigent circumstances.
2010-2011: LeBron’s first year with the Big Three in Miami. Another year, same story. Two-time reigning MVP LeBron James loses in the finals to well-coached, savvy, veteran-laden Dallas Mavericks team, and LeBron again takes the blame. Some argued he could not coexist with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Others argued he was too unselfish. Many claimed he flat out choked. Few went as far as to label the season an embarrassment for the Eastern Conference Champion Miami Heat.
Both Peter Parker aka Spiderman and the French philosopher Voltaire once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” LeBron James found that out once he was anointed with the title of NBA MVP in 2009, and Kevin Durant should too find this out in 2014.
To be blunt, Kevin Durant has been babied by fans and media throughout his NBA career. When the Oklahoma City Thunder lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals in 2010-2011, there was no blame assigned to anyone. The narrative was framed as the Thunder being too young and inexperienced. In 2011-2012, when the Thunder lost to the Miami Heat in five games in the NBA Finals, youth was now a secondary excuse; Russell Westbrook became the primary scape goat for allegedly taking too many shots and not being a conventional point guard. Then in 2012-2013, when the Thunder were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by the Memphis Grizzlies, in a perplexing about face from the previous year it was asserted that Oklahoma City lost because Russell Westbrook was injured and unable to play. Historically, it is always something with the Oklahoma City Thunder, but that something is never Kevin Durant.
Now considered to be the league’s Most Valuable Player, Kevin Durant can no longer exist in a perpetual state of blame envelopment. Sometimes in the past, the Thunder did lose because of youth, and they did lose because of Westbrook’s basketball IQ, but they also sometimes lost because of Durant. As MVP, Durant’s failures can no longer be ignored, downgraded, or forgotten. Winning and losing in Oklahoma City is now on the capable shoulders of Kevin Durant.