Through the third week of March, let’s take a look at who are the front-runners for the major six NBA awards in this week’s NBA Award Watch.
We are at the home stretch of the 2016-17 NBA season. Every team has somewhere between nine and 12 games left on the schedule. With every passing game, some team is getting closer to clinching a playoff berth, while others get closer to being in the NBA Draft Lottery.
As the regular season draws a close, the awards races across the league intensifies. Though there has been a ton of movement of late, here are the six front-runners for the six major awards in the NBA in this week’s NBA Award Watch.
Most Valuable Player: Kawhi Leonard
Most Valuable Player will end up being one of the most interesting races down the stretch. There are four serious candidates for the award: James Harden, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard and Russell Westbrook.
At this point of the MVP race, it will come down to what NBA writers feel is more important: statistics or winning. The media’s fascination with the triple-double could make Westbrook the presumptive leader, but his Oklahoma City Thunder are only middle of the pack in the Western Conference.
Harden’s Houston Rockets are electrifying offensively, but have cooled off of late. James could be a viable candidate, as he is having maybe the best season of his career. However, sitting out games down the stretch to conserve energy only adds fuel to the fire for media voters to not give him their MVP vote.
That leaves Leonard as arguably the best and most deserving candidate. He has San Antonio as a top-two seed in the Western Conference and has handled the transition to superstardom fantastically after Tim Duncan’s retirement. If San Antonio wins over 60 games, Most Valuable Player might end up going to Leonard. He is the best player on one of the three best players in the NBA today.