The NBA MVP is an arbitrary award

On Monday, the NBA will congregate at Pier 36 in New York City for the league’s first live awards show, and they will probably name Russell Westbrook league’s MVP. Still, that half-certainty hasn’t stopped fans from launching salvos in support of the other candidates: LeBron James, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard.

Unfortunately for the NBA, in the month since they announced the MVP finalists, the league’s most prestigious individual award, in perhaps the best race of the decade, has become an afterthought. During those four weeks, we’ve had the NBA Finals, Kevin Durant replying to everyone on Twitter, the Philadelphia 76ers trading up for Markelle Fultz, Phil Jackson putting Kristaps Porzingis on the trade block, and the Chicago Bulls selling low on Jimmy Butler. The show (hosted by Drake) is the NBA’s attempt to bring its awards season into the mainstream, but the timing has come at the cost of hype.

So let’s go back to May 19, the day the finalists were announced, when the MVP buzz was at its highest. The three finalists for the award: Westbrook, Harden and Leonard. Fans and media accepted Westbrook and Harden as locks. Most agree they had the two most viscerally impressive seasons and will likely finish first and second, respectively, but, after the top two, fans criticized voters. Leonard, instead of LeBron, who had been an MVP Finalist every year since 2008, two years before he started his Finals streak, occupied the third spot.

Read More: Remembering the first Superteam in NBA history

NBA Twitter, always quick to react, exploded with criticism toward the system. How could the best player in the world be left off an MVP ballot?

And…

Then there’s…

Even LeBron — king of being informed, despite his facade where he always says otherwise — played off the finalist snub:

Outrage over an MVP snub is natural, especially when it involves the best player in the world. The fact that the fourth guy on the list can boast such a strong MVP case is both a compliment to his talent and a compliment to the pool.

But the outrage over LeBron’s snub isn’t about his career-highs in assists and rebounds at 32 years old, playing in his 14th season. It’s not about true shooting percentage or uncontested rebounding rate or VORP or BPM or PER. That’s too deep. And it’s not about who rightly deserves a nominee spot. The outrage is about the best player in the world being left off a list. It doesn’t matter if LeBron deserves to win or not. Detractors say he deserves to be considered part of the final group. And therein lies the problem: A finalist ballot doesn’t mean anything.

This particular MVP race has shown us two things: The first is our affinity for round numbers and established standards for ranking success — a system that usually manifests in a top three, top five or top 10. In the NBA, a season is considered greater the closer stats get to multiples of 10. Westbrook’s 30-10-10 is generally considered better than Harden’s 29-11-8 because we like double-digits, even if we realize Westbrook’s season is considered so much better because of 2.5 more rebounds a game.

The second is that our digesting of numbers is subjective. If you took 100 rebounds from Westbrook’s season total, he would’ve averaged 9.3 rebounds — still a ridiculous season for any guard — but his historic season takes a huge hit. That’s not to knock Westbrook’s season at all. Rather, it’s just to expose our subjectiveness. A 30-10-9 season for Westbrook would have equaled about 1.2 fewer rebounds per game, an inconsequential number across a sample size as large at 82 games. Yet votes would still change.

In fairness, toeing that line between what counts as enough is the toughest part of any MVP vote. We — voters, fans and anyone who thinks a player should be MVP — create a filter that can vigorously cycle all potential candidates, with the hope a clear-cut choice comes out the other side. We gather as much information as we can, measure it against other candidates, apply it to situations throughout the season and account for variables such as team wins and games played (a significant part in the rest era). It’s the beautiful chaos that is an MVP race; you can make a case for anyone, even Dion Waiters! (Kidding.)

But the inherent problem isn’t with who comes out the other side; it’s who built the filter and with what parts. We don’t universally know what makes an MVP, which makes it one of the best debates in sports. Yet, a natural product of immense research in picking an MVP is subjectiveness. No matter how objective a voter may be, there will always be bias. We can come together and agree a stat like points per game has value, but it’s about the weight it carries from individual to individual. Certain numbers carry certain weight. So setting a cap to a list of three or four or five candidates is only a guideline with no value. A cutoff. A predetermined number of options that is a safeguard against our predisposition to gorge ourselves on choice.

And if we understand that MVP voting favors the varying weight of certain stats by individual, then why the outrage over LeBron’s absence as a finalist? If we stopped the collectively established top three and increased it to a top four, would the outrage over LeBron’s absence exist? No, because he would be a “finalist.” If his name appeared beneath Leonard’s, visual proof LeBron would finish in fourth place, would anyone care? The only difference between LeBron being an unlisted fourth MVP candidate and a listed fourth candidate is an arbitrary line. It creates the illusion of a snub only. It’s still the same thing. The number of candidates doesn’t mean anything other than the weight we put on the number three when it comes to MVP ballots. And, don’t think that there wouldn’t be a fair amount of outrage coming from slightly different circles if Kawhi Leonard and LeBron James had simply switched spots.

Here’s a quick way to show how little weight we can put on rankings: How many movies are in your top 10? If you answered 10, you’re lying. If you answered anything more than 10, congratulations, you realized that it all means nothing! (Pops champagne.)

Next: Jimmy Butler can unlock Andrew Wiggins' full two-way potential for the Timberwolves

In the landscape of the NBA MVP, a snubbed finalist is rarely a big deal. It’s not often that fourth place has a legitimate case for winning. But it happens. And arbitrary emphasis on numbers shouldn’t stop us from realizing how freakish this race is. The NBA should change its way of presenting its finalists for the MVP by eliminating a top three completely. Instead of thinking it as a means to determining the best player in the league for that season, we should look at it as a way of understanding a season as a whole. A top three creates buzz, but it leaves us vulnerable to snubs and a change in narrative for a given season — LeBron’s faux-snub becoming the biggest MVP story, for example.