The Most Valuable Player Award is one of the most coveted in all of American professional sports. Winning it almost assures a player greatness. No one who has ever won and is eligible has missed the Hall of Fame.
While the nature of “value” is hard to define, there are traditionally four factors which play into it: individual performance, team performance, help, and narrative. Here is a brief explanation for each of those:
- Individual performance: Since the media started voting in 1979-80, a player who is top five in win shares all but three times and top five in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) all but five times. While those metrics don’t weight into voting, it’s safe to say that typically the winner is statistically a top-five player.
- Team performance: Only twice since the media started voting has a winner not been on a top-four team in the NBA. The two exceptions were Michael Jordan in 1988 and Russell Westbrook last season. Jordan’s PER was the third-highest in NBA history and Westbrook averaged a triple-double. Exceptions are made for very rare performances, but they are rare.
- Help: Having enough help to win but not so much help that it takes votes is an issue, as well. Only twice have winners had a teammate also finish in the top-five (Moses Malone and Julius Erving in 1983 and Jordan and Scottie Pippen in 1996).
- Narrative: As the season unfolds, a narrative around each player unfolds. It plays a part, but it’s more of a tiebreaker than anything.
Here are the top five candidates, in ascending order, with a brief discussion of how they fit in each of these areas.
DeMar DeRozan, Toronto Raptors
Individual Performance: DeRozan is averaging 23.1 points (down 4.2 from last year), but he’s also notching a career-high 5.2 dimes per contest and 48.9 effective field-goal percentage, per Basketball-Reference.com. His numbers aren’t sensational, but they are the best on the Raptors.
Team Performance: The Raptors are the best team in the Eastern Conference and the third-best in the NBA. With that, they merit at least one player in the MVP convo and DeRozan is their best player.
Help: DeRozan’s best teammate is Kyle Lowry, who has significantly regressed from last year. The bench has been huge, but no one ever lost MVP votes because they had a good bench.
Narrative: The Raptors’ success has everything to do with the “culture change” and DeRozan absolutely bought into that. If he doesn’t do that, they just aren’t as good as they have been.
Kevin Durant, Golden State Warriors
Individual Performance: Durant is averaging 26.5 points on 64.0 percent true shooting. He also has a career-high 5.4 assists per game and 1.8 blocks per game. He’s one of the greatest scorers in history, but this season he has been far more than a scorer for the Golden State Warriors; he’s been a legitimate two-way player.
Team Performance: The Warriors have the second-best record in the league, in spite of getting clobbered by a litany of injuries. Still, they have underperformed when healthy. That might be normal for a repeat champion coasting until the playoffs arrive, but it’s a bad MVP excuse.
Help: With three All-Stars and arguably not even being the most important player on his team (with Stephen Curry having a case there), few players in history have had more help than Durant.
Narrative: There might be a narrative argument that he’s carried the team without Curry. The Warriors are 15-7 when Durant has played without the senior Splash Brother. The problem is that they’re 8-0 with Curry and without Durant.
Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
Individual Performance: Davis is averaging 28.1 points, 11.1 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game. He’s also netted 55 treys this season. No one has ever done that. He’s having one of the greatest all-around seasons by a big man in the history of the game.
Team Performance: The Pelicans are currently on the No. 5 seed, but that they’re in a position to make the playoffs at all without DeMarcus Cousins is a true testament to Davis’ value. Since Boogie went down, Brow has averaged 30.3 points, 12.1 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 3.0 blocks in 29 games.
Help: Without Cousins, Davis’ best help is Jrue Holiday, who isn’t going to even be All-NBA (even if he is a bit underrated, he shouldn’t be either.)
Narrative: Davis picked up the Pelicans, strapped them to his back and carried them into the playoffs. It’s a monster effort and a great narrative.
LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers
Individual Performance: LeBron is arguably having his best offensive season ever in many ways. He’s averaging 27.7 points, 8.7 boards and a career-best 9.2 dimes per game. His 28.7 PER is the best it’s been since he returned to Cleveland. He leads the NBA in VORP.
Team Performance: The Cavs are a disappointing fourth in the weaker conference. They would be a lot worse without LeBron’s on-court play, but you can also argue that they might be better if it weren’t for some of the locker room issues he played a part in or if he hadn’t essentially taken a month off on defense.
Help: Kevin Love is an All-Star, but he’s missed a lot of games. There certainly isn’t much of an argument that he has too much help.
Narrative: Rather, the opposite is probably true. James’ best narrative argument is that while chaos and ruin rained down on #TheLand, the King reigned over it all, guiding the Cavaliers through essentially two roster revamps in the same season.
Next: The 20 different emotions of Gregg Popovich
James Harden, Houston Rockets
Individual Performance: There’s no argument that Harden has statistically had the best season. He leads the NBA in PER, Win Shares, Real Plus-Minus Wins, Box Plus-Minus and a ton of other advanced metrics. He’s also the leading scorer while also adding 8.7 dimes and has a 62.0 true shooting percentage.
He will be the first player in NBA history to average over 30 points scoring and 20 points passing with a true shooting percentage over 60.
Team Performance: The Rockets are the best team in the NBA, whether you’re looking at Simple Rating System, Margin of Victory or record. They locked up the No. 1 seed with weeks to go. When Harden plays, they’re 58-12.
Help: While Chris Paul might get named All-NBA (or might not) no other Rocket was named to the All-Star game or has a real shot at All-NBA. While Harden has a number of very well utilized role players around him, he’s what makes the team click.
Narrative: There’s a bit of a “fake narrative” that the narrative about Harden is that it’s “his turn. I don’t think this the main narrative around him and is actually a way of throwing a bit of shade on his candidacy in that it suggests he actually hasn’t earned it. The real narrative here is that he’s made the Rockets into a “super team” without having super team elite talent around him.