From the ETB Reader Mailbag: Enough MVP Talk–Let’s Just Enjoy the Game

- The Season's Over -

From the ETB Reader Mailbag: Enough MVP Talk–Let’s Just Enjoy the Game

March 24, 2009

2009 NBA MVP LeBron James Last week I asserted that despite Kobe’s usual magnificence and Dwyane Wade’s remarkable comeback season, LeBron James would shortly be crowned the NBA’s Most Valuable Player. Many fans and writers out there agree with me, but then many don’t.

These annual MVP discussions tend to be heated ones. One of our readers, however, made it very clear in his letter dropped in the ETB mailbag that he’s sick of the debate and simply wants to enjoy the rest of the great seasons these three candidates are having without them being clouded by MVP talk. Fair enough. As I said, I’m not a fan of the endless back-and-forth either.

Since this loyal ETB reader–we’ll call him “Mario”–took the time to send such a lengthy response about the 2009 MVP race, I thought I’d publish it here instead of leaving it buried somewhere in the comments.

Check out his plea for MVP perspective in its entirety after the jump:

From ETB reader Mario:

Over the last few weeks it’s been impossible to log onto a NBA forum without getting into a heated debate about this season’s MVP award. If you find yourself in one of these debates, you will learn that any rational argument you put forward will result in a heavy bombardment of stats, transcript snippets, and highlight reels.

I guess this brings me to my question: what qualifies us, or anyone for that matter, to judge who is the MVP? Have we ever played in the NBA? It seems any time I pick up an MVP-related article, it tends to scream at me: “THIS GUY SHOULD BE MVP BECAUSE HE DID THIS AND THIS, BUT I’VE NEVER MET OR PLAYED WITH HIM, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER CANDIDATES”. So I say to them, prove it. (By the way, I have singled out Lebron/Kobe/Wade simply because they seem to be the most dominant in MVP discussions, and no, they are not in any particular order!)

How can you prove that Lebron is the one and only to make his team better when they have revamped their
starting roster this season, and with both Mo Williams and D-West both having their best years? (Why couldn’t he do what he’s doing now without them last year?). How can you say that Dwyane Wade deserves MVP because of stuffing stat sheets and keeping his sub-par team afloat in the East (very similar to what Kobe did in ’06). And how can you shout that Kobe is the one to credit all the Lakers recent success to, when they have such a strong motivational and technical mind like Phil Jackson, the pure talent of Pau Gasol, strength and experience of Derek Fisher, and hard work ethic of Sasha Vujacic and Trevor Ariza?

As human beings, we can only make the best decision based on the information at hand. Which is exactly what the coaches do every year: base one of the biggest decisions of the year on a handful of times they have watched or played against a player. Is this enough for them to base their vote on? Have you ever heard of a jury convicting someone based on snippets of the evidence testimonies?

To me, that raises an interesting question: do we as fans, who get to watch player’s night in night out, have a better idea of how valuable they really are? Are sports writers on the judging panel completely free of personal bias? Should we have criteria for MVP judges? Perhaps this is a reflection of why candidates on teams with worse records don’t get as many votes: because coaches won’t vote for Wade because he dropped 40 on them and they beat the Heat by 20, they would be more likely to vote for Lebron or Kobe, who torched them every time they tried to make a futile run to get back into the game.

A perfect example of this would be the Lakers and Heat against the Mavericks. In January, Wade put up 30 in a 15-pt loss. In March, with the Lakers down in the 4th, Kobe comes in, hits two clutch shots to ice the game, Lakers win. Who do you think Carlisle would vote for?

From previous MVP selections, we can see some common criteria the coaches are using: how consistent is he? How does he perform under pressure? How does he react to losing a game? How does he react when his team needs him most? How does his team react to his actions? To me, when you consider these categories, it’s quite clear that there’s no way any of us can separate the trio of Lebron, Wade, and Kobe. (I won’t bother giving examples here.)

And of course there’s always the argument that if the candidates were to switch teams, how would they perform? This is probably the second-worst way to separate the candidates (the worst is reading box scores: shoot me now). Rosters are created to compliment the game of their star players and the teams’ respective game plan.

And then there are the fans that run around saying “Lebron should be MVP because Kobe said he should win”, or how Lebron said the other guy should get it… I could go on, but what a waste of a reader’s time! At the end of the day, it won’t be up to us. And for this, I am thankful.

So this year, I’m going to pick my favorite and enjoy watching the whole field of candidates compete for the rest of the season rather than wasting my time arguing topics over which we (thankfully) have no control. Because I believe the three-horse race between Lebron, Wade, and Kobe is as good as basketball gets, and I refuse to miss out on it because of personal preference.

To me, this argument feels a lot like the “other” question of the last generation:who is/was better, Kobe or Jordan? And we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?