Media Valuable Player award just got even lamer

[Reality]

Just when it was about to be another (rare) year when the MVP selected really was the MVP (Lebron)....
Now fans will get to vote for the MVP award.  Not sure what percentage their vote will weigh, but you know the NBAs largest marketing teams culties will be out in force, including the boardies here.  Update, the fans vote will be one of 125.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Your-vote-actually-counts-so-who-ya-got-for-MVP?urn=nba,231390
Your vote actually counts, so who ya got for MVP?

By Trey Kerby

Rather than arguing about who is the best player in the NBA, why don't you do something about it?

What's that? You don't have an MVP vote?

Wrong! Kind of.

For the first time in major pro sports history, fans have a vote in the Most Valuable Player race. By voting at NBA.com from Apr. 1 to Apr. 15, the winner of the fan vote counts one of the 125 votes used to determine this year's MVP. That's pretty cool, you guys.

Mark Tatum told USA Today the reasoning behind letting fans vote.

    "The impetus was how do we continue to engage our fans, empower our fans and get them involved and reward them for being fans of the NBA," executive vice president of NBA global marketing partnerships Mark Tatum said. "They cheer our players all throughout the year, and it's only right that they have an opportunity to determine who the league MVP should be."

We've earned it, I think. All those posts, chats, comments, and arguments and now we get to cast votes for the MVP and have it actually count for something. That's excellent.

Now all we have to do is agree on who's the best player in the NBA this season which should be really easy and not cause any fights at all. I'll be voting for Brad Miller(notes), obviously.

[Joe Vancil]

I don't even see how this is an argument.

James is 1st or 2nd in scoring, with the team with the best record in the pros.  Unexpected?  Perhaps.  How is he not the MVP?

Competitors:

Bryant:  4th in scoring, team with second-best record.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Nowitzki:  Team is in a dogfight for 2nd in conference.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Howard:  Leading rebounding, winning division, 2nd in conference.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Wade:   Team tettering on playoff brink.  Unexpected (in a positive way)?  Not at all.
Bogut:   Team in the playoffs and looking good.  Unexpected?  Sure.  To what level?  Basically irrelevant.
Pick-a-Celtic:  Team winning division, but no better than second in the conference, third in the league.  Unexpected?  Nope.
Nash:  Team second in division.  Unexpected?  Not really.
Durant:  2nd in scoring, leading a playoff team.  Unexpected?  I say yes.  He's second on my list.

My list looks like this:
James
Durant
Bryant
Nowitski
Howard

[Lurker]

Don't have any idea what the original post says...

But I agree with Joe's list.

As far as James...here is an article from Hollinger.  Of course it is all based on his PER calculation and how you will feel depends on how much creedance you give to that metric.

Normally at this time of year, we would be writing breathless articles about the MVP race, rallying our support behind one candidate or another and sifting through torrents of angry e-mails supporting that player's rivals.

Not this year.

The MVP race has been over since about mid-January. LeBron James has run so far away from the pack that he could shoot 0-for-100 from the field over his final eight games and still win the award going away. (For fun, I fact-checked this: Even with 100 straight misses, no assists and no rebounds in his next 200 minutes, he'd still lead the league in PER.)

Only two items of interest remain. First, will some sycophant homer screw up what should be a unanimous decision with a completely indefensible vote for his local guy? And second, is this the best individual season a player has ever had?

As you might suspect, today's topic deals with the second of those questions. Some of this may sound familiar, as this time a year ago I mentioned that James was en route to one of the best statistical seasons in history.

Here's the thing: This season, he's been better.

Once again, a hallowed record (at least in my world) is in play for James as we enter the final eight games: He could surpass Michael Jordan's 1987-88 campaign for the greatest single-season PER in the modern era. I have to add the "modern" qualifier because the league didn't keep track of things like blocks and individual turnovers before 1973-74, rendering the PER exercise a guessing game for players from previous eras.

James' current PER of 31.81 is second best in "modern" history, and with eight games left (of which he'll probably play only five or six), he retains an outside shot at breaking Jordan's all-time mark of 31.89. At the very least, he's going to be within hailing distance.


Top All-time PER Seasons
Player Year PPG RPG APG MPG PER
Michael Jordan 1987-88 35.0 5.5 5.9 40.4 31.89
LeBron James 2009-10 29.8 7.2 8.6 39.0 31.81
Michael Jordan 1990-91 31.5 6.0 5.5 37.0 31.79
LeBron James 2008-09 28.4 7.6 7.2 38.6 31.76
Michael Jordan 1989-90 33.6 6.9 6.3 39.0 31.31
Michael Jordan 1988-89 32.5 8.0 8.0 40.2 31.29

Regardless, James will almost certainly set another record: The best two-year PER stretch of any player in history. James was no slouch last season, finishing at 31.76 for the third-best PER ever (well, until he bumped it down to fourth this season); combined, that gives him a two-year average of 31.78. The best Jordan mustered was 31.55.

Obviously, the larger James versus Jordan argument won't be much of a debate until LeBron picks up some hardware in the postseason. Nonetheless, I can't emphasize enough what an extraordinary accomplishment James' past two seasons represent. We've flinched at comparing current players to Jordan after several previous "next Jordans" were found wanting. But that has put up a mental barrier to a declaration that the numbers see as obvious: In terms of regular-season performance, we're watching the next Jordan.

I'd argue that we can extend that comparison further. When Jordan was at the same stage of his career as LeBron, the press treated him almost exactly the same. Like James, he was a wondrous regular-season performer who had never won anything important and thus couldn't be compared with the likes of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

Looking back, that whole notion seems laughable, if not downright quaint ? yet we're falling in the exact same trap. Jordan, remember, didn't win a title until his seventh season. As luck would have it, James is in his seventh season, and his odds of winning a crown have never looked better. With the Lakers faltering down the stretch and the Celtics succumbing to age, only James' nemesis from a year ago -- Orlando -- would rate as an even-money proposition to stop him from winning the trophy.

That part of the James-Jordan comparison won't be settled for another two months, his regular-season one in a little more than two weeks.

James leads the league in scoring, at least for the moment (Kevin Durant is only 0.2 behind, and if James rests the final couple of games, Durant will have a number to shoot for, David Robinson-style, in the season finale). But LeBron is not just scoring. He's getting his 29.8 points per game with incredibly high-percentage shots. James' true shooting percentage of 60.4 ranks in the league's top 25, and most of the players ahead of him are snipers with much smaller offensive roles.

Yet for me, his passing is the most amazing part. In fact, for a wing player, it's eye-popping: James has cracked the league's top 15 in pure point rating even though he plays small forward. (Except for James and San Antonio's Manu Ginobili, every player in the top 40 plays the point).

Or try this one on for size: No forward in league history has ever averaged more than eight assists per game until this season; Larry Bird's 7.6 assists per game in 1986-87 came the closest. James is averaging 8.6, even though he's playing in one of the slow-paced eras in league annals and averages a relatively modest 39.0 minutes per game. Put him at Bird's pace in 1986-87, and he'd be averaging a whopping 9.3.

The same applies to most of James' numbers. On a per possession basis, his triple-crown stats of 29.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 8.6 assists crush Oscar Robertson's triple-double season in 1961-62 ? or Jordan's 32.5-8.0-8.0 season in 1988-89 ? or just about any statistical season in history.

All except one, that is. James' output still trails Jordan's peak campaign in 1987-88 by a whisker. He has a chance to glide past him in the final two weeks but, with Cleveland throttling down to coast into the postseason, probably won't.

Nonetheless, it's a season for the ages -- and his second of the like in a row. We've held off on comparing James to Jordan for some good reasons, especially since he hasn't won a title yet. But at this point, there's nobody else left to whom we can compare him.

[Reality]

I don't even see how this is an argument.

James is 1st or 2nd in scoring, with the team with the best record in the pros.  Unexpected?  Perhaps.  How is he not the MVP?

Oh it shouldn't be an argument.
But there might be one.

[Reality]

W.O.W.koast i apologize.

We had agreed as a board not to post unauthorized photos and here i posted one of you and now i can't take it down.  (for some reason, technical problem).

[westkoast]

Let's just make it clear that no Laker fan on this board is saying he is the MVP.  Again, Reality is the only person talking about it.  Big surprise there.

[Reality]

Let's just make it clear that no Laker fan on this board is saying he is the MVP. 

WouOutWest 

"Kobe is so much better then Queen James"

westkoast

Again, Reality is the only person talking about it.  Big surprise there.

JoeV

I don't even see how this is an argument.

James is 1st or 2nd in scoring, with the team with the best record in the pros.  Unexpected?  Perhaps.  How is he not the MVP?

Competitors:

Bryant:  4th in scoring, team with second-best record.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Nowitzki:  Team is in a dogfight for 2nd in conference.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Howard:  Leading rebounding, winning division, 2nd in conference.  Unexpected?  Not at all.
Wade:   Team tettering on playoff brink.  Unexpected (in a positive way)?  Not at all.
Bogut:   Team in the playoffs and looking good.  Unexpected?  Sure.  To what level?  Basically irrelevant.
Pick-a-Celtic:  Team winning division, but no better than second in the conference, third in the league.  Unexpected?  Nope.
Nash:  Team second in division.  Unexpected?  Not really.
Durant:  2nd in scoring, leading a playoff team.  Unexpected?  I say yes.  He's second on my list.

My list looks like this:
James
Durant
Bryant
Nowitski
Howard

[westkoast]

So you took a quote from WOW saying he thinks Kobe is better than Lebron and a quote from Joe where he put Kobe THIRD on his list of MVPs as them saying Kobe should be the MVP?

LOL, thanks for the laugh.

[WayOutWest]

So you took a quote from WOW saying he thinks Kobe is better than Lebron and a quote from Joe where he put Kobe THIRD on his list of MVPs as them saying Kobe should be the MVP?

LOL, thanks for the laugh.

"You can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever." - Ron White