Doctor MJ wrote:lessthanjake wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:
So, while I do think that the more statistically dominant the best player is, the more likely it is he'll get the nod even if his team loses...but the gap between SGA & JDub is huge. He has way higher PPG, TS%, better all-in-ones, better +/-, all while quite clearly being the main focus of the opposing defense at all time and being known to be tiers ahead of JDub as a player in generally.
If voters want to vote for the best player in the series, aka, do their job, they know who it should be already.
But they also knew it in 2015 when they chose a non-top 2 player (Iggy) over the obvious top 2 (LeBron & Steph), and over in the WNBA in 2024, they knew it when they chose another secondary player (Jonquel Jones) over the team's star & opponent focus (Breanna Stewart), and over easily the best player in the series and playoffs (Napheesa Collier).
Somehow over time, media members have convinced themselves it's literally their job to have a weird kind of winning bias so strong that they'll punish not just the star of the losing team, but the star of the winning team if they are inferior to the star of the winning team. There's just no way these folks would have given Jerry West the Finals MVP in 1969 the way the original voters did.
Personally, I think the extreme winning bias here is reasonable. If it were Playoffs MVP, then it wouldn’t be reasonable to dogmatically only reward someone on the title team. But when it’s Finals MVP, there’s an element to which the losing team came out of the Finals with zero value at all—since it is basically an all-or-nothing thing with a winner and loser, and the team lost. If the award were for best player in the Finals, then maybe it’d be different, but I think it’s reasonable to decide a player on the losing team cannot have been “most valuable.” In that sense, I think the 1969 award was wrong, rather than that it provides a precedent that should be used moving forward. To draw an analogy to a much more serious issue, I think it’s a Korematsu type of thing—precedent that is technically still on the books (or, in the case of Korematsu, it was until very recently), but never to be followed.
Of course, that’s separate from the question of whether it is right in any particular instance to give the Finals MVP to a secondary player on the winning team rather than the winning team’s star player. I think it’s possible for a role player or secondary star to actually be the most valuable in a particular series, but the effect of star players on game plans is so large that it’s quite unlikely for that to happen, and voters should have a really high bar to give it to someone else. So, to me, the 2015 Finals MVP decision was definitely wrong. The 1988 Finals MVP decision was also definitely wrong. The 2007 and 1981 Finals MVP decisions were more defensible, but may have been wrong too. The 1989 Finals MVP decision was probably actually right.
So, I'll put it like this:
Had the NBA said, when they first made the Finals MVP award, that it would go to the MVP of the winning team, I'd have no issue with that being the norm.
Instead, with the very first vote, this possible criteria was rejected, and from that point onward, I've never heard anything that's said this criteria specified to correct how voters approach the award. (And if there's something I missed on this, please do let me know, as that would be important.)
To me, the fact that it was the first vote is all the more reason to not take it too seriously. Realistically, things like this are often hastily put together the first time they’re done. They were making it up as they went, and very likely hadn’t really thought through and developed a consensus on what the criteria for the award should be. It’s like a common law legal standard that gets refined over time, rather than being set in stone by the first instance in which its ruled on—that process of refinement is important and helps get to a real consensus view on the right approach. This is underscored by the fact that it seems to have often been described at the time as an award for the “outstanding player” rather than “most valuable” player (see jalengreen’s post above). Which could make a big difference in how the award would be thought about (indeed, I said in an earlier post that I think a player on the losing team could get an award for best player in the Finals, but shouldn’t get an award that’s for MVP). More on that near the bottom of this post.
Related to the making-it-up-as-they-went thing, I will also note that it’s genuinely not clear whether the 1969 Finals MVP was actually voted on after the series ended, or before Game 7 was over. I’ve never seen anything definitive on this topic, but the general consensus seems to be that it was voted on before the end. Of course, if that’s the case then it’s really not precedent at all for voting for someone on the losing team. It’d be like Zidane winning the 2006 World Cup golden ball, because it was voted on before the end of the World Cup Final (and he proceeded to be red carded for headbutting someone in extra time, after which his team lost). I’m not certain what’s right in terms of how the 1969 vote was done, though, and maybe the oft-stated claim that it was voted on before the series ended is misinformation (and maybe you have concrete information on this that I don’t have). It doesn’t really change my view on it either way, but I assume it’d probably change your view.
Re: zero value at all because all-or-nothing thing. I mean, we create our own meaning in this life, and the original voters clearly felt Jerry West's performance was valuable. I'm loathe to reject the value placed on things like this by their contemporaries.
My point about a team getting zero value from losing is explaining my own view on how the award should be voted for. That view is why I think the 1969 vote was wrong. If contemporaries voting for someone makes the vote correct, then that basically just means that every Finals MVP pick must be right. Which ends up being a bit tautological (i.e. the vote must be right because it was the vote).
And, of course, even if the 1969 voters took the view that someone on the losing team can win (a notion that is subject to whether they actually voted after the series had ended), it really does seem like voters since 1969 have taken the opposite view, so the overall Finals-MVP-voter consensus over the years is almost certainly in the losing-player-shouldn’t-win direction. Though obviously the consensus view of voters doesn’t *have* to be right anyways.
Re: Korematsu. I get what you're trying to say here, but it's a bit dicey territory. Let's note for the record that there's nothing about the NBA's Finals MVP award that is moral/immoral in a way comparable to the internment of Japanese-Americans by the government.
Certainly agreed. I was intending to cover that by saying that it is a “much more serious issue,” but yes it certainly bears noting that obviously no side of this discussion is in any way morally comparable to internment of Japanese Americans. I was simply using it as an example of precedent that no one actually seriously thinks of following.
I’ll give a different, less morally charged, analogy: It can be thought of as akin to non-delegation doctrine. The Supreme Court found non-delegation violations in a couple cases in 1935, so there’s precedent for it. But non-delegation claims have lost every single time at the Supreme Court for like 90 years since then. So non-delegation claims are essentially never taken seriously anymore, even though there is actually precedent for it. (Granted, given its current composition, the Supreme Court might actually change that soon, so it’s not a perfect analogy right now, but that gets us far afield). The point is that sometimes there’s precedent that, over the course of time, has effectively become invalidated/repudiated by people not being willing to subsequently follow it, even if it’s not been formally overruled. I think this is one of those times.
So then, I'll specifically put forward the question:
What are the grounds for rejecting precedent in the case of the Finals MVP?
I say this not doubting they exist, but how would you describe the case?
I think there’s a few grounds:
1. The point I made about a team getting zero value if it lost.
2. The fact that players don’t actually want the award if they lost. Jerry West was angry about getting the 1969 award. Lionel Messi was visibly displeased to get the World Cup Golden Ball in 2014. Players don’t even want to win these kinds of awards when their team lost. Which certainly would seem to militate against giving it to them—not to mention that it suggests that players take a view of things that’s supportive of point #1.
3. The fact that the only precedent for this was the very first instance of the award—before the standard and criteria had been thought through much—and it has proceeded to never be replicated again. (Not to mention that the one instance of this may not really be an instance of it at all, if it was voted on before the series ended). And I’ll add that the fact that it was never replicated again may well be in part because of point #2.
4. Following up on jalengreen’s post above, if the award in 1969 was labeled as an award for “outstanding player” of the series rather than “most valuable player,” then it’s not exactly proper precedent for an award that now squarely is about “most valuable player.” I think it’s much easier to label a player on the losing team the “outstanding player” of the series than the “most valuable” one, because the former doesn’t squarely run into the issue with point #1. The evidence on this is not super concrete, but if it was often described at the time as the “outstanding player” rather than “most valuable” player (as jalengreen’s post certainly indicates), then I think that’s pretty important in terms of how important the precedent from that particular award is. If the award’s meaning/label wasn’t the same as it is now—and in a way that materially affects the specific question being discussed—then it’s hardly good precedent.
