How many 21st century MVP selections do you disagree with?

[TheLand13]

2001 to Shaq, 2005 and 2006 to Dirk, 2008 to LeBron or CP3, 2011 and 2017 to Bron. There's a few others where, I would have voted for someone other than the winner if I were a voter, but I don't think the winner was undeserving - probably would have voted for Duncan in 2007 and Bron in 2014 but Dirk and KD were right up there with them.

2017 LeBron vs 2017 Harden

Code: Select all

    Lebron Harden
GP     74     81
PER   27.0   27.4
VORP   6.7    8.0
BPM    7.6    8.7
WS    12.9   15.0
WS/48  .221  .245

Cavs were 7th in SRS and the Rockets were 3rd
Cavs had the #3 offense and the Rockets were #2
Cavs had the #21 defense and the Rockets were #18

It would take a VERY strong media narrative around LeBron for him to take that MVP over Harden.

Arguments for Lebron over Harden in 2017 as I see it:

- Houston's offense held up fairly well with Harden off the court that year, whereas Cleveland's offense was awful with Lebron off the court.
- Lebron was probably a better defender all things considered
- Heliocentrism bad (or at least, heliocentrism juices box-score production)

Weak.

LeBron had Irving and Love while Harden had Eric Gordon and Trevor Ariza.

Hardens individual stats were better. His team stats were better. His box score stats were better. His advanced stats were better and he had no star power on his team.

There is no good argument for LeBron, even if the team built around him sucked while he was on the bench.

"He put up worse numbers and won less games, but his bench was bad!"

Yeah, doesn't hold up

I'm a little confused by this argument.

Why is Harden being compared to LeBron in 2017? Westbrook is the one you should be comparing him with since he's the one who won the MVP award in 2017. I guess if you're saying Harden was more deserving (which I actually do agree with in regards to that particular season), then that would make more sense, but even then you're still going to have to argue why he deserves it over Westbrook.

2018 would make more sense, and quite frankly, I don't see an argument for Harden really deserving it over James anymore. It always felt like, even with Harden's incredible numbers and the Rockets record, LeBron was always the better player. Not to mention, getting Chris Paul was a huge factor in Houston's improvement and Harden playing better, since Paul ended up becoming the main initiator of that team instead of Harden. Meanwhile, Cleveland is most certainly a bottom of the barrel team without LeBron.

[f4p]

2018 would make more sense, and quite frankly, I don't see an argument for Harden really deserving it over James anymore. It always felt like, even with Harden's incredible numbers and the Rockets record, LeBron was always the better player. Not to mention, getting Chris Paul was a huge factor in Houston's improvement and Harden playing better, since Paul ended up becoming the main initiator of that team instead of Harden. Meanwhile, Cleveland is most certainly a bottom of the barrel team without LeBron.

2018? not sure i follow. Harden led the league in PER, WS, WS48, and BPM on a team that had the #1 offense and easily led the league in wins. lebron won low 50's games in the east and took like 2 weeks off of playing hard to complain about how bad his teammates were (and i say that as a huge lebron fan). paul was a great leader of the 2nd unit and super good that year, but he was definitely not the main initiator of our team. harden was still putting up 30/9 and had just had the #2 offense to the 2017 warriors the year before so it's not like paul just brought the offense to unprecedented heights. sure, did any of that mean that harden surpassed lebron as a player? of course not. you wouldn't pick anyone in the world over lebron back then and lebron had one of the great playoffs ever in 2018. but harden 2018 mvp seems like a pretty open and shut case.

[TheLand13]

2018 would make more sense, and quite frankly, I don't see an argument for Harden really deserving it over James anymore. It always felt like, even with Harden's incredible numbers and the Rockets record, LeBron was always the better player. Not to mention, getting Chris Paul was a huge factor in Houston's improvement and Harden playing better, since Paul ended up becoming the main initiator of that team instead of Harden. Meanwhile, Cleveland is most certainly a bottom of the barrel team without LeBron.

2018? not sure i follow. Harden led the league in PER, WS, WS48, and BPM on a team that had the #1 offense and easily led the league in wins. lebron won low 50's games in the east and took like 2 weeks off of playing hard to complain about how bad his teammates were (and i say that as a huge lebron fan). paul was a great leader of the 2nd unit and super good that year, but he was definitely not the main initiator of our team. harden was still putting up 30/9 and had just had the #2 offense to the 2017 warriors the year before so it's not like paul just brought the offense to unprecedented heights. sure, did any of that mean that harden surpassed lebron as a player? of course not. you wouldn't pick anyone in the world over lebron back then and lebron had one of the great playoffs ever in 2018. but harden 2018 mvp seems like a pretty open and shut case.

Chris Paul was most definitely the main initiator of that team. Harden got more assists, but Paul was the one constantly calling out the plays and controlling the tempo of the game. He was the one getting guys in position and adapting on the fly to meet the defense being presented to the team. Harden followed his lead and had no problem doing so, because even he understood that Paul was better at this than he was. Without Harden, that Rockets team is still pretty elite, and is still playoff bound, and is still going to present problems with its offense. They had a well built and oiled machine around Harden and Paul was the last piece needed to turn that team into a juggernaut.

Yeah, the Cavaliers only won 50 games. And they're lucky that they did. The pieces Cleveland got in return for Irving ultimately did not pan out the way they would have liked. Rose had injury and consistency issues. Dwayne Wade was the lone bright spot in terms of acquisitions Cleveland had that season. Kevin Love missed time with injury as well, and he was an all star that season.

And then they made a huge mid season overhaul, bringing in four new players. That's pretty tough to do, but LeBron was able to hold it all together. It's actually pretty incredible that they ended up with 50 games that season, all things considered. You can bring out the advanced stats all you like but the simple fact of the matter is, Harden had a much easier go with a better cast around him that fit his skillset perfectly and a lot of guys doing all the dirty work for him. LeBron on the other hand basically did ALL the work, all while still managing better overall numbers. And I'm willing to bet that if you asked the general public which team would suffer more without their star player, the Cavaliers would be the more popular choice.

[Bank Shot]

01 - Duncan
08 - Paul
11- Dwight
17 - Harden

[pipfan]

I just don't see the argument for LBJ in 2011-he wasn't even the leader of his own team. I had Howard-Rose-LBJ-Dirk