Offensive Player of the Year
1. Jerry West
2. Oscar Robertson
3. Kareem Abdul-JabbarOscar has his worst season to date and plays less than West, finally opening up an opportunity for West to lead this award outright. Extremely competitive group behind him, with Oscar, Kareem, Cunningham, Frazier, Hawkins, and Hudson all mounting valid cases, and Bing and Wilkens worth mentioning too.
Ultimately I cannot see anyone on this list matching even a relative down-year Oscar season on offence specifically, and then I think Kareem elevating the Bucks from a below average offence to a top two offence is too large a signal to overlook. Their selections here also presage their team-up the following year, when they generate a record-high relative offensive rating which will not be met/exceeded until the 1987 Lakers.
Defensive Player of the Year
1. Elvin Hayes
2. Willis Reed
3. Wes UnseldAwkward year with Russell gone, Wilt and Thurmond injured, Hayes irrelevant, and the Knicks/Bullets dividing front-court responsibilities. Mel’s Pacers and Kareem’s Bucks are underwhelming on that end as well, and Paul Silas’s Suns are outright awful. My initial thought here was to reward the power forwards rather than the centres; however, upon further reflection, Reed and Unseld play enough extra minutes that any advantage for DeBusschere and Gus is likely offset. And then Hayes is a minute outlier beyond that. In the spirit of Wilt and Russell, who both rarely ever left the court, that seems like a suitable tiebreaker.
Player of the Year
1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2. Jerry West
3. Willis Reed
4. Walt Frazier
5. Billy CunninghamI have Kareem #1 too. Little odd in the sense that it is one of the “worst” years of his true prime (1970-80, with a nice extended prime 1981-86), but I think West (and Reed/Frazier) needed a lot more help to compete for a title; put Kareem on the Suns this year, and who knows, maybe he manages a rookie title of his own.
TrueLAfan wrote:I know this is going to sound horrible, but Lew Alcindor had announced he was Muslim in late 1968, aligned himself with Elijah Muhammed in 1969...and probably didn't do as well in MVP/All-NBA voting as he should have in 1969-70. (Compare how Wes Unseld—a quiet, Christian black man—did in MVP voting in 1969 to Kareem in 1970. Hmmm.) I also think this played a part in Reed outpointing Frazier in MVP voting. I don't think there was a huge group of voters who were racist in the NBA, and it's not that Willis Reed was anything other than a terrific ballplayer. But the undercurrents were there and expressed, if subtly, and I do think there was a large enough minority to make for some bad voting from the late 60s into the early 1970s.
drza wrote:Honestly, just from what I've seen in this thread, it seems to me that Alcindor was pretty solidly better than West even as a rookie. In the regular season their stats were relatively close, but when in doubt doesn't a big usually have a bigger non-statistical impact on a game than a wing? I recognize that West was a good perimeter defender, but big men defenders just have a bigger effect than wing defenders and Alcindor (even then) was recognized as an excellent defensive big that dominated the glass. Offensive impact is much better covered by the box score stats than individual defense, and since bigs tend to have a bigger defensive impact their advantages generally may not show up as clearly. I expect that this is a theme that will soon get a lot of run in the Russell years.
Also, I don't buy the intangible edge of veteran over rookie in this comparison, again, because Kareem's on-court impact was obvious and undeniable. He led the biggest turnaround in NBA history, taking a team from the basement to the penthouse. Then, he stepped up even further in the postseason. I would bow to a strong, supported argument from the old-heads that clearly demonstrates areas that Kareem just didn't have the impact that his numbers and the team's turnaround suggests. But so far I haven't seen that in this thread. I've seen several people allude to the fact that Kareem was a rookie, and just seemingly make the logic leap that therefore he couldn't have that huge of an impact. But so far I haven't seen anything convincing to corroborate that. I've also seen it said that rookie Kareem wasn't as good as prime Kareem... OK. I can buy that. The thing is, that isn't the standard. He doesn't have to be better than prime Kareem, he only has to be better than everyone else in 1970. And so far, I haven't seen anything to suggest that he wasn't.
Even if it we were just voting on the regular season I'd have Alcindor edging out West. But in the postseason, it seems like Alcindor blew West out of the water. Even if West was injured for a part of the Finals, his postseason just doesn't even look comparable to Alcindor's. In fact, Alcindor's postseason was up several notches even from West's regular season. Kareem took a team that was last place in the conference the previous year to the 2nd best record in the league, the (then) biggest turnaround in NBA history, and then carried that team to the Conference Finals where they lost to the only other team in the league with a better record then them. Kareem played 10 postseason games against 2 different teams, so it's not like his numbers were inflated from playing in 2 or 3 postseason games. After averaging 29 and 15 on 52% FG in the regular season, he averaged 36 and 16 on 58% FG over 5 games against the Sixers, then 34 and 18 on 55% FG against the Knicks. That postseason performance looks consistent against both teams, and both were a step up from what he did in the regular season.
Again, unless there is film showing that the Knicks completely ignored Kareem, even a "let him get his" strategy would suggest that Reed was still on Kareem just maybe without as much help as he might normally get (and again, as far as I know even this is speculation). Perhaps something like the '95 Spurs attempted with Robinson getting Hakeem primarily 1-on-1. The thing is, just like in '95, the Muslim center absolutely UNLOADED on the reigning MVP 1-on-1. Just because the Knicks had a strong enough team to win anyway while the Spurs didn't, I don't see how the individual performance by Kareem against Reed isn't similarly impressive as what Hakeem did to Robinson.
West had a fine case. I think the lift he provided to the Lakers absent Wilt is still substantially less than what Kareem provided to the Bucks, but with yet another Game 7 Finals loss, he has the postseason success to justify him as the defining player of the year. Win that overtime game three and it becomes a lot more difficult to back Kareem. But while I understand he was injured, West’s performances in Games 3, 5, and 7 were not typical PotY material to me regardless of whether they can be excused by sub-par health, and I doubt that the Knicks were forcing all those turnovers without significant fault from the primary ball-handler for the Lakers. Both he and Reed were better last season, and that largely contributes to both their teams being in slightly diminished postseason form from the previous year.
Reed wins a bit of a makeup MVP — and a “leadership” Finals MVP — despite a lesser season. Frazier maintains, although his scoring in the Bucks series is enough of an individual blemish that I will not definitively say he improves; nevertheless, he steps up and wins them two Finals games with Reed limited. I do probably lean toward Reed for the regular season though, and with Reed’s superior series against the Bucks and with him playing like an MVP in their first two wins against the Lakers, that secures a slight edge for him.
Decent rotation of options for fifth, although I ultimately sided with Cunningham for keeping the 76ers at a high level of play (if not a high wins total) despite what has now become both a replacement of Wilt with Clark and Imhoff,
and an outright loss of Chet to the Bulls. Oscar is too deep into irrelevance this season, without his usual level of truly undeniable play. Wilt misses too much of the season to qualify, but I respect rushing back for the postseason, where he was an essential piece for the Lakers against the Suns and in that Game 6 Finals win. Haywood has an impressive ABA season, but fails to achieve anything, and I agree that his gaudy numbers are tempered by lacklustre league quality. Rick Barry looks better when he plays but misses a large chunk of the season and is even less relevant, losing his series against Haywood. Connie Hawkins has a nice first season, but ultimately his raw numbers are too similar to Billy Cunningham’s, and I think it reflects less well on Hawkins that the team improves the following two seasons even as he individually declines (also, Paul Silas likely deserves a fair amount of credit for their turnaround).
Finally, I am much more willing to consider Unseld this year, where he outplays Reed in three wins and ostensibly pushes the Knicks to the brink — although much like the Lakers against the Suns, the Knicks controlled every win, with the only reasonably close game being Game 2 where the Knicks needed to mount a five-point fourth quarter comeback to win by eight — but Earl, Gus, and Jack are all all-star talents, so team accomplishment will always be tempered. Individually, Unseld is a more serious competitor than he was last year now that Wilt and Thurmond are also injured, Hayes is out of the postseason, Oscar has slumped, etc.; however, that all brings him up to only ~eighth for me this year. In a series against the 76ers, I do not think Unseld would look like a superior player to Cunningham — and in fact we see exactly that next season.
