baldur wrote:i dont respect this award because of the unfair team success criterion. it is named most valuable player award yet the player's team's regular season record is much more important than the player himself's performance. in this sense, we cant include anthony davis in mvp discussion even if he has 35 ppg, 14 rpg and 3 bpg. it is not his fault his teammates being scrub.
Different folks, different opinions. I prefer my MVP to come from a great team 99.9% of the time. Anthony Davis is obviously one of the very best players in the league and he may yet make the playoffs this year. It's still early, they aren't out of it yet. However it this point he wouldn't be my MVP.
The problem I have with giving MVPs to guys that come from medicore or bad teams is numbers never tell the whole story. Think of James Harden last year. Posted outstanding numbers but he played no defense and wasn't a leader on the team. Not saying at was all his fault, it wasn't. The team wasn't good enough to be top 2 in the West last year(or this year) but still you have to take that into consideration. You could say the same thing about Kevin Love when he was in Minnesota, great numbers but not an MVP player for many of the reasons I just listed about Harden.
On the other hand you have a guy like Chris Paul. His numbers are good but not great. But everybody paying attention realize his leadership is probably the single biggest reason the Clips are a NBA best 14-2. If the Clips finish with the best record you will be hard pressed not to give it to him.
I know the Durant/Curry/Warriors haters don't want to hear it but both guys are in my top 4 and both have a STRONG case as to why they are the MVP right now. Durant case is simple. Of all the top ten scorers in the NBA Durant is easily the most efficient so far. And Curry isn't too far behind. Speaking of Curry it has to help his case that he come out with a total "team" mindset. He didn't come into the season worrying about his shot attempts. If anything he took a backseat to help Durant get integrated into the offense. And when he did Curry picked his pace back up. That's the definition of MVP. A guy doing whatever it takes to help his team win not pile up big numbers. You see Lebron doing the same with the Cavs. You see Lebron trying to make winning plays, get teammates invloved, etc. Contrast that to Irving and Love, every time I see them they are trying to score which is fine as long as Lebron is on the team to be a stabilizing force. But without Lebron the Cavs probably go from a one seed to eight seed. That's the definition of MVP.
My early top 5 MVP race.
1)Chris Paul
2)Lebron James
3)Steph Curry
4)Kevin Durant
5)Kawhi Leonard
I wrestled with the Curry/Durant decision but ultimately I decided Steph over KD. Obviously both of those guys are great and there is no wrong decision there but for me I can back to not necessarily which of them have had the better year but which player do I think have made the TEAM better. If I were choosing strictly based on individual perfomances I would of picked KD considering Steph first 4 or 5 games weren't great(not bad but just not great by his standards) and when you've only 15 games into the seasons 4 or 5 games is a lot. But ultimately I believe Steph is the bigger reason the Warriors are on pace to be the best offensive team ever. I also notice the Warriors offense function at a higher level with Steph on the floor and Durant isn't than vice versa. Granted it early but I expect that trend to continue. Like I said for years what make the Warriors offense so unique is you have to defend a dribbler out to 30 feet. That put a defense into all type of comprising positions. That mean more to me than Durant superior one on one skills. Especially in the modern NBA where it's all about ball movement. If it was 15 years ago where it was all about the iso game and one on one skills Durant would be more valuable.
In short I'm glad voters have team success as a HUGE part of the award. Otherwise you could have someone go out that who isn't focused on winning and just gun for big numbers win the award. And in no way, shape or form am I saying Anthony Davis is doing that. He's not. But we've seen guys do that before.
Having said all this there is almost no chance Curry gets it for a third straight year without pulling off something truly historical and even then he still might not get it. When the dust is settled and the smoke is clear, it's likely going to be Paul, Lebron, Durant or Leonard walking away with the award. And if they and their teams go on and do what we expect them to this year you can't complain about that.
