Better case for 2011 MVP? Dirk Vs Dwight

[Proxy]

I see alot of people claim that Dwight was the most deserving for MVP over Rose out everyone that missed out in 2011, but Dirk also put together a pretty strong regular season that seems to be overlooked because of his playoff run.

Is there a chance that Dirk was an even more deserving player than Dwight? What are your thoughts?

[Texas Chuck]

Sure there is a chance for Dirk. Depends on you view the 9 games he missed(and the 2 he rushed back for when still clearly hurt). If you look at how Dallas literally couldn't score without Dirk and they went 2-9 wrecking what would have been a strong 60+ win season its pretty easy to make the case not only was Dirk clearly the best player in the playoffs, he was competing with Lebron for the best player period.

Or you could look at that stretch as his fatal flaw costing him the MVP. If I had an MVP vote my top 3 would have been:

1. Lebron
2. Dirk
3. Dwight

Obviously Dwight has a case for finishing over Dirk, but I don't think either of them have a great case for finishing above Lebron, but I think we all understood going into that season Lebron had very little chance to win the MVP if the voters had any other options. Why they chose Rose I'll never understand, but its frustrating they "punished" Lebron for The Decision. Shows how small a lot of the media members can be.

[Statlanta]

Dirk. The Magic declined and weren't even seen as a serious contender mid-season in 2011. The only people who felt he deserved that MVP at that time were Floridians.

Dirk like Dwight was severely underrated by the media heads probably because of Derrick Rose's story, LeBron's story and the HEAVILY media driven(having the teams play in short shorts for example) Lakers Celtics rivalry brewing at the time. His postseason failures put him at such a media low that it was frankly criminal

[Odinn21]

Howard had a better case than Nowitzki for 2011 MVP.

MVP is an award with strong consideration for narrative.
With James joining Wade in Miami, he was out of the race basically.
The Magic traded R. Lewis for G. Arenas who was on his way out of the league, brought H. Türkoğlu back who was clearly worse than his 1st stint in town and let V. Carter go for Türkoğlu. The team actively got worse and there were phases. Yet the Magic won 52 games and the 5th highest margin victory in that season (SRS or NRtg don't make news but MoV does).

The most Nowitzki got recognised for was the Mavs were; 55-18 with him (62W pace, also +5.5 MoV) and 2-9 without him (15W pace, also -5.9 MoV).

Also Howard was recognised as an MVP candidate as he got 3 of 7 non-LeBron votes in the previous year. Nowitzki was not. There's usually an MVP window for every player, you can call it voter-fatigue or a thing like that but Nowitzki wasn't really in MVP race for a few years.

If it was going like the way we want it to go, it'd probably look like Texas Chuck's ranking, but it doesn't. And Howard was a stronger MVP candidate.

[SHAQ32]

Dwight had the 'narrative', the games played, the more dominant regular season while still having a great playoff run individually and team-wise. It's not close—revisionist history, really.