[NBA] The 4-Point Play: My MVP vote.

Archive

Every year it seems the vote for the MVP is screwed up. Voters tend to take strange things into account, subconsciously, and it really messes with things. There is no doubt that players are held to different standards than other players. Guys like Shaquille O’Neal will get passed over for guys like Allen Iverson, or Steve Nash, simply because those guys are underdog stories or because the media has latched onto some aspect about them that they find sells papers. O’Neal was robbed at least 2 times (last year and the 00-01 season), and Jordan was robbed a few seasons seemingly because people were just sick of him winning all the time.

Sure some cases were made each time, but they were about as effective as a case for WMD’s being made towards Switzerland. It just never made any sense and it only left most of us fans puzzled.

This season is one of the hardest in memory. There are several great candidates in the running, mainly because there isn’t a huge gap in the top scorers AND because there are enough compelling stories for each of them that there isn’t a “media darling” running away with the sentimental vote.

Anyhow, I went about this by looking at a few factors:

1) Player PER. PER is a comprehensive statistic created by John Hollinger in his Pro Basketball Prospectus. The drawback here is that this statistic doesn’t take defense into account. While there isn’t a great stat to look at defense, I like to at least use what I have. This is why I also use:

2) Roland Rating. The Roland Rating is essentially a variant on the +/- system. I include the Roland Rating here because it tries to bring defense into the equation in some form and since it’s practical for what I want to do, I’ll include it.

3) Team record. This speaks for itself. Now, unlike a lot of folks I don’t put TOO much weight in this factor. Some people believe you can NOT have an MVP who doesn’t at least win X games (X being whatever random amount one has picked out of his head). I tend to use games won as a tie breaker system and in the elimination of candidates who are on teams that are VERY VERY bad.

4) Salary. Yes you heard this right. I’ve read countless columnists and I never ever see anyone using this. Typically the argument against it is that has nothing to do with how that player performed and once the contract is signed there isn’t anything about the contract that a player can control anyhow. It also gives an advantage to players on their rookie contracts. I use the number simply because there is a value in not taking up as much of your team’s assets as another guy. That money can be spent making the whole team better and since there is some correlation between money spent and team wins, I think players should get this added in. If you have 2 guys, one makes 10 mil a year and the other makes 8, all other things being equal I’ll take the guy that makes 8. And because of that he has more VALUE to me. Why…one could say he’s the MOST VALUABLE PLAYER, of the two. So, bingo-was-his-name-o, I use it.

5) Player replacement/positional impact. Let’s use those 20/10 players again. If Player A’s backup is Antonio McDyess and Player B’s backup is Kelvin Cato, then in my view Player B is more valuable to his team simply because that team loses more when Player B is out, than when Player A is riding HIS team’s pine.

6) Minutes played. This ties into #5. In fact it often lessens the impact of #5. Staying with the comparison: If Player B plays half the minutes of Player A, that means that Kelvin Cato is in the game twice as much as Antonio McDyess. There is a value in Player A simply staying in the game more than Player B. He’s a starter for a reason.

Let’s see what we have

PER Roland Wins Minutes Salary

James 28.18 16.3 49 3361 4.6

Diggler 28.16 11.6 60 3086 13.8

Bryant 27.9 14.5 44 3244 15.9

Wade 27.7 15.5 52 2897 3.0

Garnett 26.9 12.9 33 2960 18.0

Billups 25.2 12.1 64 2909 5.9

Nash 24.5 8.9 53 2746 9.6

The first thing I want to do is start with the assumption that the most comprehensive stat tells the tale. So for me this means that LeBron James is our MVP unless the other factors can take it away from him.

The Roland Ratings would have been the MAJOR tide changer. Had Dirk’s Rolands’ been closer to 16 this thing would have been his running away. The team success of the Mavs would have just been too much. It’s interesting to note at this point how Wade’s Rolands’ bring him up into the conversation. This is also clearly where Steve Nash departs from the conversation. Having the worst PER in the group AND the worst Roland Ratings can not be overcome. Later on down the line he also had the least amount of minutes too, which means he was effective for “less long” than the other players. Sorry, Steve but this season ends where last year should have….with you just out of the race.

Team wins. Again, I don’t put too much stock in this. An NBA team is like an organism and because of that weak links really do hurt a team. Someone who weighs wins too heavily would assume Dirk is the MVP over Kobe, but compare the relative teams around them and it’s easy to see why one team got 60 wins and the other got far fewer. In fact, one could argue that with LA’s cast, 44 wins was close to a miracle. However, what team wins DOES do is it doesn’t allow anyone to run away with it. Had James’ team been better and won more games this would have iced it for him. Yes there was an injury to Lawrence Hughes III. However, the rest of that team is good enough that 49 wins out East simply isn’t overwhelming for me. Unfortunately, this is where we say goodbye to Kevin Garnett. Middle-of-the-pack PER and middle-of-the-pack Roland Ratings can keep you hanging around, but 33 wins is just too few to stay in this race. The best PER and he’s still in it based on my view of wins, but his PER was too low with his win count. In the words of Al Davis, “The KG must go down, and he must go down hard.” Obviously, Billups is greatly helped here. Anything less than 60 games and he’s officially done. His other stats just aren’t enough, but wins on a team that was bored, or it could have won more, is impressive. However, it’s a bit of a double edged sword for Billups as we all know how balanced the Pistons are; if his team were slightly worse, but him being a bigger part of it led to them winning the same…that would help him. But we keep in our minds the balance of the Pistons just in case we need to break more ties later.

Minutes. It doesn’t appear that minutes are going to tip the balance much here. James and Bryant do have their causes helped however, and it’s starting to show James running away with things. Kobe closes ever so slightly on Dirk and Wade seems to be losing out in the battle with Kobe for the “anti-James” position.

Salary is where things get tricky. James and Wade are on their rookie contracts. The rest of the players have signed their new deals and it shows with the gap in salaries. While I have a problem figuring out HOW exactly to weigh it, I must factor it in somehow. What I decide to do is compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Wade vs. LeBron. Kobe vs. Dirk vs. Billups. While Wade’s advantage is so small it’s meaningless vs. James….Billups’ low salary simply can’t be ignored. The flexibility the team has to put players around Billups is what has LEAD to the team being so balanced and so good and thus we begin to see the value of salaries. The Lakers want to stay near the luxury tax so Kobe’s contract really restricts who else the team can get. They WILL improve with time, but in theory if they had Billups instead of Kobe, they would have 6 million more bucks to spend. We can argue how well GM Mitch Kupchack (yes I really DID trade Shaq) would spend the money, but we see what a good GM can do (Dumars) with the extra cash. The big winners here are Billups and James. James essentially knocks Wade out because at this point there is no reason to vote Wade over James. It also puts Billups BACK into the running with Nowitzki and Bryant.

The final factor here is replacement value and positional impact. Of the remaining players it seems that Dirk would be the easiest to replace. Of the remaining players he is the player how least handles the ball. The talent at PG is pretty good, but finding a solid PG is very hard to find and much harder than finding a solid rebounder (Dirks only real large advantage over the other players). James and Bryant are also primary ball handlers and play makers. Again, this skill is not very easy to replace. This aspect knocks Dirk out, his PER was not much higher than Kobe, his Roland Rating could show us some defensive deficiency problems, and only his win total could save him. It helped get him this far, but even the slightest advantage salary has, puts Billups into the final 3.

James, Bryant, Billups. Since I said that James keeps going until I have a reason to get rid of him he heads to the final 2. So the anti-James comes down to winning vs. statistical greatness. There are some SLIGHT advantages in salary and also positional replacement for Billups. However, this is where surrounding talent comes BACK in. The Pistons are just so good around Billups that it’s easy to see the team still getting into the playoffs with Billups. For goodness sakes they had their whole starting 5 in the All-Star game. That tells me something. The Lakers would be lucky to be 4th place at your local YMCA without Bryant. In a year that is SO close, surrounding talent is going to play a role in this. I know that people probably think it would be easy to just look at the teams from the very beginning and put Kobe in the final two off the bat. However, doing that takes too many things out in my view that simply must be looked at….in other words you need to do the footwork even IF you believe something is a slam dunk.

So here we go: Kobe vs. James. The PER gap is very small with the slight edge to James. The Roland gap is slightly more significant; remember this was what put James up there to begin with. The win count is even Steven in my book. 44 wins in the West is AT LEAST equal to 49 in the East, and really it could be worth more.

At the end of the day, in what I think should be one of the closest races in history, LeBron James IS the NBA MVP. I said from the beginning that he had the advantage of being the front runner based on his PER and Rolands. Someone needed to provide something clear cut to knock me off that choice. Kobe’s singular performances and “supporting cast” did a lot to eat into that gap, but it was nothing clear cut. Had Dirk been higher in PER and Rolands then I could have had Kobe jump him based on some team-based factors, but because James’ supporting cast wasn’t a group of supermen his individual greatness could not be overcome by Bryant.

As I said before, this was a really tough year to choose a winner. Let me also say that anyone who tells you, with 100% certainty, that THEY have the right MVP, is full of “N.Y. Knicks” (a.k.a. poo-poo). Many of these players put up such similar stats that we begin relying on things that become more and more subjective. Anytime that happens whole realms of bias open up and we get really kooky results.

Getting beyond the decision and debate, however, is the idea that James could be an MVP at 21 years of age. When you take into account that a players peak years are usually around 25, this is a VERY scary thought. I think it’s clear to say that he will be the best player in his generation, and it will be interesting to see if his teams can manage the couple of titles it’s going to take before he can really be put in the same breath as guys like Jordan and Magic.

Read them

Daniels: Did Daniels jump me by a day in putting out a playoff prediction before I did? Yes. Was I forced to scramble and do this article instead, holding off MY playoff prediction until next week? Yes. Does that mean that his article is still damn good and you should read it? Yes. Plus….I have slightly different views on things so you can read his now and then mine later. It’s called free exchange of ideas people, this isn’t Cuba you know?

Sick is doing some things in his pit again. I’ll give you a quarter if you crawl into it and report back what you find.

Tom takes on Barry Bonds, he takes on Magic Johnson, he gives you a MLB power rankings, he talks about the NFL Draft…he’s better than a freaking cuisinart people!!!

Finally, I want to pimp myself. I have a brand spanking new blog. Go there, have fun, but then HURRY back and read all the other zones we have here at IP.

(Stats from ESPN.com, 82Games.com, Basketball-Reference.com.)
(Salary information by Hoopshype.com)
(If you’re still reading this, God bless you and come on back soon.)