Tag: Chicago Bulls

Cutting through the created clutter of the NBA’s MVP discussion

In the wide world of sports, there hasn’t been too many topics generating more buzz than who this season’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the NBA should be. The discussion is everywhere, and it’s the type of conversation all of the fake-debate shows dream about. As usual, there is a lot of disagreement in terms of who should win the award, but there is agreement on the three contenders, who are all bigs. The three players (in no particular order) are Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid and Milwaukee Bucks swingman Giannis Antetokounmpo. On the surface, deciding a winner should seem more cut-and-dry, but it never is, and it’s because the voters make up their own criteria in picking first place. Opinions are what make us unique, but they can also create unnecessary complications, which leads me to this conclusion. No one (including myself) knows what the MVP, in any sport, represents, but I believe I can tell you what the award isn’t.

It’s not a lifetime-achievement award. From reading articles and hearing viewpoints on television and radio shows, it appears some of the voters want to give the award to the best player in the league. That sounds good, but what if said best player is on a team that struggled to make the playoffs? There’s no denying what a person has done in his or her career, but that shouldn’t have any bearing on what happened for a particular year. If lifetime accomplishments is what the MVP is measured on, then there wouldn’t be a need to have this award given annually. For an example, let’s look at the 2017 season. At that time, most people would have said LeBron James, then a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was the best player in the world, but Russell Westbrook, who was with the Oklahoma City Thunder, won the MVP. There aren’t many who think Westbrook is a better player than James overall, but that didn’t stop voters from giving the award to him (it’s funny these two are teammates on a dysfunctional Los Angeles Lakers squad that’s at home with us). In other words, best player is different from most valuable.

The MVP is also not a who has the best stats award. Since the glamour stat is scoring in the eyes of many, that would mean Embiid is the winner, since he won that title during the regular season. Even with that feather in the cap, the 76ers finished fourth in a rugged Eastern Conference, which is a spot behind Antetokounmpo and the Bucks in the standings. It’s one thing to see stats, and it’s another to see how it happened in game action. This is important because Jokic and the Nuggets, a team that plays in the Western Conference (and finished sixth and those standings), might not get as many eyes on him simply because of where he resides. There are a lot of players who put up empty stats that don’t lead to team success. I’m not trying to call the stats these three great players empty at all. I’m just saying while numbers never lie, they don’t always tell the whole truth.

Finally, the MVP is not a playoff-projection award. Ideally, it would be better if the postseason was included in the voting, but with the system we currently have, the playoffs have nothing to do with anything. Therefore, how people and voters think a player’s team is going to do during money time is completely irrelevant. With Denver facing the Golden State Warriors in the first round, not too many people like the Nuggets’ chances of advancing. Philly has a scrappy Toronto Raptors squad to deal with, and while Milwaukee should be able to get by the Chicago Bulls, nothing is a guarantee. The overall point is there’s a possibility the Nuggets, 76ers and Bucks can go home early. Are we going to say Jokic, Embiid or Antetokounmpo are all of the sudden not worthy of MVP consideration if their respective teams fall short of supposed expectations? Of course, there are some voters who will say that, and ultimately regret choosing the way they did. If and when they have this viewpoint, one can wonder where the meter of understanding lies with these individuals.

Ultimately, the MVP is a regular season award. What standards are used to choose the winner is up to the person with a vote, but there’s no denying that fact. Nothing else matters, and if people want to include the playoffs in the voting, then change the rule, so voting doesn’t start until the NBA Finals conclude. Until that happens, all of the clutter created by voters, and the stats, should cease. Pick the winner for this particular season (not an accumulation of seasons), the person who is most valuable to their team winning games, given the situations they’re in. This includes availability for the team, and the potential lack of availability with other key players on their squads. The three players on the ballot are all deserving, considering this is (again) a regular season award. Let’s keep it there, and I’m confident most of the complications will go away.

The NBA title asterisk argument, and why it doesn’t make any sense

Here we are, in the middle of the 2021 NBA Finals, coming close to crowning a new champion. As it stands right now, the Milwaukee Bucks have a 3-2 series lead over the Phoenix Suns, with Game 6 scheduled for Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Both of these teams have been through a lot in their journey to the championship series, and whoever wins deserve the time to be celebrated. It’s been said nobody can ever take a title away from a team who wins it. Unfortunately, there are many who will try to take it away, or at the very least, attempt to lessen the legitimacy of the triumph. Regardless of who wins, either the Bucks or Suns will have to hear how (among other things) teams they faced along the way were not at full strength, which is basically saying their paths were made significantly easier. The 72-game regular season is also something that will be thrown in to dump dirt on the potential victory. All of this equals the mastery of the halfway acknowledgement, where you have people admitting the championship run happened, but with an asterisk. Words like phony and cheap are constantly thrown around to explain a team’s quest when it’s perceived they did not exactly “earn” it. Come with me as we look at other title runs that commonly have an asterisk by it, and then talk about why these cases against the winners equate to glorified excuse making.

1999 San Antonio Spurs – Going into this particular season, there was serious doubt a season would even take place. The NBA and the Players Association were in the middle of a lockout, and a deal wasn’t reached until January of that year. As a result, the season was shortened to 50 games, and the All-Star Game was cancelled. With the campaign compacted, it was the Spurs, lead by future hall-of-famers Tim Duncan and David Robinson, who would emerge as the team to unseat the Chicago Bulls as the new heirs to the throne. Of course, the Bulls looked totally different from previous years, as Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman all left the team, and the Los Angeles Lakers, with young superstars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, weren’t quite ready to ascend to the throne just yet. To top it off, the Spurs defeated an eighth-seeded New York Knicks team to win the franchise’s first trophy. Bottom line is whoever won the title in this campaign was going to get grief simply because it wasn’t the normal 82-game format. It just happened to be the Spurs. Being a teenager who was growing up in San Antonio at that time, I can say first hand the fans down there didn’t care about the way victory was claimed by their team.

2012 Miami Heat – Like the ’99 season, the 2011-12 was also shortened by a work stoppage. The difference is the powers that be were able to salvage a 66-game season instead of 50, with the games starting Christmas Day. The Heat, with the “Big 3” of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, were coming off of a crushing loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 Finals. With everything on the line, they were able to come through and get the elusive title James sought after in coming down to Florida from the Cleveland Cavaliers in the summer of 2010. Having said that, the championship didn’t come without its doubts. Besides the season being 66 games, people wonder to this day whether or not the Heat even get to the Finals if the Bulls, who had the best record in the Eastern Conference that year, didn’t lose point guard Derrick Rose to a injured knee in the first round of the playoffs. In the conference finals, Miami needed all seven teams to get by a Boston Celtics team that had Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen all on the downsides of their respective careers. With the team the Heat had, it was not a huge surprise seeing them win, but for the haters out there, these are the excuses they put in front to justify the asterisk.

2015 Golden State Warriors – Unlike the first two case studies, the Warriors actually played a full 82-game season. They also had the league’s best record at 67-15 and the Most Valuable Player in guard Stephen Curry. On the surface, this is the team that should have won it all with all things considered, but the argument comes against them because of their opponent in the NBA Finals, the Cavaliers. It was the first year in James’ return to Cleveland after being in Miami for the last four seasons, and he had another version of the Big 3 in the form of himself, guard Kyrie Irving and forward Kevin Love. On the way through the East, Love suffered an injured shoulder and was lost for the rest of the season, and Irving hurt his knee in Game 1 of the Finals. Now here come the questions. What would the result have been if Cleveland was healthy (One can ask the same question in reverse when it comes to the Cavs’ title win the year after)? It’s always tough because injuries are part of sports, and we never know when, where or who they can happen to. It’s probably fair to say it’s often not the best team who rises to the top, but the healthiest. For LeBron (and the few remaining Cavs) fans everywhere, health will always be a question, but isn’t that the case for many teams in the history of sports?

2019 Toronto Raptors – In a time where we are always looking a story to captivate us, this version of the Raptors was one a person can get behind with ease. Forward Kawhi Leonard was traded to Toronto from the Spurs before the year started, and with that move, the whole country of Canada was being carried on Leonard’s back. The end saw the Raptors winning the title, defeating the Warriors, who were trying to become the first team since the Lakers in the early 2000s to win three straight league championships, 4-2. With this run, there are two glaring points some fans and media will point out to take away from Toronto’s accomplishment. One, James left the Eastern Conference to sign with the Lakers, and teams that had him playing for them had made the Finals eight straight times. Two, the Warriors saw Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson go down to catastrophic injuries. Yes, Golden State was favored to win it all going into the season, but to say they would have won just off of projections ignore the original reason why games are played. It just goes to show why there is an element of luck, good or bad, that goes with the skill, and for the people in the city of Toronto, I struggle to see any evidence of care about how the Raptors brought a title back to not just that metropolitan area, but the country as a whole.

2020 Lakers – I probably don’t have to explain why this case is questioned, but for research purposes, here it goes. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the season, and sports in general, stopped as we know it, and there were questions about the season being canceled altogether. From March 11 to July 30, the season was in limbo, but it did return to resume playing in Orlando, where teams met to play in the NBA bubble. Needless to say, the circumstances the players were facing were unlike any they have faced before. So with that being said, mental and emotional toughness was going to be key for the team that could rise to the top. It ended up being the Lakers, but people would be quick to point out how the “break” really helped James and newly-acquired forward Anthony Davis by helping their bodies recover from the grind of the regular season. Davis has a detailed injury history, and James, as great as he is, was showing signs of the wear and tear of a long career that has seen countless runs to the Finals in previous years. In other words, critics say L.A. would not have won the title if it wasn’t for the pause in action.

So there are five cases detailing why some fans and media want to put an asterisk on these title runs, but to be honest, the people who have these opinions sound dumb and jealous. If their favorite team, or in the case of the media, their pick to win, came through for them, they are not complaining or talking about the perceived pitfalls they want to throw on the winners. They would put a more positive spin on it, saying how their team was tenacious and showed the heart and grit necessary to complete such a task. Also, it’s quickly forgotten all of the other squads had the same circumstances to deal with. It’s not like there was a different set of rules put together for the team that hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy. To sum it up, the asterisk argument holds no water with these scenarios, and it won’t when the Bucks or Suns get their moment to shine sometime this week. That does not mean people won’t try to fill the broken cup with BS. We’re just left to decide if we want to take the cup, and that decision should be easy if things are looked at by principle instead of who is involved.