MVP Race Continues

Here’s another look at the top three MVP candidates this year. Apologies to Kevin Garnett, who has missed significant time and whose statistics just don’t quite measure up. If KG is going to be seriously considered, his team will need to finish with around 70 wins. His presence is felt mainly on the defensive end, so his defensive player of the year award should be a no brainer, however, KG has even said himself that Pierce is the Celtics' MVP.

No apologies to Tracy McGrady, who, if asked, would probably himself say that he is not worthy of an MVP consideration because the Rockets are defined by team effort and chemistry. Besides, no MVP can miss 15 games, regardless of a historic 22-game win streak. 

So, what was done here is I’ve gone over the schedules for each of these three players and taken the stats from quality wins (a quality win is against any team with above a .500 record). I’ve also pointed out the poor losses to bottom-feeding teams (or, any team under .500). The numbers are quite telling.

Chris Paul  (15-5)

           24.5 ppg, 12.5 apg, 4.6 rpg, 4 spg, .06 bpg, 45%

QW: Portland, Denver (twice), Los Angeles, Golden State, Cleveland, Phoenix (3 times), Dallas (twice), San Antonio (twice), Utah,

          LL: Indiana, Minnesota, Sacramento, Washington (twice)

          
 Kobe Bryant (16-4)

           30.5 ppg, 6.1 apg, 6.8 rpg, 2.1 spg, .62 bpg, 54%

QW: Phoenix (3 times), Utah (twice), Detroit, Denver (3 times), New Orleans, Toronto (twice), Orlando, Portland, Dallas

          LL:   Milwaukee, New Jersey, Atlanta, Sacramento     

Lebron James (10-9)

           33.2 ppg, 7.8 apg, 9.2 rpg, 1.4 spg, 1.3 bpg, 45%

QW: Utah, Boston, Dallas, Toronto, San Antonio, Los Angeles Lakers (twice), Portland Trailblazers (twice), Orlando Magic

LL:  Milwaukee (twice), New Jersey (twice), New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago,
        Washington

Right now, the slight, and I mean ever-so-slight nod goes to CP3 because he has had victories over all of the elite teams in the west (SA, Dallas, LA, Utah). Kobe has had 1 more victory, but has failed to beat San Antonio (at full strength). Lebron has had some huge victories (Boston, San Antonio, LA), but has also had far too many losses to horrible teams.

In the statistics category, Kobe’s numbers might not be as gaudy, and his turnovers are quite high, but his shooting percentage is lights out (9 percentage points better than Lebron in 6 more games and 9 percentage points better than Paul). Kobe just seems to be a big game player. But we already knew that. Mamba gets up for big games. 

Chris Paul’s shooting percentage is low, but those 12.5 assists and 4 steals are incredibly insane.

What emerges from these findings is that Lebron James seems to be the odd man out despite his triple-double-esque numbers. While he is a lot of people’s consensus MVP favorite, it is apparent that he doesn’t fair as well against elite competition. His shooting percentage drops to 45 percent, though his numbers see slight improvements. It is also worth noting that Lebron has lost to some pretty terrible teams. MVP’s don’t allow 9 losses to sub .500 teams. New York? Seattle? Milwaukee twice?

In contrast, Chris Paul’s only terrible loss is to Minnesota. Sacramento, on any given night, can play excellent basketball and Washington is a legitimate Eastern conference playoff team.  

Kobe’s loss to Milwaukee is bad, but again, Sacramento could be the third seed in the East and Atlanta’s got talent, just no direction. And Kobe lost to a Jersey team that still had Kidd.  

All in all, Kobe’s team has a better record than Paul’s, but Paul’s contributions can’t be overlooked. If voting were to happen today, Chris Paul would beat out Kobe Bryant by about as much ink separating the “M” from the “P” in MVP.