I know this blog is only supposed to be about the NBA Draft, but picking the NBA end-of-the-season awards is fun and I’m sure my loyal readers (aka me) are interested to hear my take. I’ll fill in the Top-3 for each category, which is what I believe is on the official ballot. EDIT: I was originally going to make this all one post, but I got too into writing about MVP and ROY so I’m going to break it up into 3 parts.
MVP
- Kevin Durant
- Lebron James
- Joakim Noah
Everyone thought Lebron was poised to run away with the trophy for the next 5 years and it made sense. He had just come off his second championship and he was far and away the best player in world. Even writers (and others whom have access to ballots) made a point at the beginning of the season to acknowledge and denounce any potential repetition bias that could occur ([this is where I wish this version of WordPress had footnotes] meaning awarding a less deserving player the award because the real MVP/best player in the league has won it, usually multiple times, and may have not had his best season, even though it was still better than anyone else’s; i.e. Barkley over Jordan in ’93). However this year, the Slim Reaper/Iceberg Slim/”The Servant”/The Durantula/KD, happened. While Lebron coasted for much of the year, obviously weary from success and 3 straight lengthy playoff runs, Durant took off. Averaging a prolific 32.0 points per game to go along 7.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists, Durant was forced to carry the Thunder for a large portion of the season while All-NBA point guard, Russell Westbrook, sat with knee injuries. While Lebron spent games deliberately trying to become the most efficient wing to ever play (i.e. trying to score 25 points on 15 shots) in a historically awful Eastern Conference, Durant was counted on to put up 40 a night or his team would lose. During the (roughly) 2 month stretch where Westbrook was out, Durant averaged 35.0 points per game and solidified himself as the NBA’s best scorer right now and arguably one of the greatest to ever play the game. Durant scored the 2nd-most total points in a season in the past 23 years (2,593), with 05-06 Kobe only scoring more (2,832). He also passed Michael Jordan with 41 consecutive games of scoring 25+ points. There is a strong argument that Lebron still deserves MVP, his numbers of 27.1 points per game, 6.9 rebounds and 6.4 assists are almost equally impressive and Dwyane Wade did miss almost as much time as Westbrook, even though it was game to game, not to mention Lebron is still the best player in the world. However, he wasn’t challenged like KD was all season and the Heat had real struggles at times that Lebron didn’t necessarily get them out of. In an absolutely stacked Western Conference, the Thunder ended up winning more games than the Heat who played in an atrocious Eastern Conference. That is I believe, the final necessary point to make, and arguably the most indicative for this debate.
Joakim Noah gets 3rd-place because he took his game to another level after Derrick Rose went down and Luol Deng was traded for no present-value to the team. He, along with coach of the year candidate, Tom Thibodeau, kept the Bulls playing at the same competitive level they were before, despite the clear setback in the way of talent. He was able to function as essentially point-forward on offense, while still maintaining fantastic defense, that should earn him defensive player of the year. Apologies to Blake Griffin (he’s 4th for me) and Goran Dragic (5), both those guys were amazing this year as well and showed significant improvement as the season progressed.
ROY
- Michael Carter-Williams
- Victor Oladipo
- Mason Plumlee
This year’s rookie class pretty much sucked, but MCW definitely earned this award. He leads all rookies in points, rebounds, assists and steals and had a stellar first week and month of the season. Some writers have made the claim that Oladipo really deserves the award because his stats are similar, he was more efficient and the Sixers play at such a fast pace which inflated MCW’s stats; also the 26-game losing streak was awful. While I cannot deny any of these claims, I try to look at it from the following standpoint:
Carter-Williams was sensational during the first month and a half of the season. Before the team lost hope, which wasn’t their fault since the roster was intentionally designed to lose, they actually had some decent success; a 5-4 record, three game win streak and huge wins to beat the Heat on opening night (one of the best games of the season in which MCW set the rookie record for steals with 9) and the Bulls with Derrick Rose. He was the second rookie (first since Shaq in ’92) to start his career by winning Player of the Week (in week 1). Obviously, the rookie wall hit and his efficiency and shooting percentages dropped, but this success should count for a lot, especially in a historically weak year like this one. Once the team began to struggle, their entire level of play basically succumbed to the trap of tanking that had been set before the season. It’s especially tough to evaluate MCW’s play after the Sixers traded 3 of their top 7 guys away for either nothing or last man on the bench type guys. Him and Thaddeus Young were basically the only players (literally) that opposing teams needed to prepare for and as a result, their stats dropped and the team lost 26 in a row. It was essentially like taking 4 real NBA players, 2 of which are mediocre (MCW and Thad; James Anderson is below mediocre, but still NBA talent), 2 of which are rookies (MCW and Tony Wroten) and putting them on a D-League team where half the roster is unfamiliar faces and on top of that, starting a whole new season in the middle of every other NBA team’s season at a time when teams are really hitting their strides and jockeying for playoff position. I find it difficult to find significant fault in the efficiency of MCW’s play when, after already proving he was the best rookie in the earlier part of the season, he was thrown into a huge leadership role as point guard and second best player on probably the least talented team (top to bottom) in NBA history. What was he supposed to do, not take more shots? Keep passing the ball off to guys who are even worse shooters and bad offensive players in general? Despite management’s ideology of throwing away the season, MCW and the team were in fact trying to win games and improve spots of their game’s that needed work. Overall, it was pretty much a lose-lose situation for the Sixers in terms 2013-2014 achievements, so I believe some of his shortcomings, especially towards the latter half, can be discounted and attributed to the awfulness of the team, rather than his specific play.
With regards to Oladipo’s season, I think if you switched Carter-Williams and put him on the Magic, that team would be in the playoffs, or at least on the fringe of making it. The Magic have real NBA players on that roster! A team with a top-7 of Oladipo, Arron Afflalo, Jameer Nelson, Tobias Harris, Nik Vucevic, Mo Harkless and Andrew Nicholson (of which the latter two were mid-first rounders 2 years ago) shouldn’t be just 5 games better than a team with a top-7 of Carter-Williams, Thad Young, James Anderson, Tony Wroten, Hollis Thompson, Henry Sims and Byron Mullins, especially after said team loses 26 games in a row. MCW showed that he has excellent vision as a distributor this season. Put a satisfactory supporting cast around him and he’d get close to 10 APG. My worry is that this lost season impedes his long-term growth a la 96-97 Antoine Walker. I really don’t think it will just because I’ve seen how good he can be and he seems like a smart and thoughtful kid, especially with regards to career decisions and team performance, but there could be ramifications from this throw-away year. Below is a statistical comparison between the two. MCW is better in every category, except slightly worse in field goal percentage and legendarily awful in 3-point percentage. He should probably stop shooting those.
Carter-Williams: 16.7 ppg, 6.3 APG, 6.2 RPG, 1.9 SPG, 40.5 fg%, 26.4 3p%, 15.59 PER
Oladipo: 13.8 ppg, 4.1 APG, 4.1 RPG, 1.6 SPG, 41.9 fg%, 32.7 3p%, 13.64 PER
I gave Mason “Plums” Plumlee 3rd because he is pretty much the only rookie putting up numbers and playing meaningful minutes on a playoff team this year. He’s looked really good the last month and his game-saving blocked dunk on Lebron with time winding down to beat the Heat in Miami and give the Nets the season series sweep was awesome – what I’d call a “power move”. That alone is probably enough to put him in 3rd for this awful rookie class, but actually he has been playing really well down the stretch and will likely be a factor for the Nets in the playoffs.