NBA MVP

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I got Dwight. And if it weren't for sloppy management, and poor personnel decisions, the Magic would be 10 games better and Dwight would be getting some more serious consideration.

[DELdaBull]

Rose and its not even close.

Has a corpse at the two, good post defenders, and Deng and Boozer to help on offense.

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I offer Exhibit A against Rose:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/28/2137216/for-chicago-bulls-derrick-rose.html

For Chicago Bulls’ Derrick Rose, winning alters all numbers

By Dan Le Batard

dlebatard@miamiherald.com

These are the numbers/facts without manipulation:

Through Saturday, Player X has averaged 22.2 points on .444 shooting with 4.6 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.8 steals. He has been his conference’s player of the week four times.

Player Y has averaged 24.9 points on .439 shooting with 4.2 rebounds, 7.9 assists and 1.0 steals. He has been his conference’s player of the week twice.

They are essentially the same player, in other words. Player X is more efficient and a better rebounder and thief, but Player Y scores one more basket per game. Yet Player X isn’t even considered the most valuable player on his own team. And Player Y is about to be named the most valuable player of the entire league.

Why Y?

Perception is not reality. Reality is reality. Player X (Russell Westbrook) isn’t viewed like Player Y (Derrick Rose) because winning alters all, even facts, even if one team is 53-19 and the other is 47-24. Exceed our expectations, and we’ll give you trophies you don’t deserve instead of admitting that our expectations were, um, wrong.

Rose has thorns

The Bulls’ offense is statistically mediocre; Rose is that offense’s best player. The Bulls’ defense is best in the league; Rose might be that defense’s least important piece. But throw all the ingredients together in the Winning Pot, make a stew with a flavor that surprises us and you, too, can taste like MVP.

Rose benefits from the greatness of his teammates, but Westbrook is harmed by the greatness of his more famous one (Kevin Durant). Would Westbrook be MVP if he simply had Chicago’s defense? Would he be a bigger scorer than Rose if he didn’t have to share with Durant? The only reason Rose scores 2.7 points more than Westbrook per game? He has taken 200 more shots.

They should just rename the MVP trophy The We Didn’t Expect To See Rose Sitting Atop LeBron In The Standings Award.

A million variables go into winning, but baseball is so much better at isolating and measuring those variables than basketball. Felix Hernandez won Cy Young with a 13-12 record in last place because baseball voters understand, after a mathematical paradigm shift called sabermetrics, how much Hernandez can and can’t control. And baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team sport anyway. Albert Pujols is alone in that batter’s box, and it doesn’t matter if he listens to his manager or likes his third baseman. Hernandez controlled that baseball only when he held it; he couldn’t do anything about how terrible his teammates were at scoring.

Group effort

But basketball’s five are linked like fingers in a fist, and isolating performance is next to impossible, especially on defense. So intangibles get assigned to the winning instead of facts or data, and Rose has in his favor the Hey-I-Didn’t-Expect-The-Bulls-To-Be-Good metric that LeBron or Dwight Howard or Kobe or any of the Spurs or Mavs or Celtics can’t have. It is absurd that he will soon have as many MVPs as Shaquille O’Neal, but not as absurd as Steve Nash having twice as many as Shaq.

The Bulls aren’t exceeding expectations because Rose is a “leader†or “knows how to win†or is “clutch.†They are exceeding expectations because no team in the league strangles the opponent better on defense. You want to give the Bulls coach of the year for that? Cool. Defensive player of the year? Fine. But MVP for the league’s 20th-ranked offense? The one scoring less than Indiana, Toronto, Philadelphia, the Clippers and Sacramento?

Rose has been named the best player in his conference two weeks this season. Two. So, too, has LeMarcus Aldridge. How can you be the most valuable for the entire season when you were only the most valuable in your conference two weeks? Almost everywhere outside of sports and Visa commercials, “best†and “most valuable†are supposed to be synonyms. And try paying your Visa bill with a check that reads “priceless,†and see how that works for you.

None of this is meant as an indictment of Rose.

He’s just not the best one.

Which means he’s not the most valuable.

[smazza]

kobe if lakers catch spurs