Just read a very interesting article by my boy Ric Bucher at Espn (y'know for the longest time I hated how they always proclaimed themselves to being the leader in sports news and entertainment, I found it to be so arrogant and pompous. However, as time has passed and as my feelings have loosened a bit, I now feel that in a way they are right, Espn does kick ass. I guess I just hate when I'm proved wrong, whatever though) his article brought light to a topic I have pondered and fought over in my head and with many others over the years. How do you rank/rate or pick the league MVP? You see for me it has always been a simple calculation where you pick the BEST player in the league and give that guy the award. Up until 1997 this way of thinking actually took place amongst the league. The guy that was clear head and shoulders above everyone else usually won the award, even if his team/himself lacked sometimes in other areas (ie, most wins, best stats, etc...), the award most often went to the best player. Now I'm not saying that this always happened but for the most part, if you look back in the history books
http://www.nba.com/history/awards_mvp.html
you will see that it did happen. For me the league has always been easy to follow and if you watch a good amount of games it is usually quite evident as to who is the best player in the league. If you go back and think of a time and era and try to pick who was said best player of that era, you can usually come down to one or two guys who clearly stood above everyone else. For example, the 60's were dominated by two men, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, plain and simple. And well guess how many awards they won. Russell 5, Chamberlain 4, and well we all know that Chamberlain should have more, he was robbed quite often by a huge number of voters because of his overall dominance that quite frankly was taken for granted, very similar to Shaq, who should be appalled at how he's only received ONE, count it ONE mvp. Anyways, look towards the 70's and clearly one man dominated that decade, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was by far the most dominating force; he won 6 by the way. The 80's were dominated by who? You guessed it, Magic and Larry, and well they each have 3 a piece, which could have been more had Jordan not developed so prominently and quickly. The 90's is a obvious, Jordan 5, but for some reason in 97' things started to change, that was the year that Karl Malone won over Michael Jordan is what many call the biggest farce in league MVP history (for me it's second to Nash winning the award, twice too many, but that's another story all together).
1997 was the year that changed it all, (well 93' also, but hey I didn't want to go that far), it was the year that voters decided that "hey I'm sick of Jordan winning this thing every year; so what if his team won 69 games and had the best record again, Utah is our Cinderella team to upset them, we need to vote for the underdog". I mean how can you not give it to Jordan that year, he led the league in scoring, his team almost won 70 again, he led and made his teammates better, etc... whatever you get my point. Anyways, after that all hell broke loose. Okay so they've done it right here and there, 98 was good (Jordan), 2000 (O'Neal), 2003 (Duncan) and 2004 (Garnett) and that's about it. Every other year it has gone to either, the Cinderella team's best player (Iverson in 01', Nash 05', 06' and Nowitski last year) or "well he's due" (Malone again in 99' and Duncan in 02'), which to me is a shame. This award has now become the most hotly debated and criticized award ever, I mean it's almost comical, for instance, how can Dirk win the award when his team gets clobbered by and 8th seed in the FIRST ROUND, no MVP I can remember has ever let that happen. Anyways, you can see my point by now, things need to change. Which brings me to the question of , How?
Easy. Let the coach's and players vote, they play the games and know who's the king more than stupid writers and sports analysts who tend to weigh in criteria and biases that can overshadow who's most deserving. But hey that's just me, this thing will always come with some criticism and I guess that's maybe the point, it's fun writing stories like this and it sure is fun blabbering away while drunk to someone who opposes your choice. Maybe I'm bitter, maybe I'm just being fanatical, but I sure hope I'm being clear, that things need to change. If Chris Paul wins the damn award this year, I'm going to kill someone.
Anyways, below are my picks of who should have won since 97'.
97' - Jordan
98' - Jordan
99' - Shaq
00' - Shaq
01' - Shaq
02' - Shaq
03' - Duncan
04' - Garnett
05' - Duncan
06' - Kobe
07' - Kobe
08' - Kobe
later
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