Loading ...
The Most Valuable Player is presented to the NBA player who receives the highest point total from a panel of chosen sportswriters. These sportswriters cast a vote for their first, second, and third place selections. First place votes receive five points, second place is worth three points, and third place is worth one point. The player who receives the highest point total is then awarded the distinction of Most Valuable Player.
MVP has historically gone to the best player on one of the teams with the top record in the NBA. No player whose team has won less than 50 games has won the award in the past 25 years.
Team success should not be the barometer by which an individual player is considered to be of most value to his team. Rather than award the title of Most Valuable Player to the best player on the top team, it should go to the NBA player who is of most value to his particular team, with less significance placed upon that team’s win-loss record. Basketball is a team sport. No one player can win consistently without the luxury of a quality-supporting cast.
The value oBLEEPreat player encompasses a myriad of basketball intangibles that sadly, are not always guarantors of victories.
Nowhere is this more evident than the Most Valuable Player Award tally’s of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Wilt Chamberlain was the most dominant player in the history of basketball. He once averaged over 50 points and 20 rebounds for an entire season! Chamberlain ended his career with a total of four MVP’s and two NBA championships. Russell, his on-court nemesis of that period, won the MVP award five times, and the NBA championship a record 11 times.
The Boston Celtics of the 1960’s were the definition of a sports dynasty. The Celtics won eleven NBA championships during Russell’s thirteen year career. Russell was surrounded by seven-future Hall of Famers during his eleven year career: forwards Frank Ramsay, Tom Heinsohn, Jim Loscutoff, and guards Bill Sharman, K.C. Jones, John Havlicek, and Bob Cousy.
Chamberlain’s teams were never as adept from top to bottom as Russell’s. Despite the lack of talent surrounding him, Wilt managed to lead his team to six NBA Final appearances. Four of those appearances ended in defeat at the hands of Bill Russell and the Celtics.
Russell was the defensive anchor of those championship Celtic teams and was the most important element to their success but Wilt Chamberlain was always of more value to his team than Russell was to Boston. Russell had the luxury of proven playmakers and scorers to shoulder the burden. Red Aurbach surrounded Russell with players who knew their role and complimented one another perfectly.
Wilt was never afforded the same benefit. Chamberlain was forced to assume practically all of the scoring, rebounding, and defensive workloads in order for his teams to attempt to compete at Boston’s championship level.
The MVP award should have gone to Chamberlain each year that he was able to lift his team to excellence. Wilt’s basketball mastery was such that he could have gone to any NBA team and made them a title contender due to his complete offensive and defensive dominance. Hypothetically, if he had been afforded a spot on Boston’s championship roster there is little doubt that he would have been capable of meeting and more than likely exceeding Russell’s production. Furthermore, if Chamberlain and Russell were subtracted from their respective teams, Wilt’s would have languished in obscurity while Russell’s Hall of Fame teammates would have undoubtebly continued to compete for NBA titles.
The awarding of Most Valuable Player has always been flawed due to the voting panel’s total lack of naivety concerning one player’s impact upon their team’s success. Michael Jordan is the almost consensus pick for greatest player ever but even he failed to win the award consistently until the Bulls begun to win championships. Jordan was recipient of the MVP fives times but only one of those honors came in a season in which the Bulls failed to win the title.
MJ’s first MVP honor came in the 1987-1988 season. The Bulls were a mediocre team that season but their mediocrity had nothing to do with MJ’s value. Not only did he capture the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award but he snagged the Defensive Player of the Year Award as well. Despite the championship success of Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers and the great teams led by the likes of Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas, MJ was awarded for being of more value to his team than those players were to theirs. Lamentably, this season was a rarity in the history of the MVP.
Recent award winners are glorified mainly for their team’s win-loss record with little to no attention payed to that player’s defensive ability, offensive system, or the talent surrounding him.
Offensively, Steve Nash has played brilliantly since signing with Phoenix. He has been crowned the MVP the past two seasons and has statistically improved upon those this year. With Nash running the Suns’ high energy run n’ gun offense, their production has been mind boggling. Phoenix has become a joy to watch and their regular season success is the reason Nash has garnered two Maurice Podoloff tropies.
Despite Phoenix’s recent success, I don’t think Steve Nash was deserving of the title of Most Valuable Player the past two seasons. Nash was without a doubt very valuable to his team but Shaq and Kobe were far more valuable to theirs the previous two years. They were swindled in much the same fashion that Chamberlain was.
The trade of Shaquille O’Neal to the Miami Heat before the start of the 2004 season ensured that Miami would be a title contender for years to come. The pairing of Shaq and Dwyane Wade surpassed early expectations as they quickly claimed the best record in the Eastern Conference. Miami marched to the Eastern Conference Finals where they were defeated by the Pistons in a tightly contested Game 7. Shaquille resurrected that franchise. He made them winners and for that he should have been the Most Valuable Player. If Shaq had not been traded, Miami likely would have been a 7 or 8 playoff seed that season and certainly wouldn’t have won the championship the following year.
The 2005-2006 season was highlighted by some of the greatest individual performances the NBA has ever seen. Kobe Bryant won the league’s scoring title, averaging 35.4 points, the most since Michael Jordan’s 37.1 average in the 1986-1987 season. Bryant was spectacular. He tallied 62 points in only three quarters of play against what would be the NBA Finals runner up Dallas Mavericks, outscoring the entire Mavs team by himself, 62-61. Kobe also scored 81 vs. Toronto on January 22nd, 2006.
Bryant carried his team to an eleven-game improvement over the previous season and a 7th seed playoff birth in a very competitive Western Conference.
Unfortunately, it was Kobe’s much maligned reputation which kept him from being awarded MVP that season. He finished fourth-place in the voting for MVP but received 22 first place votes, second only to winner Steve Nash.
The Most Valuable Player Award is one of the greatest honors in basketball. It should be regarded with distinction. It shouldn’t be a popullarity contest controlled by PR much like the ridiculousness that has become the NBA All-Star Game.
The distinctinon of MVP should not blindly award the best player on the best team. The voting panel needs to do their job or a new committe or criteria should be developed in order to guarantee that the NBA player who is of the most value to his team receives the credit that he rightly deserves.
