On the day he accepted his third straight NBA MVP award, having received all but five of the 78 first-place votes, Larry Bird was in a chipper mood. ?Well, Red [Auerbach] tricked me again,? he said to the assembled media. ?I thought I was coming here to sign a contract extension.?
That was on May 28, 1986. No one has won three straight MVP awards since, leaving Bird, Bill Russell (1961-?63) and Wilt Chamberlain (1966-?68) as the only three players to ever do it. And when it was announced on Tuesday that Kevin Durant was the 2014 recipient, LeBron James missed his second chance to join their company. After winning decisively last year (120 of 121 possible first-place votes), LeBron was trounced this year by Kevin Durant (who received 119 of 125 first-place votes). Wow, LeBron must have really fallen off.
#WellActually
It?s worth remembering that MVP votes of late have generally been landslides. Unanimous selections are rare?there?s a first-place vote for Carmelo Anthony here, one for Allen Iverson there?but so are tight races. When Derrick Rose won in 2011, foiling LeBron?s first three-peat effort, he received 113 of 121 first-place votes. LeBron got 4. This despite LeBron?s leading the league in PER for the fourth straight season and in win share for the third. Eh, what do advanced stats mean anyway?
A lot, apparently. Because any discussion of why KD?s victory over LeBron was so complete has to include them. This season was the first in six where LeBron did not lead the league in PER, and the first in five he didn?t lead in win shares. Both of those titles were taken by, yes, Kevin Durant, who also captured the imagination of the climate-change denier media faction by scoring 25 or more points in 41 straight games (an NBA record) and leading the league in scoring with a career-high 32 points per game. Add in 7.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists, and that?s Jordan-in-his-prime territory. Like 1991, where Jordan led the league at 31.5 ppg along with 6.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists?and, well, won his second MVP.
But let?s talk about LeBron for a bit. His numbers were virtually identical to last year?s, which was heralded as one of his (or anyone?s) best NBA seasons ever. His points per game ticked upward by .3, to 27.1, while his rebounds and assists dropped by roughly one apiece, to 6.9 and 6.3 respectively. And even though he didn?t lead the league in PER or Win Shares, he did post his highest-ever True Shooting Percentage, an absurd 64.9 percent. He also posted the highest field goal percentage of his career, at 56.7 percent, beating last year?s career high in that category by two tenths of a percentage point. So LeBron scored more than he did last season, and did it more efficiently, after a season where he missed being the unanimous MVP by one vote. How did he lose?
Call this the Steve Nash corollary. Nash won his first MVP in 2004-?05 on the strength of a near 90/50/40 (free throw percentage, field goal percentage, three-point percentage) to go along with a league-leading 11.5 assists per game. This led to a whole discussion on the meaning of ?valuable,? as Nash became the first point guard to be named MVP in nearly 25 years, edging out Shaquille O?Neal. The next season, when he bettered all of his percentages, increased his scoring by three PPG and led the league in assists once again, he won again, over a more fractured field. And in fact, he may have had his best season the FOLLOWING year in ?06-07, posting career highs in both PER and true shooting. But the thought of Nash winning three straight MVPs when even Jordan didn?t may have skewed the vote toward former teammate Dirk Nowitzki, who just edged out Nash despite receiving 83 first-place votes to Nash?s 44.
Which brings us to the real crux of the matter?the voters. MVP may be the most prestigious award in basketball, but a) it?s voted on by the media, the members of whom b) can?t even come to any sort of consensus on what ?valuable? means from one year to the next. To be fair, that can be dependent on which player (or type of player) dominates the conversation. And maybe that?s the crux of the crux, if you will, and why it?s even more difficult for a player to three-peat as MVP than it is for a team to win three straight titles.
Why? Because dominating a game is one thing, dominating a conversation is another. Call this the Spurs corollary. Over a long period of time, sustained anything can appear pedestrian, even excellence. Are the Spurs really boring? No. Not when they?re viewed objectively. If anything, their execution is beautiful, and one any team would be thrilled to be able to emulate, especially considering the results. But people?and most of the media are people?are constantly in search of something new to laud. They build things up to tear them down. And when tearing them down is impossible, they simply move on. Say ?it?s KD?s time? long enough, and everyone starts to believe it. Especially when he breaks a nearly 30-year-old record set by Michael Jordan.
3.
Let?s talk about LeBron again. This past season, as noted, he shot 56.7 percent from the floor while attempting 306 threes. That is not only a higher field goal percentage than Jordan (who never took as many threes) ever shot, but it?s a higher field goal percentage than Shaq had in his rookie season. Dig deeper. Take away LeBron?s threes (which he shot at a respectable 38-percent clip) and realize that he shot a career-high 62 percent on twos?which bests ANY of Shaq?s single-season marks (barring his last, where he only attempted 200 shots). By comparison, the 6-10 Durant shot a relatively pedestrian 55 percent on twos. LeBron shouldn?t have just been named MVP, he should have been declared illegal. LeBron again? Again and again!
Enter the third and last corollary, call it the three-year itch. This is how you get Charles Barkley over Jordan in ?93, Nowitzki over Nash in ?07, even Kevin Garnett over Tim Duncan in ?04. The statistics don?t change considerably, both players are deserving, but there?s a new winner. KG and Duncan posted very similar numbers in 2002-?03 and 2003-?04, but KG went from 43 first-place votes in 2003 to 120 in 2004. Jordan got 80 first-place votes in ?92, posted virtually identical numbers in ?93, and received just 13 in ?93, finishing third behind Barkley and Olajuwon. The difference? Barkley was traded to Phoenix and elevated the Suns. He finished tied for 12th in 1992, first in 1993. The conversation changes, the votes follow in almost crowdsourced collusion.
Will anyone ever win three consecutive MVPs again? It seems highly unlikely, especially as advanced statistics continue to redefine the game and the social media driven 24-hour news cycle constantly seeks?and produces?new storylines. LeBron James has already been in the NBA two full seasons longer than Jordan was prior to his first retirement. There?s a growing sense of LeBron fatigue, that somehow despite the fact that he continues to do things that have never been done before that...well, we?ve seen this already. We?ve rewarded him for this already, haven?t we? ?Isn?t it time to recognize someone else?
Make no mistake, Kevin Durant was a perfectly reasonable choice as MVP this season, and?especially given that it?s an award with no definitive guidelines?it?s hard to argue things should have been different. And had LeBron won, there would have been plenty of compelling arguments as to why Durant was more deserving. But that was last year. And next season things will start anew, with wholly different questions?like, will LeBron be able to dethrone KD and regain his rightful place? The numbers may not change much, but the storylines will. After all, they always do.
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