Monday Musings: Thoughts on the MVP

Dwight Howard's domination on both ends of the floor makes him the best MVP candidate. (AP)

In explaining why Derrick Rose should not be the MVP, Neil Paine and John Hollinger, in separate must-read columns, both cite (among many other things) plus/minus statistics that show the Bulls do not play all that much better when Rose is on the floor versus when he is on the bench. One commenter who disagreed with Paine’s conclusion reasoned that if we’re going to be giving out MVPs based on such on-court/off-court stats, we may as well consider Steve Nash. The Suns score like gang-busters with him on the floor and collapse when he goes to the bench.

The commenter was being facetious. He assumed Nash would be a ridiculous MVP candidate because the Suns are going to miss the postseason.

And yet, that sort of player is exactly the type who should get more attention from MVP voters, at least those in search of an MVP who may not be the league’s top player but nonetheless holds a unique “value” within his team context. In his piece, Hollinger talks about the tendency of voters to fall in love with a compelling story — the Bulls are so much better than we expected! — and choose their MVP candidate based on that story, even when data suggest someone else deserves the award. Wins drive that story, and unexpectedly high win totals are the most irresistible plot elements. A star who leads a team’s surprise ascent gets extra “value” points based largely on win totals. Go read Hollinger’s column for all the lamentable and slightly less lamentable votes gone bad based on this idea; I won’t rehash them here.

Rose is not an unworthy candidate, and the critical analysis of his season has reached the point where it is obscuring how wonderfully he has played — and how the things he has improved (perimeter shooting, getting to the line, defense) are exactly the things Chicago’s scoring-challenged group needed him to upgrade. But he’s not the best candidate, and as far as I can tell, he’s going to beat out Howard mostly because Chicago has won eight more games than Orlando so far. And he’s going to beat out LeBron James, the game’s finest player, mostly because we expected Miami to be a 60-win team and did not expect the same from Chicago.

Voters depend too much on team win totals — and the perception of those win totals — when they judge individual players. The power of the raw win total is the reason Chris Paul has no chance to win the MVP despite dragging a lottery-level roster to a win total in the mid-40s and a likely playoff berth. It’s why Nash had no chance before his pelvic instability even though he was as efficient as ever and perhaps more “valuable” to this haphazardly built Suns team than he was to any of his previous Phoenix teams.

The point is, if you’re going to award the MVP based on the amorphous concept of value instead of just giving it to the best player, there’s no good reason why someone like Paul — one of Paine’s top choices — shouldn’t be considered despite the Hornets’ pedestrian win total. Ditto for Kobe Bryant in 2007 (two first-place votes for his work on a 42-win team), Kevin Garnett and Michael Jordan before each finally won it, and a host of other guys who carried otherwise lousy teams.

The 2010-11 Magic are going to win 50-plus games, so they are not a lousy team, but the notion that they are a disappointment is going to cost Howard an MVP he deserves over Rose. I’m not going to rehash the entire Howard-vs.- Rose argument, because Hollinger did so last week and I’ve named Howard my MVP at each of the season’s quarter marks — and because I haven’t yet made the final call between Howard and James. The simple way to explain it is this: Howard, like Rose and all the other candidates, is an elite offensive player, but he brings more than any of them on defense. His offensive skills are perhaps not as obvious as those of Rose, who has the ball in has hands all the time and uses more offensive possessions — with a shot, drawn foul or turnover — than everyone but Kobe.

But Howard is 10th in scoring, and the Magic’s offense is built almost entirely on his post game and his pick-and-roll skills. Howard has taken on the heaviest offensive burden of his career this season without suffering the drop in shooting percentage or the increase in turnovers we see with lots of guys who step up to a new level of scoring responsibility. I won’t argue if you want to knock Howard for his poor free-throw shooting and the fact that, as a result, he takes the same number of “clutch” shots per minute as Jose Calderon, Boris Diaw and Mike Bibby. That’s a legit concern, and it’s one of a small number of reasons — the existence of LeBron being one — why Howard isn’t a no-brainer for me.

Back to that simple explanation: Howard is an elite offensive player. Fine. So is every MVP candidate. But none of the realistic candidates do what he does on defense. Only James is in the same league, but even his blur of arms and speed and strength doesn’t approach Howard’s level of total dominance on that end. The Magic have built an elite defense with only one player universally regarded as an above-average defender. Stan Van Gundy’s system has a lot to do with Orlando’s excellence, but that system — stay at home, let Howard disrupt pick-and-rolls, don’t gamble, seal the defensive glass — is based on Howard. The fact that the defense remains successful with Howard on the bench is a tribute to the team’s commitment to it and the ease with which a cohesive bench unit can defend other bench units.

And if we’re going to take points away from Howard for his lack of clutch shot attempts, we should add some for the fact that he leads the league in clutch rebounds per minute and is near the top in blocks. Defense matters at the end of games, too. Also: If Rose gets credit for lifting an injury-riddled roster for parts of this season, then Howard should get some for keeping Orlando afloat despite a mid-December overhaul that completely disrupted the team’s rotation and handicapped its defense.

Howard’s unique offense-defense combination separates him from most of the field, and especially from Rose, who is in the middle (at best) of reasons for Chicago’s defensive excellence. And as everyone with even a passing interest in the league knows, that defense is the reason Chicago is where it is.

That is not to dismiss Rose’s candidacy. It is impossible to measure the inspiration teammates feel when they see a star — especially a scoring star who has struggled defensively — buy in completely on that end. It matters that Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer and Brian Scalabrine talk about the galvanizing impact of Rose’s all-in commitment to Tom Thibodeau’s system. And it is difficult to know how far Chicago’s offense might have fallen had you replaced Rose with a league-average starting point guard; this is a team, after all, that starts Keith Bogans, gives heavy minutes to several so-so offensive players and would have fatal spacing issues had Rose not improved his three-point shot. It is a team of guys who mostly need help to create points, and Rose provides that help.

But if the Nuggets’ rise has taught us anything, it’s that easing the scoring burden from one guy and redistributing it to others might have a positive effect that is impossible to predict. The intent here isn’t to characterize Rose as selfish — duh — or say Chicago’s offense would be better off without him (duh, again). It is to point out that Chicago’s offense has been mostly mediocre, and that it’s fair to wonder whether the team is distributing its possessions in an ideal way.

Rose has been fantastic, and he belongs on everyone’s MVP ballot. I won’t rant and rave if you put him at the top, but if you do, you have to set him apart from Howard and James with an argument deeper than, “Count the wins!”

10 THINGS I LIKE AND DON’T LIKE

After skipping the Heat's introductions in Cleveland, LeBron's "Who, me?" act is getting old. (US PRESSWIRE)

1.  LeBron, skipping intros in Cleveland

LeBron first said he was in the bathroom, and a Heat spokesman later said LeBron has skipped intros a few times this season — including recently against the Rockets. So it was surely just a coincidence — a randomly timed call of nature — when LeBron happened to miss intros in the one place where he is guaranteed to be treated as a real villain. Just as LeBron had no clue what “contraction” meant when he suggested contraction. Just as LeBron’s Twitter account happened to spit out the Dan Gilbert “karma” tweet — the accidental re-broadcast of a follower’s tweet, James later explained — when the Lakers were crushing the Cavs. And on and on it goes, with LeBron either committing grievous errors in judgment or daring to speak out on sensitive topics, only to shrug his shoulders later and claim to not understand what all the fuss is about.

LeBron hasn’t ducked everything, and he’s very good at manipulating the segment of the media more interested in the circus than how the Heat are integrating Mike Bibby. But his “Who, me?” routine is rotten.

2. Dwyane Wade, blocking big guys

It’s not all Heat hate here. James and Wade might be the most complete athletes in the league, and the spectacle of Wade’s rejecting big guys at the rim never gets old. He nailed Nene, Thaddeus Young and Spencer Hawes in separate games before I took a few days off late last week. Great stuff, especially because Wade’s rejections at the rim usually come from the Heat’s desperation rather than his tendency to over-help.

3. The pick-and-roll decoy for Kevin Durant

This can unfold in a variety of ways, but the basics are the same: Russell Westbrook and a Thunder big man will run a pick-and-roll at the top of the arc while Durant lurks elsewhere — sometimes along the baseline, sometimes on the wing. After freeing up Westbrook, the screener will begin his roll to the hoop only to suddenly veer in the direction of Durant’s defender just as Durant is curling out to the perimeter and preparing to catch a pass from Westbrook.

The action is designed to free Durant for a jumper, but it can also produce a second pick-and-roll, with Durant as the ball-handler.

4. Houston, missing the playoffs

It’s a near-certainty now, even though the Rockets could finish with a better average scoring margin than six of the 16 teams that qualify — not to mention a better record than the bottom three seeds in the Eastern Conference. I’m not sure this is indicative of a real problem — and if it is, how the league can fix it — but I know this is a playoff-quality team with one of the league’s prettiest offenses. I’ll miss ‘em.

5. Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap, meshing

I’m uber-skeptical about whether the idea of Millsap at small forward can ever work, but these two have developed some chemistry on offense as the season has progressed. A couple of favorites: Millsap will sometimes catch defenses off guard by flashing across the lane into the low post while Jefferson handles the ball in the high post on the same side of the floor. And the Jazz will smartly put Millsap at the elbow on the same side of the court, where Jefferson is about to establish position on the block after getting a screen down low.

That action — a staple in Utah — often draws the attention of Millsap’s defender, who feels he might need to help. And that’s the moment when Millsap will dive down into the paint to either take a pass from Jefferson or draw attention from perimeter defenders.

6. Any NBA game not being on television (outside of League Pass)

I’ve been meaning to mention this since I read that the Bucks’ March 18 game against the Nets was not televised locally in the Milwaukee market. That this still happens anywhere, ever, is a total joke and an insult to consumers.

7. Jrue Holiday, going left

It’s always useful when a point guard is good with his weak hand, and Holiday is fantastic going left — especially considering how young he is. It’s one reason Holiday, 20, has remained such an important cog in Philadelphia’s offense even after ceding some point guard duties to Andre Iguodala in a key midseason adjustment from Doug Collins. Watch for this.

8. Playing volleyball on the offensive glass

Who are some of the best guys in the league at tapping out offensive rebounds to teammates? I nominate Emeka Okafor and Erick Dampier off the top. Also: I’d love to find some research on the risk/reward nature of this play — how often the ball actually ends up in the hands of a teammate versus how often it bounces out to an opposing point guard, igniting a dangerous fast break.

9. Thabo Sefolosha, touching the ball in transition

It’s just not a good idea.

10. Mixing it up with John Salmons

Sometimes it seems like half of Milwaukee’s possessions center on the same action: Salmons cuts across the perimeter, right to left, with a big man jogging right behind him. Salmons will catch the ball on the left wing, and that trailing big man will stop and set a screen for Salmons; it’s a quick-hitting side pick-and-roll the Bucks have run to death this season, to middling results. And so it has been nice to see Milwaukee varying this a bit, with Salmons getting to his usual spot only to cut back-door or curl around a screen instead of making his customary catch.

It’s too little, too late, of course. Let’s hope for a big bounce back next season for one of The Point Forward’s favorite teams.