SI.com’s Ian Thomsen and Chris Mannix, official voters for the NBA’s year-end awards, released their ballots on Monday, so over the next few days, I’ll be rolling out my picks. We’ll start with the big one: Most Valuable Player. Here’s my five-man ballot:

(Statistical support for this post from NBA.com. All stats and records are through April 22.)

1. LeBron James, Miami Heat

LeBron James has been, hands down, the best player this season. (Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images)

When LeBron missed a crucial free throw with 11 seconds left in Chicago on April 12 and proceeded to take just two shots in overtime, Royce Young of CBSSports.com and the blog Daily Thunder mentioned James’ gun-shy approach on Twitter, asking, “Just confirming: That’s your MVP?”

The tweet crystallized the LeBron vs. Kevin Durant MVP debate, with one side suggesting that Durant’s edge in “clutch” performance could make up for James’ obvious superiority as an overall player — a superiority reflected in a mammoth 4.5-point advantage in Player Efficiency Rating, historically rare all-around numbers and defensive skills that Durant, though much-improved on that end, still can’t touch.

There have been two problems with this murky argument all along:

1. It tends to involve the cherry-picking of favorable evidence, generally taken from national TV games or highlight moments that for whatever reason become flashpoints on national talking-head shows.

The Bulls game qualified as such a flashpoint. Ditto for LeBron’s “controversial” decision to pass to a (wide-open) Udonis Haslem with the game on the line in Utah in early March — a pass that immediately erased all memory of LeBron’s hitting two jumpers in the last 1:07 of the game and going 4-of-4 in the final five minutes of regulation.

This kind of selective memory has no place in a debate over a trophy intended to award individual performance over a full season. It ignores run-of-the-mill crunch-time performances on League Pass, such as James’ demolition of the Nets last week; the big shots he hit against Indiana on March 10 to set up Dwyane Wade’s buzzer-beater; James’ 14 straight points in the fourth quarter of an early-April win over the Sixers; and others. It also ignores big-time fourth-quarter performances that don’t technically qualify as clutch because the scoring margin never got small enough; few remember LeBron’s 11 points in the last five minutes of regulation to keep the Knicks at bay in late January, or his halting a furious Philadelphia comeback on a weeknight in mid-March.

This is not to say James has been a giant in the clutch. He has been unsteady at the line, hitting just 15-of-22 free throws (68 percent) in the last three minutes of games with a scoring margin of three or fewer points, and he has looked passive in close losses to the Warriors, Magic and Bulls. In other games, including a memorable early-season loss to the Clippers, he simply missed a bunch of crunch-time shots.

But that brings us to problem No. 2 with this clutch argument:

2. We’re running out of evidence now that Durant has been better in crunch time.

The clutch-based argument for the Thunder forward now comes down to one thing: Durant shoots all the time at the end of games, while James passes a lot. In the last three minutes of close games (margin of three points or fewer), Durant has taken 66 shots, the second-highest number in the league. He is 28-of-66 (42 percent), a rate that is nice but unremarkable.

James, in 21 fewer qualifying minutes, is 12-of-26 (46 percent). James also has 12 assists to Durant’s zero, and he has attempted the same number of free throws (22) despite playing 45 qualifying minutes to Durant’s 66. James has outrebounded Durant easily, and his defensive-rebounding rate in crunch time rivals those of Dwight Howard and Kevin Love.

We could go on. The point is, if you’re basing an MVP argument for Durant on the idea of clutch, the numbers just aren’t there for you. For Durant to handle the ball late as often as he does and record zero assists is an astounding failure of creativity that touches everyone on the Thunder team and the coaching staff.

DURANT SAYS LEBRON DESERVES MVP AWARD

Again, James will occasionally get the yips under pressure. He and Wade go long, frustrating stretches in which they appear uncommitted to screening and cutting off the ball. James folded in the Finals last season, and if he does so again this season, the damage to his NBA legacy will be severe. But getting the yips in the Finals is an entirely different thing from passing to Haslem on a pick-and-pop in a (basically meaningless) regular-season game, and the difference between the 2011-12 clutch résumés of Durant and James is not nearly enough to overcome LeBron’s monstrous overall season.

LeBron’s 2011-12 season will mark the 16th time any player has posted a PER over 30. He’s shooting a ridiculous 53 percent from the floor and a career-best 36 percent from three-point range. He has been a more willing post player for much of the season. He has carried Miami while Wade missed 13 games, Chris Bosh struggled with inconsistency and the supporting players mostly fell apart after a hot start. His ability to defend multiple positions allows the Heat to go small without yielding much on defense or on the glass, and that versatility is crucial for a team with only two steady big-man contributors.

This is really an open-and-shut case. The difficult decisions come in spots two through five. Read More…

The Mavericks essentially deactivated Lamar Odom for the rest of the season. (Glenn James/NBAE/Getty Images)

Lamar Odom is famous because he is on some awful reality show and once served as a hugely valuable member of multiple title teams. So his failure this season with the Mavericks, culminating with their’ decision Monday to essentially deactivate him, will be viewed as a crucial reason for their demise if they lose in the first round of the playoffs — assuming they even get there.

Odom was a disaster this season, out of shape and out of sorts, but he wasn’t even supposed to be part of the plan. He was a gift, a “what the heck?” bit of good luck on the trade market, and the attention to his failures has masked all the other reasons Dallas has regressed as a scoring team to the point that it ranks 23rd in points per possession — with no signs of improvement coming.

Last season, the Mavs made important structural changes to their offense, adjustments that fit their personnel and recognized the team’s age. They transformed themselves from a mid-range team into one that took a ton of three-point shots, open perimeter looks they got by running multiple pick-and-roll combinations, spacing the floor well and whipping the ball around the court with precision. They finished with the eighth-best offense in the league, and then, remarkably, they improved by about three points per 100 possessions in the playoffs — when offense generally drops — and blew the doors off everyone they faced.

No team assisted on a higher percentage of its field-goal tries. Only the Magic shot the ball more efficiently in the last eight seconds of the shot clock, per 82games.com, evidence of how well the Mavs moved the ball and players until a defense finally broke. Only five teams got a higher percentage of their shots in those final eight seconds, evidence of how important patience was to Dallas’ scoring success. Only San Antonio and New York attempted more corner three-pointers, a shot for which Dallas showed no real affection until last season.

The Mavs didn’t get to the free-throw line all that much, had little use for offensive rebounds and turned the ball over at an average rate. In short: Other than Dirk Nowitzki post-ups and the mid-range shots that remained (mostly for Dirk and Jason Terry), Dallas relied almost entirely on getting a good first look near the rim or from three-point range, and making it.

For reasons well beyond Odom’s failure, the Mavs have been unable to function this way in 2011-12. Even more damaging, there is no fall-back plan on an aging team with no consistent off-the-dribble creator on the perimeter. Odom is a decent creator and absolutely could have helped, had he showed up ready to compete at a high level. The Mavs, at the very least, need a backup power forward capable of keeping the offense afloat when Nowitzki sits, and coach Rick Carlisle showed creativity in fitting Odom amid intriguing super-big lineups in which he was essentially the small forward.

It was a risk worth taking, and it didn’t work. But the Mavs’ issues go far beyond Odom’s. Read More…

After pondering the biggest questions of the final three weeks of the season in Part I of Monday Musings, here are my weekly collection of  Eight Things I Like and Dislike …

1. The Mavs’ reverse pick-and-roll

I’ve expressed affection for the weirdness of Dallas before, and you can add this to the list: Not many teams can regularly run pick-and-rolls in which a power forward acts as the ball-handler and a shooting guard sets the pick, but Dallas does so a few times each game, almost always with Jason Terry — an underrated screener — setting the ball screen. Dirk Nowitzki and Lamar Odom can both serve as ball-handlers, and the action can create confusion for defenders playing the opposite roles to which they are accustomed — especially when the play involves the deadly shooting of the Terry/Nowitzki combination.

2. The Gerald Green experience

I’m loving everything about it — the ridiculous dunks, the fact that New Jersey actually runs its offense through Green on the block for stretches, the use of Green as a screener in pick-and-rolls and that all the issues that kept him out of the league still crop up often.

His shot selection will veer into selfish territory, and on defense, active cutters can catch Green with his head turned. His rotations can be shaky, and he has occasional trouble navigating off-ball screens.

But, wow, is this guy fun to watch. He’s already reached the Blake Griffin point at which crowds stand/murmur in anticipation of a possible dunk even as Green crosses mid-court on a fast break. On those side pick-and-rolls, Green has an uncanny ability to come to an instant full stop upon catching the ball and immediately rise for a smooth jumper.

Green’s re-emergence has been a fun subplot amid a crazy season. Read More…

OKC averages 115.2 points per 100 possessions when James Harden (above) plays alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

Basketball is a process at the NBA level. It was for the post-”Decision” Heat, though Miami’s three stars are such great players that they spoiled us by pushing the team to an elite level last season even as they learned on the fly. Some talents mesh more easily than others, but for any set of devoted players and coaches, time spent working together will lead to learning and (hopefully) more positive results.

Watching the Thunder finish one assist shy of their season high while whipping Miami 103-87 on Sunday served as a reminder of how Oklahoma City is still growing, if only because of how young its core players are and how inexperienced coach Scott Brooks is relative to some of his peers among the NBA’s elite teams.

The Thunder live at the foul line, but they got there just 23 times against Miami on Sunday. Oklahoma City, over the last two seasons, had been just 15-18 when attempting 23 or fewer foul shots and 23-22 when attempting 25 or fewer. In keeping the Thunder off the line, defenses generally find themselves facing a shaky offense dependent on isolations and predictable play-calling — an offense that ranks last in the percentage of baskets that come via assists.

The Heat limited the Thunder at the foul line but nonetheless watched Oklahoma City record 26 assists on 39 baskets and score at a rate well above its league-leading points-per-possession mark. It was, to be frank, a scary indication of how good the Thunder can become offensively as their three core scorers improve as all-around players and offer Brooks more creative ways in which to use them.

Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden have logged 945 minutes together in 49 games this season after sharing the court for just 972 minutes last season, according to NBA.com’s stats database. The trade of Jeff Green last season and injuries to both Eric Maynor and Thabo Sefolosha this season have had something to do with this development, but the Thunder brain trust understood that the team would never reach its ceiling until Brooks could comfortably play the trio together for as many minutes as possible. Read More…

Tony Parker's ability to penetrate in isolation and pick-and-roll plays drives the Spurs' offense. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

Incredibly, we are entering the home stretch of the regular season, which means it will soon be time to start looking ahead at potential playoff matchups. Talking heads love discarding the NBA regular season as meaningless, but actual evidence suggests regular season results tell us very important things about some head-to-head matchups. Trends from the first 82 games last season should have alerted us that the Grizzlies would be huge problems for the Spurs in the first round, and that a Hawks team willing to give Jason Collins heavy minutes against Dwight Howard would have a very good shot at upsetting a superior — in the big picture — Magic team.

On Friday in Oklahoma City, we got our latest reminder of another solidifying trend: The Thunder have a Spurs problem, and specifically, a major problem defending the Spurs. San Antonio has won five of its last six games against the Thunder, and eight of the last 10 dating back to the 2009-10, though San Antonio’s 3-1 mark against the 2009-10 Thunder probably doesn’t have much relevance now.

Taking too much from a five- or six-game sample size can be dangerous, and when you dig into the numbers and the tape, you notice a few variables that at first appear telling flip-flop completely over the next game or two. A random blowout or two can skew the entire sample, though this season’s blowout was actually the Thunder’s lone win in the series over the last two years, an early January romp in which Gregg Popovich threw up white flag and played his bench almost the entire second half.

Still, a few troubling trends have started to emerge for the Thunder:

• Oklahoma City cannot guard the Spurs, especially from three-point range. The Spurs have lit up the Thunder in three games this season to the tune of 107.1 points per 100 possessions, a mark better than that of the league’s best offense, and the worst such figure the Thunder has surrendered to any team they have played more than once, per NBA.com’s stats database. Of particular notice: San Antonio, which thrives on dribble-penetration and open three-pointers, has shot 28-of-57 (49 percent) from three-point range so far against the Thunder. Read More…

The Bulls were not on Dwight Howard's list of preferred destinations. (Nathaniel Butler/NBAE/Getty Images)

Trade deadline week is finally here, with as many as half-dozen franchises contemplating moves that could shape the next half-decade of their existence and even alter this season’s championship picture.

This “change the landscape of the league” stuff is not hyperbole — not when names such as Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol are involved; not when the league’s glamor team, the Lakers, is in the thick of a transition era under the stewardship of an untested executive in Jim Buss; and not when the Rockets and Warriors, among others, are willing to go all-in to find third and fourth teams they could use in a monster Howard transaction.

As always, what we don’t know trumps what we know — and that statement applies not only to ongoing trade talks happening across multiple levels of all 30 franchises, but also to how the trades themselves will play out once they happen. So much in the NBA depends upon the unpredictable — luck, chemistry, roster fit, injuries, the lottery and so many other variables beyond the control of even the savviest general managers.

Which brings us to the ongoing undercurrent of chatter about the possibility that the Bulls, holders of the league’s best record, might alter the landscape of the NBA by dealing for Howard. The Magic “would like to seriously engage the Bulls in trade talks,” per the always plugged-in Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, but Chicago is reluctant to do so without Howard’s commitment to a long-term deal. Here’s more from Berger:

But the team that can make the strongest case for Orlando to depart from its risky strategy of holding onto Howard are the Bulls, who could offer 7-footer Omer Asik, Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer for Howard and Hedo Turkoglu, sources said. The Bulls also could offer a valuable first-round pick from Charlotte — top-14 protected in this year’s draft but unprotected by 2016.

Such a scenario has gained no traction since Chicago is “not on his list,” a person familiar with the situation said of Howard. Without assurances from Howard or his camp that he’d be willing to sign long-term with the Bulls, Chicago executives have exhibited no appetite for trade talks with the Magic.

The narrative throughout the league surrounding Chicago’s non-pursuit of Howard has been built on the assumption that it can offer the Magic the “best” deal. If only Howard would commit and accept second-fiddle status to Derrick Rose, or Adidas would sign off on two of its signature stars playing for the same team, then the poor Magic might be able to get something at least approximating fair value for Howard — something better than the Nets or Lakers or Mavericks or Gambling Team X could provide. Read More…

Prior to Saturday, the Thunder had perhaps the best defense in the league near the end of close games.

The Western Conference has unfolded in a predictable way, with the young Thunder, carrying over nearly their entire roster from last season, distancing themselves from a pack of teams either dealing with age, injuries, controversy, protective masks (have you heard?) or general craziness.

Rivals are searching for cracks in Oklahoma City’s 29-8 record, and so the league perked up a bit on Saturday, when the Thunder finally faltered down the stretch in a close loss to Atlanta. Before that game, the Thunder had been a league-best 13-3 in games in which the scoring margin fell to three or fewer points (in either direction) during the final three minutes, per NBA.com‘s detailed clutch numbers.

They had been even better — 10-2 — in games in which the margin had dwindled to a single point during the final three minutes. Kevin Durant has emerged as the league’s most feared closer, and with occasional scoring help from Russell Westbrook and James Harden, the Thunder have consistently bailed themselves out of close games in the last couple of minutes. Were they lucky? Was their plus-5.9-per-game scoring margin — far below those of the Heat, Bulls and Sixers and not much higher than the Trail Blazers’ or Spurs’ — an indication that they weren’t as good as their record?

The focus on Durant’s crunch-time scoring — and the crunch-time bricks he and Westbrook tossed up against Atlanta — missed the more important element of the Thunder’s crunch-time success so far: Their defense, mediocre overall, had been perhaps the best in the league near the end of close games. Read More…

Tim Duncan might need more help defending inside for the Spurs to excel in the playoffs. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Here comes San Antonio, a winner of 10 consecutive games and the one Western Conference team that you could reasonably argue has been Oklahoma City’s equal all season.

The Thunder lead the Spurs by two games in the loss column and by a single point in victory margin, but San Antonio has played a slightly tougher schedule. John Hollinger’s power rankings give San Antonio a small edge, while Basketball-Reference’s rating system prefers Oklahoma City by a hair. The Spurs, playing unproven youngsters in place of the injured Manu Ginobili, have nonetheless built an offense that ranks sixth in points per possession. That’s a tribute to the greatness of Tony Parker and Tim Duncan, but also to coach Gregg Popovich’s half-court system of motion, screening and (above all else) spacing.

As the Thunder play one nail-biter after another, more executives around the Western Conference are beginning to sense a vulnerability that didn’t exist on Christmas. Every scrap of evidence we have suggests that the Spurs are best positioned to topple that allegedly vulnerable conference favorite in June.

Read More…

Kobe Bryant has cracked the 40-minute mark in seven of the Lakers' last 10 games. (David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

The highs and lows of the NBA, through Jan. 29 …

1. The Lakers’ minutes

Kobe Bryant is playing nearly five more minutes per game than last season, and he has cracked the 40-minute mark in seven of the Lakers’ last 10 games. Pau Gasol’s minutes are right where they’ve been in each of the last three seasons, but he’s older now and this is a season like no other. Gasol has logged at least 40 minutes in three of the Lakers’ last five games.

The Western Conference is competitive, with 11 potential playoff teams (yup, I’m including the Timberwolves), and every team, save for the Thunder, needs every win it can get. But at some point, the long-term price outweighs the short-term gain. It’s unclear where that line is, but you’re playing a risky game when Bryant is on the court, passing the 40-minute mark, in the fourth quarter of games in which the Lakers trail by double figures.

2. Roddy Beaubois, shot-blocker, creative force

The Mavs — with so much roster turnover, so many old guys and lots of aching bodies — need lots of things to come together at the right time in order to make an honest repeat run. One such thing: the emergence, at long last, of Roddy “Buckets” Beaubois as a guy actually worthy of that nickname — and regular playing time. The key for Beaubois (other than health) has always been balancing individual skill with the Mavs’ team-first, motion-heavy system.

That may be happening now in Jason Kidd’s absence. Beaubois still has a trigger finger that’s itchier than you’d like, and he’ll provide at least one ill-advised out-of-control drive per game. But over Dallas’ last three games, Beaubois has scored 47 points on 11-of-22 shooting, turned the ball over just four times and generally looked under control. Also: He has blocked 10 shots in that stretch, and has used his long wing-span to reject at least one shot in six straight games. He can make things very difficult for guards who like the in-between floater game. Read More…

Dwight Howard and the Magic could become legit contenders. (Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images)

We’re at the one-quarter mark of the NBA season, a time when I’d normally slow down, step back and address the award races, the championship picture and other hot-button topics. That seems ludicrous this season. Even 25 percent of the way through, teams are still struggling to find themselves, lots of key players are injured and what we don’t know far outweighs what we know — about both individual teams and the league in general.

But let’s try to nail down some trends that appear real and lasting: Read More…