James Harden is gonna get screwed over again in MVP Voting

It's not just about Harden, the Rockets have a lot of bias working against them.

1) Morey. A lot of traditional media and former players don't like Morey because he's a nerd. Particularly former players. It really irks them that a non player thinks he is smarter than they are about the game. This same type of backlash happened in baseball for years from the media and old time players against sabremetrics.

2) D'Antoni. "System coach." That bias against him gets baked into the cake for Harden as well. That includes a lot of the annoyance against Steve Nash from other players who did not like that he was winning MVPs instead of Kobe.

3) Harden himself. A lot of media and some, though less than against Morey, old timers don't like the way James Harden plays basketball. It's been an issue for him since he became a star with us. They don't like how he draws fouls, they don't like how he isn't this ferocious angry player, they don't like that stat geeks love him, etc. For a lot of old players they see Harden being praised by stat nerds as an affront to their own greatness, which is pathetic and wrong because most stat heads actually ENHANCE the greatness of guys who were great but not Jordan great by pointing out just how much better they were than we even realized, but whatever.

 

This is exactly right. .1 rebounds per game or .1 assists per game is 100% the difference between him being the supposed MVP and arguably the 4th or 5th ranked guy. That's how stupid it is.

Westbrook is undoubtedly a great player so I'm not intending to take shots at him, but he is not the MVP.

 

Am not really sure why everyone is being dramatic and saying that Harden has already the award, I know we had a bad month, but look at the Thunder, they are slowly falling to #8 and I wouldn't be surprised if they don't even make it.

 

Nuh, falling to #9 is almost impossible considering how bad current #8 is.
I do hope westbrook drop to 9.9 assist though. He already dropped to 10.1.

 

Just want to how the media come up with.

 

I would love that

 

Nah won't happen. He knows that the MVP is all he might get this season and the only way he gets it despite being in the 7th seed is the great narrative of "durant left him - now he's the best player ever. Look! He averages a tripple double" which is the most absurd thing ever. As someone pointed out earlier : if he had 9.9 assists he had no shot at all, but for some reason people are damn obsessed with double figures.

 

I just want to see what the writers say when Westbrook stats pad like carzy in the last 5 games and cost OKC wins and still fall short.

 

So if he's passing the ball to a teammate which leads to an assist is that padding his stats?

Is getting an offensive or defensive rebound padding his stats?

Are steals padding his stats?

It's fair to say he may up his scoring avg by shooting more, but this notion that he's padding the rest of his other stats is total BS!!

 

It's about making best decision in each possession.
One way to pad rebounds is to intentionally miss a shot and get into position to grab it for himself. Another way is to urge teammates to block all opponents and give himself the best chance to grab the ball(which is different from giving his team best chance to grab the ball.)
How do you pad assists? Just like how you pad points. Just invest a lot of possessions on it until he gets the 10th assist inefficiently. And that may not be the best decision, the guy with best chance to score on that possession should shoot.

 

So now we talking KD & Leonard and not Harden & Westbrook?

 

That tweet was an egregious bastardization of what Lowe and Beck said...

 

Zach really likes Kawhi. I don't know who I'm voting for but Kawhi is actually MVP!

HB: Far more shots, which is my continual shot at Westbrook's MVP chances. (24 shots; lowest effective FG% - it matters)

HB: There's a momentum that happens in the MVP discussions & everyone is talking Harden/Westbrook. Will it shift after the break to other teams, especially with the Thunder not in the mix.

Who is your vote right now?

HB: My preseason pick was Durant. I'm stubbornly sticking to it (won't be [stubborn] when it comes to the ballot). Durant is being overlooked because he joined the Warriors. All the macho BS with that. Somewhat fairly, Curry & Durant are hard to distinguish from each other. Durant is a strong candidate. He was my preseason pick, I'm still standing there.

Lowe: This is gonna be a tough 5 man ballot. The likeliest 5 names are some order of Westbrook, Harden, LeBron, Kawhi & Durant. That means no Isaiah Thomas, no Wall, no Butler, no Curry. I'm gonna say this: Van Gundy made this point Sunday, I'm not sure that Kawhi isn't the MVP of the whole league. I kinda think he should be number one. He puts up 30 every night, his defensive metrics have stabilized. He's averaging 49% from the field, 39% from 3, 89% from the line. 50/40/90 is right there. I guess the argument against him is these other guys are having incredible seasons & he doesn't create that well for others. I don't know how to weigh assists vs. defense. This guy is "not just put him in discussion". It's whether he should be number one & think really hard. Spurs have 2nd best record in the league by a mile.

HB: We're so caught up in: Westbrook - it's flash. You watch him and that's what a MVP look likes! Harden puts up gaudy numbers & there's style. Kawhi's lack of flash, he doesn't have anything about him personality wise or personality of his game which screams superstar. He's so damn understated but that's a dumb reason to discount him. To your point, we don't have a way to value defense for discussion purposes. We can say among the group we're talking about, he's the most important defensive player in that group. LeBron is important when he wants to be, Durant too. Harden & Westbrook, no one talks about it. No one talks that they're still net minuses on defense. No one cares because they love the numbers.

ZL: I have legit no clue who I'm voting for. Time to stop saying Kawhi belongs and maybe that he is the actual MVP. Thunder are going to be 6th or 7th seed. MVPs don't come from there.

 

Westbrook, Leonard & Harden.

How about we talk about expectations coming into the season. And how the season is unfolding to see if anyone is having an MVP performance to elevate their team beyond expectations.

Las Vegas over/under on season win totals
San Antonio - 56.5
Oklahoma City - 45.5
Houston - 41.5
http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/v...a-season-overunder-win-totals-for-every-team/

ESPN Stein Line NBA Pre-season rankings
San Antonio - #3
Oklahoma City - #7
Houston #14
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/17873365/nba-power-rankings-preseason-edition

Bleacher Report 2016 Predictions
San Antonio - West #2 54-28
Oklahoma City - West #7 43-39
Houston - West #11 38-44 (LOL!!!)
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-projections-for-every-team-pre-training-camp

I am sure I could google search more examples. I hope the voters take these things into consideration when evaluating the field.

 

Can't really disagree with Lowe here. Kawhi has been a monster lately; he certaintly deserves more recognition in this MVP talk.

 

I fail to grasp when Kevin Durant is the Most Valuable Player in the league after joining the Warriors and then proceeding to lose more games than they did last year. I fail to grasp why what he's doing is more impressive than what Harden or Westbrook is doing.

 

Because Warriors.

 

Yeah, I don't know what Beck's theory on that is other than him wanting to "stay with his pre-season pick" in a stubborn way.
KD has been efficient and the Warriors have the best record. But it's not as a compelling case to me as you could make with Harden/Westbrook and LeBron and even Kawhi.

 

For those who still claim that Harden was fine in January; Lowe and JVG used to praise Harden as the league MVP before that awful stretch began. Now they've all changed their tune. Don't tell me January didn't make a difference, 'cause it did. Yeah we had a tough schedule, but players are judged on 100% by results, not excuses. You don't get extra credit for having tough schedule. MVP voting was never like that, and never will.

That being said, I still think Harden is top 2 MVP candidate. But it's time to seriously consider Kawhi as a legitimate threat to Harden's MVP chances.