NBA MVP Race

Last night we saw the Cavaliers, Lakers, and Thunder all in action and all were involved in interesting games. Now the Cavs and Lakers are the strong favorites to be playing for the championship, but the Thunder are a playoff team this year largely because of Kevin Durant becoming an absolute monster this season. With all three teams playing in interesting games last night, I started thinking who should be the league MVP this season. I think this is becoming a three player race between, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Durant (I do acknowledge that Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, and Carmelo Anthony are also possible winners).

I first thought of Bryant because the Lakers are just so good this year, and don't get it mixed up, this award goes to a player whose team is having great success. That being said, I don't think Kobe is more valuable to his team than the other two players are. Kobe recently missed 5 games due to injury and in those games the Lakers went 4-1, signaling that while Kobe is dominant and probably the 1 player I want to take the last shot of a game when I need 2 points, the Lakers can win without him. I think his injury will eventually hurt his MVP chances, even though he only missed a few games. The Lakers showed they can without him and the other two guys are needed a little more for their teams to win.

After I crossed off Bryant, I turned to James. Now there's no questioning how valuable James is not only to the Cavaliers but to the city of Cleveland as a whole. Sportscenter ran the stat this morning that the last time the Cavaliers experienced a 4-game losing streak with James in the lineup was back in 2006. That there proves how valuable James is to his team. I truly believe the MVP is going to go to either James or Durant because both of their teams are good and both players are just out of this world. The one negative that James has attached to him is that he won the award last year. I don't know how many voters will want to vote for James to win the award for a consecutive year, but that really shouldn't be a punishing factor.

Contesting James is going to be Durant, and if I had a vote he'd get mine. Durant currently has a slim lead on the scoring title, and while that isn't a huge deal when it comes to the MVP, when he's averaging more points per game than James, Bryant, and Anthony that has to say a lot about his ability. The other reason that I would vote for Durant right now is because of something that many voters overlook. The fact that award is to go to the player most valuable to his team, and that's exactly what Durant is for the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder are in the middle of an incredible turnaround from a year before and Durant is a large reason for that. He has scored more than 25 points a game since December 19 and while he's not a takeover-the-game type of player like James or Bryant, he is a dynamite scorer and if the Thunder didn't have him, they'd be in serious trouble.

This might be the first NBA focused entry by me in the history of IHOB/S2S, which is a telling sign that I really need baseball to start up here soon or the NHL to pick back up.