Race for MVP

The NBA regular season ends on Wednesday, April 12, and the playoffs begin on Saturday, April 15 but the MVP won’t be known until June 26 or four days after the draft, six days before the start of free agency and at least a week from when the Finals will end. In previous years, the MVP was named via a league press release without any fanfare during the playoffs. 

For the first time, the league is staging an NBA Awards Show where the MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player and Coach of the Year will be named at the Basketball City, Pier 36, in New York City on June 26. It’ll be like an Oscars Night for the NBA and the concept is brilliant. The show will give significance to each award and pay tribute to the season’s top performers in a glitzy way that was never done before.

The introduction of the NBA Awards Show is timely because the MVP race is extremely close with five contenders in hot contention – Golden State’s Steph Curry, Cleveland’s LeBron James, Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook, Houston’s James Harden and San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard. Anyone of the five can make a strong case for himself as MVP which makes it even tougher to pick the No. 1 player in the league.

The NBA started to name an MVP in 1955-56 with Bob Pettit the first awardee. The MVP trophy is named after the NBA’s first commissioner Maurice Podoloff who served in 1946-63. Since 1980-81, a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters from the US and Canada voted for the MVP, picking five players each ranked first, second, third, fourth and fifth. A first place vote counts for 10 points while second place is good for seven, third for five, fourth for three and fifth for one. The player with the most points wins the MVP trophy. Starting 2010, fans joined in the selection process with one vote through an on-line poll.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has the most MVP awards with six. Curry has won the last two MVPs and last season, became the first ever to claim the trophy on a unanimous vote. It’s interesting to note that since 1982-83, every MVP came from a team that won at least 50 games in the regular season.

Of the five contenders, only Westbrook is from a team that has not registered 50 wins. The Thunder is 45-33 with four games left against Phoenix, Denver, Minnesota and Denver again. Even if OKC sweeps its remaining games, the team won’t make 50 wins. Westbrook is one away from breaking Oscar Robertson’s record for most triple doubles in a season. Last Tuesday, the former UCLA guard recorded his 41st triple double of the campaign to tie the Big O’s mark. Robertson set the record in 1961-62 with the Cincinnati Royals, averaging 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists. He shot 47.8 percent from the field and 80.3 percent from the line. The Royals were 43-37 in the regular season and were eliminated by Detroit in the first round of the playoffs. The NBA then had only nine teams.

Westbrook, 28, will finish the regular season with a triple double average, only the second in NBA history after Robertson. He’s averaging 31.6 points, 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists, shooting 42.5 percent from the floor, 34 percent from beyond the arc and 84.3 percent from the line. According to USA Today’s Sam Amick, no player in NBA history has run a team quite like Westbrook who is involved in 41 percent of the Thunder’s plays when he’s on the court. Last season when Kevin Durant was with OKC, Westbrook’s usage rate was 31.3 percent. That’s remarkable considering that entering his senior year of high school, the 17-year-old Westbrook couldn’t even dunk and wasn’t considered a future basketball star.

Writer Tim Keown of ESPN Magazine said: “Westbrook is a statistical aberration who manages to resist qualification. Watching him live and looking at the numbers, or even the highlights, is as different as swimming in the ocean and taking a shower. He is playing every game like he doesn’t trust it to be there tomorrow. He rebounds like a power forward, flies through the lane with a blatant disregard for his body and accelerates off the dribble like a Bugatti.”

In terms of net rating, Westbrook’s impact on the Thunder’s game is undeniable. When he’s on the floor, OKC is +3.2. When he’s on the bench, it’s -9.8. The 13-point swing confirms Westbrook’s value with the Thunder. “You know what I love about Russ?” asked OKC coach Billy Donovan. “I’m not ever standing in front of the team in the locker room before a game thinking, “Oh, man, I really hope Russ is ready to play tonight.’