With the NBA season coming to a close, it’s a good time to hand out my year-end awards. I don’t get an actual vote in any of these races, but that’s not going to stop me from second-guessing those that do. Besides, I’ll probably put more thought into this than 90% of the sportswriters who do get to vote. Bastards.
Regular readers know that I like to use the league’s Efficiency number to look at a player’s complete statistical picture.
EFF = ((Points + Rebounds + Assists + Steals + Blocks) – ((Field Goals Att. – Field Goals Made) + (Free Throws Att. – Free Throws Made) + Turnovers))
It takes into account all of the positive and negative stats a player can accumulate and gives us a single number to use to compare players. There are times when it is necessary to determine player’s Efficiency Per Minute (EPM) by dividing a player’s efficiency by the number of minutes. This allows us to compare players who play a vastly different number of minutes.
With that in mind, let’s work through the awards, one by one.
MOST IMPROVED PLAYER
From Mark Stein’s year-end article last season, we know that this award “is designed to honor an up-and-coming player” and that it is “not intended to be given to a player who has made a ‘comeback.’” The “comeback” piece of that refers to a player who has missed a significant amount of time due to injury. He goes into more detail about the “up-and-coming” portion in a more recent piece, basically justifying 29 year-old Hedo Turkoglu’s name on this list.
After scouring the internets, here is a list of the most-mentioned names for MIP, along with their year-to-year improvement in EPG:
Andrew Bynum – 11.9 to 21.9 (+84%)
Rudy Gay – 10.3 to 18.5 (+80%)
LaMarcus Aldridge – 10.8 to 18.6 (+72%)
Chris Kaman – 13.5 to 23.1 (+71%)
Jose Calderon – 11.3 to 17.9 (+58%)
Hedo Turkoglu – 12.5 to 19.5 (+56%)
Rajon Rondo – 9.8 to 14.0 (+43%)
Mike Dunleavy – 13.9 to 18.5 (+33%)
Last season’s winner, Monta Ellis, was the first in eight years to have an EPG less than 17.1. (He had an EPG of 14.9). Seven of the last eight winners have seen an improvement of at least 44% in EPG. For those reasons, we can probably cross Rajon Rondo and Mike Dunleavy off this list. Both players had much improved seasons, but Rondo is overshadowed by the Big Three, while Dunleavy is playing for a team that is going to miss the playoffs in a conference that features the six-games-under-.500 Atlanta Hawks as its #8 seed.
The last eight MIP have also been durable, with each winner playing in at least 72 games. Andrew Bynum has played in just 35 games while Chris Kaman has played in just 56, so we can probably eliminate them from contention. Bynum has simply missed too many games. Meanwhile, Kaman has the No Elton Brand Effect working against him. Even if voters feel that Kaman has appeared in enough games, they’ll wonder if he would have made a similar jump had Elton Brand been healthy.
Another thing to consider is the hype surrounding the player when they entered the league. Just one of the last eight winners was a former lottery pick (Tracy McGrady, 2001). Expectations for lottery picks are inherently high, so when they make a big jump, the surprise factor isn’t as big. Bynum, Aldridge, Gay, Kaman and Dunleavy were all lottery picks, and that is probably having a conscious or subconscious effect on the voters.
Gay’s ascension has been remarkable, but the fact that Memphis is one of the league’s worst teams doesn’t bode well for him. Some voters will justify his big jump by pointing to Pau Gasol’s departure. Meanwhile, Aldridge’s chances would be better if the Trailblazers hadn’t faded after the All-Star break.
So that leaves Jose Calderon and Hedo Turkoglu. Calderon has had a wonderful year filling in for the injured T.J. Ford, but he has resumed his bench role, and that is probably making voters a little gun shy. His 8.2 assists are eye-popping, but he’s averaging a pedestrian 11.4 points per game. However, both his FG% (52.5%) and 3P% (43.3%) are outstanding.
Meanwhile, Turkoglu was probably the biggest surprise of the year. After four seasons of inconsistent play in Sacramento and San Antonio, he made a big jump in his fourth season with the Magic. Everyone expected Rashard Lewis to be Orlando’s second-best player, but it was Turkoglu who claimed that crown, setting career highs in points (19.6), rebounds (5.8) and assists (4.9). Given Orlando’s surprising ascension into the East’s elite, he’s my pick for Most Improved Player.
My vote: Hedo Turkoglu, Magic
Prediction: Hedo Turkoglu, Magic
SIXTH MAN OF THE YEAR
To be eligible for this award, a player must come off the bench in more games than he starts. The race comes down to two players: Manu Ginobili and last year’s SMOY winner, Leandro Barbosa.
Truth be told, this isn’t much of a race. The knock against Ginobili last season was that he started too many of his team’s games, but that shouldn’t be a problem this season. He set career-highs in points (19.6), rebounds (4.8), assists (4.5) and 3P% (40.1%) and has the 17th highest EPM of all players averaging at least 30 minutes a game. Meanwhile, Barbosa’s numbers are down across the board.
My vote: Manu Ginobili, Spurs
Prediction: Manu Ginobili, Spurs
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
ROY is a two-horse race between 
Kevin Durant and Al Horford. There’s no doubt in my mind that Durant is going to be a superstar, but Horford has the edge efficiency wise (16.5 to 15.2) and has done it in three fewer minutes a game. In the end, I think voters will gravitate towards Durant’s 20.1-point average (along with his unequaled potential), but Horford has a big edge in rebounds, FG% and PPS. Let’s not forget that the Hawks are playoff-bound while the Sonics have the second worst record in the league. There’s something to be said about the timing of Horford’s arrival in Atlanta and their sudden development into a playoff team, albeit a bad one.
I think Horford has the edge, but Durant will probably win it. Given the fact that KD has played his best ball in the second half of the season despite having virtually no help, it won’t be a huge travesty if he goes home with the trophy.
My vote: Al Horford, Hawks
Prediction: Kevin Durant, Sonics
ALL-NBA FIRST TEAM
PG: Chris Paul
SG: Kobe Bryant
SF: LeBron James
PF: Kevin Garnett
C: Dwight Howard
Honestly, the only pick here that isn’t a no-brainer is at center. I don’t think that Amare Stoudemire is worthy of back-to-back first team honors, especially with the Suns’ dropoff this year. I could go with Tim Duncan, who has been his usual steady self, but more and more San Antonio is becoming Manu Ginobili’s team, especially in the clutch. Besides, hasn’t Duncan asked time and time again to be treated as a forward? (He’s a center, by the way.)
The right pick here is Dwight Howard, whose averages of 20.9 points and (a league-high) 14.4 rebounds are eye-popping, to say the least. He’s the cornerstone of an Orlando franchise that has won 50 games for the first time since the 1995-96 season, when Shaq was still with the team. He has gone from a man-child to Superman in four short seasons, and will likely be the league’s best center for the next decade or so.
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
There are four serious contenders for this year’s MVP: Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James.
LeBron continues to grow. His gaudy averages – 30.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 1.8 steals and 1.1 blocks – seem to get gaudier by the year. But the Cavs will finish below that important 50-win mark, which means that they simply aren’t an elite team. Throw in the fact that Cleveland is just 27-23 against the East and the record looks even worse. The MVP award hasn’t gone to a player on a team with fewer than 50 wins since the 1981-82 season, and the streak won’t be broken this year.
All due respect to Kevin Garnett, but his numbers just aren’t MVP-caliber. I don’t look solely at stats, but they play a pretty big factor and Garnett is one of eight players who average at least 19.0 points and 9.3 rebounds a game, so it’s not like he’s in exclusive company. If KG does defy the odds and win his second MVP, it will be due to the defensive mindset that he brought to the Celtics. The team’s transformation on that end of the court has been something to behold. This is why KG is all but a shoe-in to win the Defensive Player of the Year, which isn’t a bad consolation prize.
So it’s down to two. It’s tough to compare the stats of a point guard like Chris Paul to a scoring guard like Kobe Bryant, so I like to double the assist numbers and add that total to the average points to determine the total number of points that the player is directly responsible for. In this case, we’re looking at 44.3 for Paul and 39.3 for Bryant. Paul also averages almost a full steal more than Bryant, shoots more than two percent better from the field and a full percentage point better from the free throw line. Paul’s Points Per Shot (PPS) is 4% higher than Bryant’s. And he does this all with 1.6 fewer minutes per game, so he’s clearly more efficient than Kobe, which gives him an advantage in EPG (+1.0) and EPM (+0.055). Kobe is the better rebounder (6.4 to Paul’s 4.0), but other than points, that’s the only stat in which he’s superior to Paul.
And then you have the likeability factor. Paul has it and Kobe doesn’t. Bryant is no doubt a popular player, but he’s also the league’s most hated. Meanwhile, Paul seems to be universally loved. Like it or not, being the most valuable player to some degree requires a player to be a good teammate, both on and off the court. Kobe’s on-again/off-again trade demands last summer, along with his decision to throw Andrew Bynum and Mitch Kupchak under the bus, have destroyed any shred of “good teammate” rep that Kobe had left.
Some sportswriters will weigh the likeability factor more heavily than others, but I think most voters are just looking for an excuse not to reward Kobe’s offseason antics by giving him his first MVP. And in Chris Paul they have the perfect alternative. No one thought the Hornets would be this good and CP3 is one of those guys that simply makes everyone around him better. If you only consider the on-court performance, an argument could be made that Kobe’s season is more deserving, but the NBA is not played in a vacuum, and Kobe’s wild summer will seep into voters’ minds, as it should.
My vote: Chris Paul, Hornets
Prediction: Chris Paul, Hornets
Photos courtesy of Flickr.
