March is here, and that means college basketball is now the focal point of the sports world. There are few things more jam-packed and enticing than a large group of college students coming together to play a bunch of super-mid basketball for four consecutive weeks.
I can picture it now... wide-open jump shots barely hitting the rim, moving screens, charges, and travels galore, and point guards that'll be accountants in Idaho two years from now. What a sight to behold.
For NBA heads, March usually means the league is turning the corner towards the playoffs and the MVP conversation is in full effect. And although the phrase, “This is a different kind of year,” has become a well-versed cliche, it’s apt in this scenario, as well. The NBA is just hitting the halfway point—with the All Star break coming in as a much-needed reliever—and the MVP conversation is gaining steam every day.
I’ve always been probably a little too passionate about the MVP race. And I don’t know if it’s necessarily passion or frustration that drives me to the brink of insanity when the final results are released each season, but it’s one or the other—if not both.
The MVP is determined by an overwhelming majority of idiotic pundits and basketball nuisances. Are there some voters that approach the award the right way? Of course. Are there some voters that I would like to verbally berate over a couple of cocktails? Abso-fucking-lutely.
I’m merely here to offer some humble solutions to the problems that are ingrained in the Most Valuable Player award while offering my own ballot of candidates who I believe have a chance at holding the title of “Best Basketball Player in the World for the 2020-21 Regular Season.”
My podcasting partner, Jack Martin, and I used to have a weekly segment on The Fro and The Flow called “Watch the Throne,” in homage to Kanye West and Jay-Z’s masterful collaborative album, where we ranked the Kings of the league in ascending order. So, in homage to another brilliant collaborative project, I’ve resurrected our ranking system and prepared it with a twist.
How I’ve determined the order:
The eye-test. This should be the first thing that every voter addresses because it's as subjective as subjective gets and is entirely dependent on your respective basketball knowledge. If the league did this, then they could trim the fat on all the voters and cut everyone who voted for Andre Drummond for MVP. It’s also the easiest way to digest basketball. It’s pretty easy to tell who the best player on the floor is without ever having to look at the numbers. Who’s dominating the game on both sides of the ball? Who’s controlling the game? Who’s seeing things that others aren’t and then executing on those extraordinary visions? Who’s asserting themselves every time down offensively and posing the most problems for the opposing defense? In other words: Who’s making the coach shit themselves at halftime, and then coming out in the second half, and making the coach purge himself when the final buzzer sounds?
Digest the statistics and analytics; ignore the talking heads. Stephen A. Smith, Max Kellerman, Skip Bayless, Shannon Sharpe, etc. all have their respective television spots because of one thing: ratings. Not knowledge or legitimacy as basketball connoisseurs, but as people who can entertain and boil the internet’s sensitive bloodstream. I realize that they all have journalistic backgrounds, and good for them. But their personalities are what've gotten them to where they're at. Do they know who the top five teams are according to net rating? Or who the top three players are according to John Hollinger of ESPN’s PER model? I highly doubt it. Those aren’t the only statistics that are going into effect here. I’ve also attributed the average box-score numbers (points, rebounds, assists, free throw attempts, steals, blocks, field goal, three-point, and free throw percentages), team record—DON’T REWARD LOSERS—with and without a player, individual offensive and defensive rating with a slight nod in favor of the offense, and a dash of Real +/- in order to dissolve the reprehensible Fake +/-.
Ask yourself: How much worse is this team without this player? Now, although this is last on the list, it may be the most vital one strictly because of the name of the award: Most Valuable Player. The award is given to the player who is most valuable to their team. That’s why we so often see the NFL hand the trophy to the best quarterback; he’s irreplaceable. The same can be said about the NBA. The Nuggets couldn’t replicate what they do on offense without Jokic being their Point God. The Jazz couldn’t replicate their defensive model if they lost Gobert and had to replace him with Derrick Favors. The questions you then have to ask yourselves are the big ones: What’s this team’s ceiling with this player? 50 wins? The Conference Finals? Awesome. Now, what’s this team’s ceiling without this player? 25 wins? A top-five pick? And on and on until you’ve dug yourself into a theoretical hole that only more basketball can save you from.
At the end, you rank your top five MVP candidates and everybody gets mad because their biases set in, so they yell at you over Twitter or text. Say it to my face, you frauds. Without further ado, here it is. The first textual installment of Watch the Throne...
1. Joel Embiid
29.8 PPG, 11.3 REB, 3.3 AST, 11.6 FTA, 1.2 STL, 1.3 BLK, 32.8 MPG
52/41.7/86 shooting splits
31.01 PER (2nd)
PHI 23-12 (1st in Eastern Conference)
For years we asked ourselves, “What could Joel Embiid look like if he sacrificed his gameday Chick-Fil-A routine?” And without definitively doing so (there’s no video evidence of him NOT drinking a Strawberry shake before a game), Embiid has become the most dominant offensive force in basketball this season. He’s one of the most fun players to watch in the league because there isn’t a spot on the floor that he isn’t a threat from. If he gets position on the block, it’s a wrap. If he faces up from the wing, then he can either bully his way to the rim or has soft enough touch to get a friendly roll on his jumper. Somebody Embiid's size shouldn't have the touch that he does and that delicacy is reflected in his shooting numbers. He's combined 90% of Shaq's game with 80% of Dirk's and has evolved into a weapon unlike anyone we've ever seen.
The numbers speak for themselves. JoJo—which is such a cute nickname for a man of his stature—ranks second in points and eighth in rebounds. At seven feet and 280 pounds, Embiid is the closest the league has come to an impossibly demanding presence down low since Shaq. He’s not just getting buckets down low, either. Embiid’s getting to the charity stripe almost 12 times per game and knocking those free buckets down like a guard at an 86% clip. For as impressive as he’s been on the offensive end, he’s been just as locked in defensively, recording at least one steal and block each game.
The only thing preventing Embiid from remaining atop the MVP race is an injury—knock on wood, because the big man has a rough history with those—or an unprecedented midseason slump.
What to watch: Philadelphia still has three games left against Milwaukee, two against the Clippers, and one against the Lakers and Nets. Joel loves the attention, but it’ll be interesting to see how he performs against the best-of-the-best as we near towards the playoffs in the second half of the season.
2. LeBron James
25.8 PPG, 8 REB, 7.8 AST, 5.8 FTA, 1.1 STL, 0.6 BLK, 34.6 MPG
51/36/69 shooting splits
24.49 PER (16th)
LAL 24-12 (3rd in Western Conference)
We all know that LeBron James is in his 72nd season in the NBA. We all know that he is one of the two best basketball players of all-time depending on your IQ level, local bias, and inherent stubbornness. Despite the world turning upside down after every Lakers loss, they still remain the three seed in a brutally tough Western Conference, and they’d be the first seed in the East. It’s a direct credit to LeBron James for, once again, putting the team on his back after having only two months off in between the Finals and the season opener.
The Lakers are +16.1 with LeBron James on the floor per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass. For comparison’s sake, Kevin Durant is sitting at +10.9 in that category. The argument against LeBron is that the Lakers have been on the wrong end of a losing streak ever since the Robin to his Batman, Anthony Davis, went down with an injury against Denver two weeks ago. So, what? People expect the Lakers to win at the same rate without one of the six best players in the league on the court? Okay, settle down there, dipshits. It’s Anthony Davis. Do you think that the Nuggets would win as many games without Jokic? Okay then, quit trying to find reasons to hate the man who has given you everything since 2003.
Since AD’s injury, LeBron has averaged 27/8/7 while playing just below 35 minutes per game. I mean, this dude is 36 years old. What the fuck were you doing/are you going to be doing when you’re 36 years old? Probably sitting on a couch bitching about how good LeBron is because he broke your team’s hearts in consecutive years in the playoffs. Grow up, losers.
What to watch: The Anthony Davis timetable for return; it’ll be ever-shifting because NBA teams nowadays hide that information like nuclear codes.
3. Nikola Jokic
27.3 PPG, 11 REB, 8.6 AST, 5.2 FTA, 1.7 STL, 0.7 BLK, 35.9 MPG
57/41.7/88.5 shooting splits
32.21 PER (1st)
20-15 (7th in Western Conference)
What do you get when you mix 125% of Arvydas Sabonis, with 85% of Dirk Nowitzki, 50% of Magic Johnson, 75% of Kevin Love, and sprinkle a little bit of nutmeg on the top? Nikola motherfucking Jokic. The most fun and unpredictable player to watch in basketball. An unassailable wizard that should have his own channel on the front page of YouTube, strictly dedicated to he and Facundo Campazzo’s passing extravagances.
His numbers are absolutely disgusting. They simply shouldn’t be what they are. It amazes me that he isn’t averaging a triple double, because if you had asked me how many assists per game he was averaging, I would’ve said somewhere between fifteen and one-hundred. For all of the extraordinary Euro-hoopers we’ve had the pleasure of watching over the last 35 years, few fall into the same bucket as Jokic. He’s an artist out there on the court and he was the final piece to my dream pick-up team:
Point Guard: Magic Johnson
Off-Guard: Kyrie Irving
Forward: LeBron James
Forward: Kevin Durant
Point Center: Nikola Jokic
I challenge you to come up with a more thrilling five-man squad than that.
What to watch: Will Nikola pull off the famed elbow pass patented by Jason Williams? Only time will tell.
4. James Harden
25.2 PPG, 7.7 REB, 11 AST, 6.6 FTA, 1.1 STL, 0.7 BLK, 38.3 MPG
48/40/86.4 shooting splits
24.7 PER (15th)
BKN 23-13 (2nd in Eastern Conference)
There isn’t a better full-time point guard in basketball right now. Last year, it was LeBron. The year before that, it was Stephen Curry. The decade before that it was Chris Paul. In 2021, however, it’s James Harden.
Harden possesses the same gift of passing that only CP3, Jokic and LeBron have, which is that he can make every pass no matter where he is on the floor (Trae Young is really, really close to being in that same category). Not to mention that this is the same guy who broke every non-Wilt scoring record over the last three seasons.
And despite popular belief, James is actually an above-average defender! People are so lazy with their defensive takes because they saw some videos packaged together on Twitter four years ago of pure, inexcusable laziness. But now there’s this preconceived notion that Harden is a bad defender. Like, have you seen this man’s body? He’s built like a brick shit house with elastic arms, and he’s just as agile as anybody in the league. He may not go as hard as he can every possession on defense, but who does in the regular season unless that’s what you’re known for? I’ll let the professionals calculate exactly how much pressure to put on their bodies on a Wednesday night in January, thank you very much.
What to watch: Harden’s average box score numbers. If he can get his rebounding numbers up to 8 per game, then he’ll be the only player in the last 25 years to average 25 points, 8 rebounds, and 11 assists.
5. Stephen Curry
29.5 PPG, 5.4 REB, 6.4 AST, 5.6 FTA 1.3 STL, 0.1 BLK, 34.1 MPG
48/41/94 shooting splits
25.27 PER (11th)
GSW 19-16 (8th in Western Conference)
I never thought I’d say this, but holy shit, is it nice to have Stephen Curry back. As a LeBronunist, some of my most agonizing defeats have come at the hands of a baby-faced assassin who shimmies like a four-year-old when he drills a jumper. And now that Golden State no longer poses a threat as a championship team, I can sit back calmly, eat a gummy, and watch Stephen Curry go for 30+ points at 11:00 PM central and dream beautiful dreams of his flawless jumper. He’s neck-and-neck with Jokic for the Funnest Player award, which I just made up, and I’d be damned if I ever took him for granted again.
Steph is the best shooter of all-time, and the gap between him and the second greatest shooter of all-time is only growing. He’s made 164 threes so far this season, and Damian Lillard—who is a historically great player and shooter in his own right—has made 135 while having played only two fewer games. I don’t know if Steph has necessarily proved his naysayers wrong—as some people have proposed—because Golden State is on the brink of the playoffs, but he’s surely serving buckets with the best of them this year and has been nothing but a joy to watch.
What to watch: The only player in NBA history to average five three-pointers made per game over the course of an entire regular season is Steph Curry. He’s done it twice: once in 2015-16 and once in 2018-19. Steph’s on track to hit that mark again, as he is at precisely 4.8 threes made per game. I’d argue that this is his most important feat so far because he’s doing it with less spacing and more attention on him than ever before.
Players on the outside looking in
Damian Lillard
Kawhi Leonard
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Donovan Mitchell
Paul George
Comments