By now you have all heard that Heat F LeBron James won his 4th NBA MVP Award over the weekend. He received 120/121 1st place votes. Today we learned that Celtics beat writer Gary Washburn, of the Boston Globe was the lone outlier. He voted instead for Knicks All-Star Carmelo Anthony, preventing LeBron from being the first unanimous winner. He wrote why he voted the way he did and has been making the rounds on local and national radio all day.
He was wrong. Here's why.
No matter what your rhetoric is for MVP, LeBron James was the only choice. Let's take a look.
Carmelo led the league in scoring (28.7 points per game), LeBron was 4th, less than 2 points back (26.8). But LeBron shot a significantly better percentage from the floor (56.5 to 44.9) and from 3 (40.6 to 37.9).
One of Washburn's big reasons for voting for Carmelo was that he led the league in scoring. Tracy McGrady led the league in scoring twice. He finished 4th in MVP one of those years and didn't receive a SINGLE VOTE in the other.
LeBron averaged more rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and minutes as compared to Carmelo. The assist number was particularly lopsided (7.3 to 2.6). Who makes their teammates better? If you want to add the assist-points onto their scoring you get (41.4 for LeBron and 33.9 for Carmelo, and that's calculating just 2 points per assist.)
LeBron had 36 double-doubles, Carmelo had 10.
LeBron missed 6 games all season (in the final month of the year for rest), Carmelo missed 15.
LeBron finished 2nd in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, Carmelo finished 2nd to last (can't confirm this.)
If you like PER (Player Efficiency Rating) that's also in favor of LeBron: 31.67 (1st); Carmelo: 24.83 (4th)
If you vote based on statistics, it's obvious. If you vote on simply best player, it's obvious. If you want to come up with some off the wall/ I'm sick of voting for LeBron theory, then you find a way to vote for someone else.
But if your argument is, "He led the Knicks to their first division title in 19 years. That's a long time." What about Chris Paul?
Chris Paul led the Clippers to their first division title in.... EVER. First title in franchise history. Seems more historically significant to me.
Another "reason" to vote for Carmelo was the theory that without him the Knicks don't make the playoffs and without LeBron the Heat are still a top team. Well it's a small sample size, but New York went 7-8 this year without Anthony. That pace would have beat out the Bucks for the 8 spot.
The Knicks won the division in large part because the Celtics were far worse than expected/ old/ just getting through the regular season. Deron Williams played hurt for most of the season. The 76ers got 0 minutes from Andrew Bynum after trading for him, and the Raptors are awful. Now, the Heat didn't play in a world-beating division either, but to say Melo gets your vote cause he scored a lot of points and the Knicks won the division seems weak.
LeBron has better teammates. Fact. They did win 12 more games and have the best record in the NBA. The Knicks finished with the 6th most wins in the league.
If you really want to use the, "Without him where is his team reasoning?" Then I assume Gary had James Harden, Stephen Curry, and Zach Randolph high on his ballot.
Fact is LeBron has already been penalized for choosing to join forces with Wade and Bosh. He should have been the MVP in 2011 (when Derrick Rose won), and everyone knew it, except not voting for him was the only way to say they disagreed with him leaving Cleveland, "The Decision," and the perception that he was taking the easy way out to win titles. That lasted one year and he has since won back-to-back MVPs in Miami, and 4 out of 5 overall.
Look, I'm not a LeBron apologist. In the words of Manti Te'o, "Far from it. Faaarrrrr from it." I actually like Carmelo more, but to think he was the MVP over LeBron is crazy. Michael Jordan missed out on some MVPs simply because writers were sick of voting for him. LeBron has raised the bar for this generation and is without question the best player in the game. To vote for someone else when he continues to put up insane numbers, because a guy made a team relevant again, or because he was the scoring champ? Makes no sense.
Yes I understand that LeBron still won it this year. But I don't understand how an NBA writer doesn't agree with that. This wasn't a Duncan or Kidd, Duncan or KG, Dirk or Nash or Kobe type of year. This was clear cut. Maybe what LeBron is doing is being taken for granted... by one Boston writer anyway.
-Keefe
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