Written by Dieter Kurtenbach at FoxSports.com
I don’t know who is going to win the NBA MVP award this season.
Both Houston’s James Harden and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook had truly historic seasons and are incredibly worthy of the award. Frankly, it’s difficult to pick one or the other.
What I do know is that their supporters — though that might be too light of a word — have been hellbent in politicking for their candidates over the last few months, and there’s been an unmistakable trend among those camps.
The Westbrook supporters point to the box score and the point guard’s incredible triple-double average, something that hasn’t been done in 50 years. Case closed.
The Harden supporters go to the advanced analytics, a few of which, if combined correctly, say that the Rockets’ talisman has posted the single most productive year in NBA history. How could you vote against that?
One of these arguments will win out amongst MVP voters, whose ballots are due at the end of the week, and it could irrevocably change how we discuss the NBA.
So much about these top two candidates is similar: They both played for teams that weren’t expected to be as good as they were, with supporting casts that require them, the point guards, to create almost everything. They both played an aggressive dribble-drive style and sparingly played meaningful defense. Both had game-winning shots against the Nuggets (poor Denver) this year. Both play a brand of basketball that lacks joy.
The way most separate the two players is, again, through contrasting schools of thought.
Westbrook is the old-school, box-score candidate. His visceral style of play comes across in his scoresheet-filling ways. For those who believe a 10th rebound is exponentially more important than the 9th, Westbrook — who did it all and then some for the Thunder this year — is your guy.
Again, he averaged a triple double — case closed, bro.
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