Despite the Cleveland Cavaliers’ struggles, LeBron James very much deserves to be in the NBA MVP race
The Cleveland Cavaliers currently sit third in the Eastern Conference, with no foreseeable shot at the the No. 1, or even No. 2 seed.
However, this year in the NBA, out of the top 6 seeds, (Top 3 from both conferences) most of the them have been ravaged by injuries which hurts their starts MVP “likeness”. Other than James Harden from Houston and Damian Lillard from Portland, there have been no other clear-cut MVP candidates; Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant have been out for Golden State, Kyrie Irving has been out for Boston.
There’s no question that injuries have dampened a lot of player’s MVP case.
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With that said, guys like Anthony Davis, Donovan Mitchell and DeMar DeRozan all have had very good campaigns for their aspiring playoff teams, but only Davis has really put in a good resume for the MVP award.
So that leaves us with three, maybe four candidates chasing for the award. And only three of them from your traditional “top 3 seeded team”. While yes, Russell Westbrook won it as a 7th seed last season, he had a historic season.
Davis has been amazing, but he hasn’t done anything we haven’t seen before. And I love Anthony Davis.
With the opinion stuff out the way, let’s look at stats.
- LeBron James – 28 PPG, 9 APG, 7 RPG
- Damian Lillard – 27 PPG, 7 APG, 5 RPG
- James Harden – 31 PPG, 9 APG, 5 RPG
Baseline stats tell us it probably should go Harden, James, Lillard in the voting. However, things like defense, quality of teammates and who means more to the team make it a lot tighter.
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Now I am not saying LeBron is the MVP, because personally I’d go James Harden. However, LeBron James is having a top five season of his career with a bottom five roster. It is ludicrous to think LeBron isn’t breathing down Harden’s neck for the award, nor if he got it, he doesn’t deserve it.