The NBA's MVP and All-League teams

 

Photo: Public Domain

The NBA MVP

The Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA) won the NBA MVP Award on May 21. He had won my MVP Chase because, by my measure, he had played great in 50 of his team's victories, far more than any other player.

The NBA voters also agreed with five of my top six finishers in the MVP Chase, and they were in the same order.

The one exception is Karl-Anthony Towns. I had him fourth, because he played great in 32 Knicks victories. He was behind only SGA, Nikola Jokic (39), and Giannis Antetokounmpo (34), and ahead of Jayson Tatum (31) and Donovan Mitchell (29).

The 100 voters of the NBA MVP disagreed. Eleven players received at least one fifth-place vote, and none were Towns. Here's why:

1. The voters saw SGA, Jokic, and Giannis as the three best players in the game, and also believed, in Jokic's and Giannis's cases, that their teams would have been toast if they hadn't played as well as they did.

2. Beyond those three, the best players on the winningest teams were Donovan Mitchell of the Cavaliers (64 wins) and Jayson Tatum of the Celtics (61 wins). Of the two, Tatum is the better player and finished fourth in the MVP voting.

3. Every other team was at least nine games worse than the Celtics; the Knicks won "only" 50 games. When selecting players of similar caliber for awards, voters tend to favor teams with more wins.

4. Towns is considered a defensive liability.

My measurements tried to account for defense and team cohesiveness by incorporating game +/- into the equation. That is, despite Towns's defense, Towns had more great games than all but three NBA players.

NBA voters, however, tend to look at the player they'd rather have. They also follow the game full-time. The MVP Chase, however, has a blueprint that says, "OK, the data suggests that Karl-Anthony Towns was a major contributor to more victories than all but three players. Give reasons why he shouldn't be 4th on the MVP ballot."

That's the intent of the MVP Chase: to set an objective standard, not to produce infallible results.

All-NBA teams

Towns did make the All-NBA third team. I would have had him on the second team, because in my ideal all-NBA teams, the selections would be position-specific. Jokic is my first-team center, Towns second, and Jarrett Allen (Cavaliers) third.

All five of the MVP Chase First Team agreed with the All-NBA first team. 15 of the top 19 finishers in the MVP Chase are somewhere in the three All-NBA teams. Three of my top 15 were "snubbed:" Allen, Ivica Zubac of the Clippers, and Alperin Sengun of the Rockets.

Thirteen teams won at least 48 games; eleven provided at least one player to the all-NBA teams, and three teams provided two. The Grizzlies (48 wins) and Rockets (52 wins) had no representatives, while Cade Cunningham of the 44-win Pistons made the third team. It's a credit to the coaching and management of the Rockets that they could produce a 52-win team without, in the eyes of NBA voters, a top-15 player.

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