Dear Mr. Simmons,
It's official, Stephen Curry is the unanimous MVP of the 2015-16 NBA Season. Lebron James has blessed the notion. I think. As seems to now be second nature for the crotchety king, he couldn't resist quickly following his acknowledgment of Curry's accomplishment by lobbing an enigmatic-awkward-sticky side quote onto the table for the entire sports media world to crawl all over and feast on. James quipped that Curry definitely deserved the award, "But when you talk about most valuable then you can have a different conversation."
What is that? He continues, "You know, that's not taking anything from anyone that's ever won the award. It's just another thinly veiled dig at my teammates." Oh... I think I added that last part.
Here's the thing. Regardless of whatever weird psychological game James is playing with himself or his teammates or the planet (no need to unravel that here. I'm sure the all of the talking heads will do a fine job of that continuously over the next 3 days), the king has a point, the criteria for the award changes year to year. It is one of my biggest sports pet peeves. Every few months as the sports calendar cycles, the same MVP debate surfaces into sports media conversations. Who should it be, player X? He's really good. No, it can't be. His team isn't good enough. Player Y is pretty good too and HIS team is going to the playoffs. By what about player Z? He was unstoppable for 3/4 of the season before he got hurt. Can he really be considered most valuable if he didn't play in all of the games? To James' point, sometimes player X gets anointed MVP and sometimes it's player Y. But where I get wrapped around a tree is how every $%*# time we have to go back and forth about what's right and what's wrong and who deserves it more.
Hey, it's just healthy debate right? It's all part of the fun of sports fandom.
Right. It's not healthy for me I'll tell you that. My blood pressure sky rockets every time I have to listen to everyone within reach of a microphone quibble over what the "V" actually means. Everyone has their own slightly different prerequisites necessary to be a "V" player.
Bill Simmons, you have to do something about this! Let's just decide what the award is for all sports. Let's decide right now. And by decide, I mean let's use my definition (because it's the right one), and we can all go on being happy sports fans.
Who is the best player? That's it. That's the question we are trying to answer. Football, baseball, and basketball all call it MVP, when they really mean player of the year. There is no reason for it to be called anything different. Why do we have to over-analyze the name of the award and twist around arguments about how much a guy adds to a team. It doesn't matter. Watch the games. Who is the best player?
Here are the only necessary qualifiers (this is going to sound like a lot, but hang in there. It's really not that complicated):
- We are redrafting the entire league.
- You have the number one pick.
- The only frame of reference you have are the games played in the current regular season.
- You know nothing about prior seasons.
- You don't need to worry about future development or performance regression.
- Salary and contracts don't matter.
- You are building a team for one year only and you are guaranteed the output from each player equivalent to their respective output from the that season.
Who do you pick?
THAT is the best player. That is what the award is for. You've talked before about how the All-NBA team is best used as a historical reference to document the best players at each position each year. MVP is just a subset of that. Who was the best player for that year? Not, "Who was the best player on the team that also had a really good year?" You can look at the season's standing to figure out which teams were good. Not, "Who is the best player that isn't a quarterback, because we're starting to feel guilty that a quarterback wins every year so we are going to start floating stupid ideas like J.J. Watt should win the MVP?" (Quarterback value. Another hot button issue inside my brain. I'll save that one for another day). If the word valuable really bothers people that much, maybe we should stop calling it MVP. I vote.. Best Guy/Girl First Named By A Draft After Season, or...
BGFNBADAS.
Slam dunk. Make it happen Billy Ice. There is too much information out there for us to have to keep weeding through crappy arguments like this. That's all I have for now. Long live Bill Simmons.
Talk to you Later,
-a fan