Leading OFF
Making the case for NBA MVP: LeBron James vs. James Harden
Zillgitt: LeBron James
Third in points per game. Second in assists. Fifteenth in rebounds. Shooting 54.4% from the field and 36.7% on threepointers.
Only player this season to average at least 25 points, eight rebounds and eight assists and shoot 54% or better from the field. Career high in doubledoubles (51). Career high in triple-doubles (18). Accomplishes feats routinely that are unthinkable for most players.
LeBron James has made the amazing mundane.
You can bend stats favorably for anybody in the MVP conversation, but for a player with four MVPs, this season is one of the top three of James’ career. When James is having this kind of campaign, he’s a legit MVP candidate.
Besides, this is not a runaway MVP season for any player. No one is unanimous, and group think shouldn’t dictate for whom voters vote.
But what James has done individually and with Cleveland’s roster — dragging the team to 49 wins (as of Monday; two games remaining) when they won 51 last season with a better roster — makes him the 2017-18 MVP.
The Cavs lost Kyrie Irving to Boston in a trade over the summer, and what they got back, especially Isaiah Thomas, didn’t work out. The roster was a mess, and it required a massive tradedeadline overhaul.
Even then, it took time. The Cavs didn’t have a healthy roster post-trade, with Kevin Love, Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr. and George Hill missing games.
Through all the roster turmoil, James was phenomenal, and since Feb. 1 he is averaging 29.5 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists and shooting 54.3% from the field and 39.4% on three-pointers. In the games before that period, James still averaged 26.6 points, 8.7 assists and 7.9 rebounds and shot 54.5% from the field and 35% on threes.
Yes, he had a bad January, as did the Cavs as they struggled to incorporate Thomas into the rotation after he returned from the hip injury that sidelined him for seven-plus months.
Without James, the Cavs are likely a lottery team.
With him, they are still the oddsmakers’ favorite to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals.
To be clear, a case for one player does not detract from the case of another. James Harden
Amick: James Harden
is deserving, and should he win, great.
But there is more than one deserving MVP candidate.
We didn’t know it at the time, but James Harden’s MVP story began on opening night.
It was Oct. 17 at Oracle Arena, and his Houston Rockets downed defending champion Golden State 122-121 in a game that featured Chris Paul at his worst. Harden’s new co-star had just four points in 33 minutes to go with 10 assists and aggravated a knee injury that night that would sideline him for nearly a month. With Paul sitting out the fourth quarter, Harden had 27 points, 11 assists and six rebounds en route to the tone-setting win.
This wasn’t the one-star script that Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni had in mind, with Paul having forced his way to Houston via trade to help lighten Harden’s workload. Yet by the time Paul came back, the Rockets had won 10 of 14 games and Harden — who was edged out by Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook for MVP last season — was still at his best. He hasn’t stopped since. Harden is the MVP over James because he did it from beginning to end, leading the Rockets to the top of a Western Conference that the Warriors were supposed to dominate. And the way he did it, with that lethal combination of scoring and playmaking on one end and a much-improved defensive effort on the other, makes him worthy of the league’s top individual award.
Harden’s case, as opposed to James’, isn’t all that complicated. While Cleveland’s locker room was in utter chaos for much of the season, there weren’t dry spells or dramas to dissect in Houston. And even with Paul missing 23 games because of injuries, the Rockets are still running away with the league’s best record.
According to BasketballReference.com, Harden is about to become the fourth player in league history to average at least 30 points, eight assists and five rebounds for an entire season. The others are Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson and Westbrook (he’s currently at 30.6 points, 8.7 assists and 5.4 rebounds per game).
According to NBA.com/ stats, his shooting (league-leading 262 made threes), ability to get to the line (league-leading 721 attempts) and dominate in isolation (1.22 points per possession, according to Synergy, compared to James’ 0.96) make him a peerless scoring talent. What’s more, Harden — despite playing alongside one of the best point guards of all time in Paul — is third in the league in assists for the Rockets team that is tied with the Warriors for the top offensive rating (112.7 points scored per 100 possessions).
Harden’s often-ridiculed defense will never win him any awards, but it could have cost him this one. Instead, he was a capable part of a Rockets defense that is seventh in defensive rating (103.9 points allowed per 100 possessions). James’ Cavs, by contrast, are 29th (109.5).