NHLers enter bubble in Toronto
From Jordan to James to McDavid, being overlooked in your prime can add some fire
Leafs firm up roster as teams set up in hub cities for season reboot,
As motivational fodder goes, maybe few things in pro sports has proven more powerful than the MVP snub, real or perceived.
We were reminded of this during our pandemic spring, when the absence of live content had the sports-loving public watching “The Last Dance” en masse. Among its assorted revelations and reminiscences, the documentary about Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls dynasty recalled Jordan’s reaction to Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz being named the NBA’s most valuable player in 1997. Jordan cited Malone’s winning of that award as the chief thrust behind his ensuing star turn in leading the Bulls to their fifth of six championships.
“I’m not saying (Malone) wasn’t deserving of (the MVP),” Jordan said in the documentary. “All I’m saying is that that fuelled the fire in me to say, ‘OK. You think he’s the MVP? OK. Fine. No problem.’”
It turned out to be a problem for the Jazz, who lost the championship series to the Bulls in six games. Jordan was named Finals MVP.
You have to wonder if we’re about to see similar storylines unfold in a couple of sports during this pandemic summer. Not that anyone currently working as a professional athlete can match Jordan’s mythic ability for turning the smallest of perceived slights into gas for an incomparable engine. Still, anyone who consistently performs at the highest level has to find ways to ignite the proverbial fire. And certainly both LeBron James and Connor McDavid could easily spin the impending MVP situations in basketball and hockey into inspiration, should they choose to channel His Airness.
James and McDavid, after all, are the consensus best players in their respective sports. And the current odds have it that, like Jordan in 1997, both are going to watch less accomplished performers be named the most valuable players of their respective leagues.
We already know it’s going to happen in the NHL this season. When the Hart Trophy nominees were announced last Tuesday, none of the three finalists for the award, voted on by media, were named McDavid. McDavid’s Edmonton Oilers teammate Leon Draisaitl, the league’s leading scorer during the truncated regular season, is the favourite to win the trophy. Artemi Panarin of the New York Rangers and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche are the other finalists. They’re all worthy nominees. But as good as they are and as legitimate as their respective cases might be, it’s hard to make a case McDavid, so long as he’s healthy, isn’t the NHL’s alpha dog, even if he’s only won one Hart Trophy in five seasons.
And if he is the player we think he is — if he’s truly the “generational” talent he has been billed — he’s about to use the platform of the Stanley Cup tournament, and specifically the familiar hub city of Edmonton, to register a forceful jogging of the collective memory. He’s not the league’s most valuable player, his on-ice argument will go, but he’s undoubtedly its best.
The same goes for James, even if the circumstances are different. Voting for the NBA’s major regular-season awards wraps up Tuesday, so there’s a chance that James can win the Maurice Podoloff Trophy for the fifth time in his 17 seasons. Still, the gambling favourite to claim the trophy for the second straight year is Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo. And fair enough. Giannis’s numbers are undeniable. The Bucks’ regular-season record is the best in the league. Their whopping average margin of victory of 11.3 points a game is beyond impressive.
Still, as fans of the Toronto Raptors remember: Not unlike Utah’s Mailman, the Greek Freak has a lot to prove as a deliverer of post-season victories. When last he was seen on a playoff court, he was the best player on the team that lost four straight times to the eventual champions from Toronto — a championship that was won, in no small part, thanks to a Raptors defence that successfully walled off the paint to expose the wonkiness of Antetokounmpo’s work-in-progress jump shot. Which is to say: Giannis still has much to prove if he’s to go down as an NBA giant. The impending news of his second MVP will ring as hollow as a fanless arena if the Bucks can’t figure out a way to at least win the East.
You could easily see how James, if he’s channelling his idol Jordan, could say: “You think he’s the MVP? OK. Fine. No problem.” As a nine-time NBA finalist and three-time champion, you’ll forgive James if he reserves judgment on Giannis’s greatness until Giannis at least makes his NBA Finals debut. If James is the player we’ve come to know he is, it’s hard to imagine this summer won’t bring with it more than a few stark reminders of his basketball primacy.
And it’ll be hard to believe that another season without an MVP — and James, somewhat remarkably, hasn’t won the award since 2013 — won’t add at least a smidgen of heat to his flame.
Being overlooked in the midst of one’s reign can irk a king. Certainly it figures to add some oomph to the approach of the reigning NBA champions. Outside of earning positive reviews for their choice to travel from their training base in Naples, Fla., to the NBA bubble near Orlando in a bus emblazoned with a “Black Lives Matter” motif, the Raptors have been mostly flying under the radar, rarely mentioned as a championship contender. They’ve compiled the league’s third-best record, but they’re Vegas’s sixth-favourite team to win the title behind the Lakers, Bucks, Clippers, Celtics and Rockets. Though the Raptors lost Kawhi Leonard in free agency last summer, they’ve continued to succeed thanks to the growth of players such as Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet. We’ll see if they continue to succeed, in part, thanks to the perception that their chance to repeat ended when Leonard left for the L.A. Clippers.
“To be simple and truthful, I just don’t care what people think of the Raptors,” Siakam told the Star’s Doug Smith a while back.
“I think, for us, it’s been a lot of years caring about, ‘Oh, love me, too,’ and I think that’s over, man. We are the champions and if you don’t see it, that’s your problem … We’re not worried what other people think … We don’t care about perception.”
That, of course, isn’t organizationally true. The Raptors, from Masai Ujiri on down, have long cared deeply about perception. It’s always helped fuel them, just as their underdog spirit helps define them. We’ll see soon enough, too, if their perceived snubbing can be constructively spun.