The Book of Basketball_The NBA According to the Sports Guy

FIVE
MOST VALUABLE CHAPTER



SAY WHAT YOU want about the NBA, but fifteen of its running features and subplots distinguish it from every other professional sport (in a good way):
A wildly entertaining rookie draft that helped calibrate my Unintentional Comedy Scale. Things settled down over the last few years when agents and PR people realized things like, “Maybe we shouldn’t send him to the draft dressed like a pimp” and “Maybe it’s not a good idea to give David Stern a full body, genitals-on-genitals hug after you get picked,” but it’s still one of my favorite TV nights of the year, if only because Jay Bilas has a ton of length and a ridiculous wingspan.
A dress code for injured players that, after an adjustment period, ultimately led to fashionably dressed scrubs hopping onto the court after time-outs to dole out chest bumps and high fives. We witnessed a blossoming of the Overexcited Thirteenth Man in the ’08 Playoffs; if Walter Herrmann was the Jackie Robinson of this movement, then Brian Scalabrine was Larry Doby and Scot Pollard was Don Newcombe. Where else can you see a $2,000 leather jacket get stained with sweat by a chest bump?
Courtside seats that serve a double purpose: First, they’re hard to get without connections or unless you have six figures sitting around for season tickets. If you’re sitting in them, your success in life has been validated in some strange way, even if everyone sitting in every non-courtside seat probably thinks you’re an a*shole. (It’s the same phenomenon as sitting in first class and watching everyone else size you up in disgust as they’re headed to coach, multiplied by fifty.) And second, it’s the best possible seat in any sport. You’re right on top of the court, you hear every order, swear, joke, insult or trash-talk moment, and if you’re lucky enough to be sitting right next to one of the benches, you can hear them discussing strategy in the huddle.1 There isn’t another sports fan experience like it. I’d even argue that the twelve seats between the two benches—six on each side of the midcourt line, or as they’re commonly known, the Nicholson Seats—are the single greatest set of seats for any professional sport.
Cheerleaders dressing like hookers and acting like strippers. Can’t forget them.
Foreign players entering the NBA with heavy accents, then picking up a hip-hop twang over the course of a few seasons from being around black people all the time. I call this “Detlef Syndrome” because Schrempf was the ultimate example; by the halfway point of his career, he sounded like the German guys in Beerfest crossed with the Wu-Tang Clan. It’s just a shame that Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t train at an all-black gym in the seventies; we really could have seen something special.2
An even weirder phenomenon than Detlef Syndrome: for reasons that remain unclear, the NBA causes some journalists to write NBA-related columns or features like they’re “writing black.” Unquestionably, it’s the worst journalistic trend of the last twenty years other than the live blog. I never understood the mind-set here: There are a great many black players in this sport; therefore, I must make my prose a little more urban. Really? That’s logical? I don’t get it. You feelin’ me? Word. This is one phat book I’m writing, yo. Recognize.
Real fans yanked from the stands to shoot half-court shots for cars, money or whatever else is being offered. What other sport allows fans to become part of the action like that? Of course, they never come close because of the little-known rule that only unathletic people, females or people weighing over three hundred pounds are chosen for the halfcourt shot. But still, at least it’s exciting.3
The most simple yet revealing statistics in any sport: points, rebounds, steals, blocks, assists, free throws, field goals, threes and turnovers. Over the past ten years, a series of stat freaks inspired by the baseball revolution pushed a variety of convoluted statistics on us, but really, you can determine the effectiveness of nearly any player by examining an NBA box score. Rarely does a post-1973 box score deceive, although a few subtle stats could be created to make things even better. We’ll delve into this during the Wes Unseld section.4
What other sport offers the broken-nose mask that Rip Hamilton popularized? For how prevalent these things have been for the past thirty years, I can’t believe we never came up with a nickname for it. A few years ago I launched an unsuccessful movement to name it “the Schnozzaroo.” Never caught on. What’s strange is that they’re such an afterthought for players who care deeply about their postgame wardrobe, their appearance, their shoes—and yet they’ll slide on these homely, bland plastic masks without sprucing them up. Shouldn’t they be painting them the way goalies decorate their masks in hockey, or maybe even wearing an intimidating, Hannibal Lecter-style mask for a big playoff game? What about putting advertising on it (like the Nike logo)? We need to spruce up the Schnozzaroos. You have to love a league that just spawned this paragraph.
Telecasts with Hubie Brown, a man who mastered the hypothetical first-person plural tense over the past twenty-five years and transformed it into a common conversation device. What would our lives have been like without Hubie? I wish Paul Thomas Anderson had cast him as Jack Horner’s assistant director in Boogie Nights, just so we could have had a moment like this one during the filming of Spanish Pantalones: “Okay, let’s say I’m Dirk Diggler in this scene. I’m hooking up with Rollergirl, I’m on a waterbed, I’m horny as hell, I’m Spanish, I’m hung like a horse and my pants are on fire. Now I’m thinking about rolling Rollergirl over from missionary to doggie style because I know that I’m keeping my options open and I can go right from doggie into another position. I also know that I should be thinking about using a Spanish accent….”
The unique-to-the-NBA phenomenon where a traded player looks dramatically different in his new uniform. Sometimes it looks like he’s been reborn, sometimes it’s like he’s finally found the perfect color/style, sometimes he looks like something’s drastically wrong, and in rare cases the uniform makes him look slower, fatter and less athletic (like Shaq when he joined the Suns). I remember when Kwame Brown got traded to the Lakers and looked magnificent in his new duds: his arms looked bigger, he seemed more imposing and he carried himself differently. For all we knew, he had transformed into Jermaine O’Neal. But absolutely nothing had changed talent-wise except that he turned a Wizards jersey into a Lakers jersey. As we soon found out. Because Kwame Brown sucks. Still, for those first few Lakers games, he looked pretty damn good. It’s just unfortunate that actors, politicians and singers can’t take advantage of the new-uniform phenomenon; people like Jakob Dylan, Matt LeBlanc, Joe Biden and Adam Duritz could have remade their careers.
In my lifetime, David Stern narrowly edges Pete Rozelle as the commissioner with the most dominant personality, someone who always kept his league in complete control, gained such power and prominence that we actually wondered if he had fixed certain games or banned certain superstars without telling us, spawned a generation of legendary, Bill Brasky-like “Did you hear about the time Stern spent twenty minutes f-bombing _______________[name at least two executives from any company, sponsor, network or the league itself from the past twenty-five years]?” stories and anecdotes, and left such a legacy that he inspired one writer (in this case, me) to make a semiserious case in one column for why David Stern should be our next president. Just like there will never be another Magic, Michael or Larry, there will never be another David Stern.5
Mothers who show up for home games, go overboard supporting their sons and sometimes make fools out of themselves. Every time I think back to a Sixers game during the Iverson era, it makes me jealous that I can’t write this book right now with twenty thousand fans cheering me on as my mom sits in the front row wearing a Simmons jersey, whooping it up and holding a sign that says, MY BABY IS THE SPORTS GUY AND HE’S ALL THAT!
Tattoos. Tons and tons of tattoos. No other sport has you saying things like, “I wonder what those Chinese characters stand for” and “Wait a second, is that Notorious B.I.G.’s face on the point guard’s right arm?” My buddy JackO has been arguing for years that, along with a game program, home teams should hand out a tattoo program that explains the origin of every tattoo on both teams (complete with pictures). Like you wouldn’t thumb through it during time-outs?
The Most Valuable Player award that matters the most.
(Sound of a record screeching to a halt.)
Wait, you don’t believe me? Can you name the last ten NFL MVPs? You can’t. Can you name the last ten MVPs in each baseball league, then definitively say which guy was better each year? Nope. Do you even know the name of the NHL MVP trophy, much less the last ten winners?6 Unless you’re Canadian, probably not. Only the NBA taps the full potential of the Most Valuable Player concept: everyone plays against each other, it’s relatively simple to compare statistics, and if you watch the games, you can almost always figure out which players stand out. You only have to follow the season. If you combine the MVP voting with the All-NBA teams, the playoff results, and individual statistics, you end up with a reasonable snapshot of exactly what happened that NBA season, much like how the four major Oscar awards reasonably capture what happened in Hollywood from year to year.
Of course, there are exceptions. Charles Barkley won the ’93 MVP even though Jordan was still the best player alive and proved it authoritatively in the Finals. Well, you know whose name sits next to “1993 NBA MVP” for the rest of eternity? Barkley. That’s just the way this crap works. One year later, Forrest Gump won Best Picture over The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction. If you could only watch one of those three movies again, which one would you pick? I bet you’re not picking Gump. If you’re old enough to remember walking out of the theater after those three movies in ’94, which one left you the most blown away? Again I bet you’re not picking Gump. I remember seeing a Shawshank matinee with my girlfriend at the time,7 limping out of the theater in disbelief, then sitting in her car afterward having an “I can’t believe how freaking amazing that was” conversation and not departing the parking lot for fifteen solid minutes. That definitely didn’t happen when I walked out of Gump. Although I do remember wondering how Jenny Gump died of AIDS when it hadn’t been created yet.
So why didn’t Shawshank win the Oscar? Because it had a crappy title.8 If they had gone with a generic Hollywood title like Hope Is a Good Thing or Crawling to Freedom, more potential moviegoers would have understood the premise and seen it. When flipping through movie times in a 1994 newspaper, you weren’t gravitating toward the prison movie with the confusing title and a douche like Tim Robbins in the leading role. Believe me, I was nearly one of those people. I specifically remember not wanting to see Shawshank until my dad (an early Shawshank lover) told me something crazy like, “Look, if you don’t see this movie within the next forty-eight hours, I’m coming over and severing your carotid artery with a machete.” Now? It’s one of the greatest titles of all time. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Back then, it probably cost that movie $75 million and the Oscar. As for MJ, he didn’t win the ’93 MVP because everyone was tired of voting for him. That’s the only reason. And it’s a shitty one.
Which brings us back to the point of this chapter: Just because somebody won an Oscar or an MVP doesn’t necessarily mean he deserved it. Since the MVP means more to the NBA than any other sport, and since we’re headed for a mammoth “Evaluating the Best Players Ever” section in a few pages that involves an Egyptian pyramid—no, really—I thought we’d travel back in time and correct every mistake or injustice in MVP history. I’m also creating a Playoffs MVP because it’s nonsensical that we have awards for the regular season and Finals, but nothing covering every playoff series including the Finals. For example, the 2007 Spurs wouldn’t have won without Tim Duncan, their entire low-post offense, best defender, best rebounder, best shot blocker and emotional leader. With nearly eight hundred games (including playoffs) and one knee surgery already on his odometer, Duncan had learned to pace himself during the regular season by then, concentrating on defense and rebounding and saving his offensive energy for message games and playoff games. In the regular season, he played 80 games and finished with a 20–11–3, shooting a career-high .546 from the field and making first-team All-NBA. Then he averaged a 22–12 and blocked 62 shots in 20 playoff games as the Spurs swept Cleveland in the Finals. So what happened? A French guy (Tony Parker) stole Finals MVP honors for lighting up a particularly poor group of Cleveland point guards, averaging a 30–4 in the sweep and shooting .568 from the field.9
Let’s say your great-grandkid looks back at that season sixty years from now. Dirk Nowitzki won the MVP, Tony Parker won the Finals MVP … and other than his first-team All-NBA spot and solid playoff numbers, how would you discern that Duncan, by far, was the crucial player on the best team of the 2006–7 season? You couldn’t. That’s why there should be a regular-season MVP, a Finals MVP and a Playoffs MVP, and that’s why I’m handing out my imaginary Playoffs MVP, creating a universal definition for regular-season MVP and settling every erroneous pick since 1956. But before we get there, three crucial MVP wrinkles have to be mentioned:
Wrinkle no. 1. The first award was given out for the 1955–56 season, with players controlling MVP votes and writers handling All-NBA first and second teams. (Only one rule: players couldn’t vote for anyone on their own team.) I know they were still finding their way in the mid-fifties, and granted, this was the same league that played for eight years before realizing it needed a shot clock. But given the racial climate of the fifties and the general resistance to the influx of black players, how could anyone have expected a fair vote when 85–90 percent of the players were white? Wasn’t it more of a popularity contest than anything? When you apply the “best player is decided by his peers” concept to modern times, you can see its inherent dangers and potential for a lack of objectivity. Critics are critics for a reason—it’s their job to objectively evaluate things. You can’t expect players to suddenly become impartial reviewers. For instance, let’s say the 2008 players considered Kobe to be a world-class bully, egomaniac and phony.10 Under this scenario, if they were voting for the 2008 MVP, would Kobe have had any chance of pulling it out over Chris Paul, a player everyone respected and loved?11 And considering the Hornets loved Paul and wanted him to win, wouldn’t they have voted for someone without a real chance like LeBron? NBA players should only be voting for things like Worst B.O., Guy You Don’t Want to Leave Alone with Your Girlfriend, Least Likely Star to Pick Up a Check, Toughest Poker Competitor, Ugliest Player and Craziest Mothaf*cka You Don’t Want to Cross.
Wrinkle no. 2. Starting with the 1979–80 season, a handpicked committee of journalists and broadcasters was given the voting reins, creating more problems for obvious reasons (some might not follow the entire league, some might be biased toward the guy they’re watching every night, some might be dopes about the NBA) and less obvious ones (recognizable stars now had an advantage, as did someone without a trophy competing against a previous winner). Starting in the early nineties, a more subtle problem developed: a group almost entirely composed of middle-aged white journalists couldn’t identify with the current direction of the league, missed the access they once had and openly despised the new generation of me-first, chest-pounding, posse-having, tattoo-showing, commercial-shooting overpaid stars but were still being asked to objectively decide on the MVP. I’d say that’s a problem. I once asked a well-known basketball writer if he had DirecTV’s NBA Season Pass, and he recoiled in disgust, like I had asked him if he’d ever been to a sex club and banged someone through a glory hole or something. And this was a guy with an MVP vote. Can we really rely on the over-fifty, “I used to love the NBA before the league went to hell” demographic to make the right decisions?
Wrinkle no. 3. Current voters openly confess to being confused about the voting criteria, mainly because the NBA powers that be willingly facilitated that confusion by never defining the term “valuable.” They like when radio hosts and writers get bent out of shape about it. They want voters to wonder if it’s an award for the best player or the most valuable one, or both, or two-thirds one part and one-third the other part, or whatever ratio someone ends up settling on. We only know the following:
It’s an award for the regular season only.
Candidates have to play at least 55 games.
Whoops, that’s all we know.
See how we might have trouble coming up with the right pick annually? That’s why I pored through every season making sure that every choice was either completely valid, relatively valid, or invalid, applying my own definition of the MVP, a formula I have been revising and redefining for an entire decade before finally settling on the language for life last summer.12 My definition hinges on four questions weighted by importance (from highest to lowest):
Question no. 1: If you replaced each MVP candidate with a decent player at his position for the entire season, what would be the hypothetical effect on his team’s records? You can’t define the word “valuable” any better. Say you switched Chris Paul for Kirk Hinrich during the summer of ’07. How would the next Hornets season have turned out? They won 57 games in a historically tough conference with an offense geared around Paul’s once-in-a-generation skills, and if that’s not enough, he was a beloved leader, teammate, and team spokesman. Switch him with Hinrich and they’re probably 30–52 instead of 57–25, and that’s without mentioning how Paul saved basketball in New Orleans and evolved into one of the NBA’s true ambassadors. Ranking the 2008 MVP candidates only by this question, Paul ranks first, Kevin Garnett second, LeBron James third, Kobe Bryant fourth, and Earl Barron fifth.13
Question no. 2: In a giant pickup game with every NBA player available and two knowledgable fans forced to pick five-man teams, with their lives depending on the game’s outcome, who would be the first player picked based on how everyone played that season?14 Translation: who’s the alpha dog that season? The Finals answer this question many times … but not every time. We thought Kobe was the alpha dog in 2008, but after watching him wilt15 against Boston in the Finals—compared to the way LeBron carried a crappy Cavs team to seven games against Boston and nearly stole Game 7—it’s unclear. This question reduces everything to the simplest of terms: we’re playing to 11, I need to win, I can’t screw around with this choice, and if I don’t pick this guy, he’s gonna get pissed and kick our asses as the second pick. I mean, imagine the look on ’97 MJ’s face if someone picked ’97 Karl Malone before him in a pickup game. It would have been like Michael Corleone in Godfather Part II when Kay informed him about her abortion.
Question no. 3: Ten years from now, who will be the first player from that season who pops into my head? Every season belongs to someone to varying degrees. Why? Just like the political media can affect a primary or a presidential campaign, the basketball media can swing an MVP race. They shape every argument and story for ten months, with their overriding goal being to discuss potentially provocative angles, stories or controversies that haven’t been picked apart yet. There’s no better example than the ’93 season: Jordan was still the best, but the controversial Barkley had just been swapped to Phoenix, then made a leap of sorts at the ’92 Olympics, emerging as the team’s most compelling personality and second-best player. Pigeonholed during his final Philly years as a hotheaded, controversial lout who partied too much, wouldn’t shut his trap and showed truly terrible judgment—epitomized by the incident when he accidentally spat on a young fan, followed by the story being twisted around to “Barkley spits on young fan!”—suddenly everyone was embracing Chuck Wagon’s sense of humor and candor. Once he started pushing an already good Suns team to another level, Barkley became the story of the ’92–’93 season, a bona fide sensation on Madison Avenue and the most charismatic personality in any sport.16
Should that “transformation” have made him the most valuable player in 1993? Well, the ’92 Suns won 53 games, shot 49.2 percent from the field, scored 112.7 points per game and gave up 106.2. The ’93 Suns won 62 games, shot 49.3 percent, scored 113.4 and gave up 106.7. They rebounded better with Barkley but he weakened them defensively. Maybe they had a better overall team in ’93, but didn’t free agent pickup Danny Ainge, rookies Oliver Miller and Richard Dumas, emerging third-year player Cedric Ceballos and new coach Paul Westphal deserve a little credit? You also can’t discount what happened in the Western Conference: following a particularly strong ’92 campaign that featured four 50-win teams and nine above-.500 teams in all, only six ’93 teams finished above .500 and the eighth playoff seed went to a 39-win Lakers team. Barkley’s regular-season impact, purely from a basketball standpoint, wasn’t nearly as significant as everyone believed. Admittedly, he injected that franchise with swagger, gave them a proven warrior and inside force, boosted home attendance, helped turn them into title favorites and pushed a very good team up one level. For lack of a better word, he owned that season. When you think of ’92–’93, you think of Barkley and the Suns first; then you think, “Wait, wasn’t that the year Chicago pulled out the Charles Smith Game and then MJ single-handedly destroyed Phoenix in the Finals?” Still, ownership of a season shouldn’t swing the voting. In ’93, it did. That’s just a fact.
Question no. 4. If you’re explaining your MVP pick to someone who has a favorite player in the race—a player that you didn’t pick—will he at least say something like, “Yeah, I don’t like it, but I can see how you arrived at that choice”? I created this question after what happened with my ’08 MVP column, when I picked Garnett and found myself deluged with “You’re a homer, you suck!” emails from fans of other candidates. I expected the choice to be unpopular, but that unpopular? Did I make a mistake? I rehashed my thought process and realized that my logic was sound and (seemingly) unbiased: I’d abided by the same reasons for which I picked Shaq in ’05—namely, that Garnett transformed the Celtics defensively and competitively, turned the franchise around, gave it leadership and life and spawned a record 42-win turnaround—and included a few I-saw-this-happen examples to bang my logic home. Still, I was biased for one reason: I had watched nearly every minute of that Celtics season, whereas I had only seen pieces of 25–30 Hornets and Lakers games. My affection for the Celtics didn’t taint my opinion but my constant exposure to them did: I knew exactly how Garnett affected the 2007–8 Celtics because I watched every game, read every story and followed them every day for eight months. Did I know exactly what Chris Paul did for the Hornets?17 Not really. Had I grown up a Hornets fan and diligently followed their miraculous transformation I inevitably would have ended up arguing Paul’s merits.18 The crucial variable: any Lakers fan would disagree with Paul over Kobe, but at the very least they would have understood the logic. They wouldn’t have agreed with it, but they would have understood it. Well, they didn’t understand the wisdom of the Garnett pick. At all. And that’s a problem. Hence, the creation of question no. 4.
Lump those questions together like MVP Play-Doh and suddenly we have a trusty formula. Ideally, I want a player who can’t be replaced, then an alpha dog, then someone who owned that season to some degree, then a pick who doesn’t need to be overdefended to a prejudiced party … and after everything’s said and done, a choice who vindicates my support by kicking ass in the playoffs. Although it sounds great on paper, it doesn’t happen every year as you’re about to see. For reference purposes, here’s the complete list of NBA alpha dogs in the shot-clock era, along with the actual MVP winners and my choices for Playoffs MVP. I put in boldface the MVP winners who, after much research and deliberation, I signed off on as a valid choice that can’t be debated.
Alpha Dog (1955): Dolph Schayes
MVP: Bob Cousy19
Playoffs MVP: Schayes
Alpha Dog (1956–57): Bob Pettit
MVP: Pettit (’56), Cousy (’57)
Playoffs MVP: Paul Arizin (’56), Russell (’57)
Alpha Dog (1958–65): Bill Russell
MVP: Russell (’58, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’65); Pettit (’59), Chamberlain (’60), Robertson (’64)
Playoffs MVP: Pettit (’58), Russell (’59–’65).
Alpha Dog (1966–68): Wilt
MVP: Wilt (’66, ’67, ’68)
Playoffs MVP: Russell (’66), Chamberlain (’67), Russell (’68)
Alpha Dog (1969–70): West
MVP: Wes Unseld (’69), Willis Reed (’70)
Playoffs MVP: John Havlicek (’69), Walt Frazier (’70)
Alpha Dog (1971–74): Kareem
MVP: Jabbar (’71, ’72, ’74), Cowens (’73)
Playoffs MVP: Kareem (’71), West (’72), Frazier (’73), Havlicek (’74)
Alpha Dog (1975): Rick Barry
MVP: Bob McAdoo
Playoffs MVP: Barry
Alpha Dog (1976–78): Unclear20
MVP: Kareem (’76–?77), Walton (’78)
Playoffs MVP: Cowens (’76), Walton (’77), Bobby Dandridge (’78)
Alpha Dog (1979–83): Moses Malone
MVP: Moses (’79, ’82—’83), Kareem (’80), Erving (’81)
Playoffs MVP: Dennis Johnson (’79), Kareem (’80), Bird (’81), Magic (’82), Moses (’83)
Alpha Dog (1984–86): Bird
MVP: Bird
Playoffs MVP: Bird (’84, ’86), Kareem (’85)
Alpha Dog (1987–88): Bird/Magic (tie)
MVP: Magic (’87), Jordan (’88)
Playoffs MVP: Magic (’87—?88)
Alpha Dog (1989–90): Unclear21
MVP: Magic (’89, ’90)
Playoffs MVP: Isiah Thomas (’89, ’90)
Alpha Dog (1991–93): Jordan
MVP: Jordan (’91–’92), Barkley (’93)
Playoffs MVP: Jordan (’91—’93)
Alpha Dog (1994–95): Olajuwon
MVP: Hakeem (’94), David Robinson (’95)
Playoffs MVP: Hakeem (’94—?95)
Alpha Dog (1996–98): Jordan
MVP: Jordan (’96, ’98), Karl Malone (’97)
Playoffs MVP: Jordan (’96–’98)
Alpha Dog (1999): Haywood Jablome22
MVP: Malone
Playoffs MVP: Duncan
Alpha Dog (2000–2): Shaq
MVP: O’Neal (’00), Iverson (’01), Duncan (’02)
Playoffs MVP: Shaq (’00–’02)
Alpha Dog (2003–5): Duncan
MVP: Duncan (’03), Garnett (’04), Nash (’05)
Playoffs MVP: Shaq (’02), Duncan (’03, ’05), Ben Wallace (’04)23
Alpha Dog (2006): Kobe
MVP: Nash
Playoffs MVP: Dwyane Wade
Alpha Dog (2007–9): Unclear
MVP: Nowitzki (’07), Bryant (’08), LeBron (’09)
Playoffs MVP: Duncan (’07), Paul Pierce (’08)
That leaves a whopping seventeen MVP seasons needing to be hashed out: 1959 (Pettit), 1962 (Russell), 1963 (Russell), 1969 (Unseld), 1970 (Willis), 1973 (Cowens), 1978 (Walton), 1981 (Doc), 1990 (Magic), 1993 (Barkley), 1997 (Mailman), 2002 (Duncan), 2005 (Nash), 2006 (Nash), 2007 (Nowitzki) and 2008 (Kobe).24 We’re separating them into three categories: fishy choices that were ultimately okay; fishy choices that were proven to be stupid, and outright travesties of justice that should have resulted in arrests and convictions. Before we rip through them, I urge you to pour yourself a glass of wine, put on some John Mayer and maybe even don a smoking jacket.
(Waiting …)
(Waiting …)
All right, let’s do it.
CATEGORY 1:
FISHY BUT ULTIMATELY OKAY

Bill Russell (1962)

Already the two-time defending MVP (shades of MJ in ’93), Russell peaked statistically in ’62 like so many others, averaging a 19–24–5 for a 60-win Boston team and providing typically superhuman defense. If the media were voting, Russell would have gotten boned because of the “You already won a few times and it’s time for some new blood” corollary (shades of MJ in ’93), and either Wilt (50–25, first-team All-NBA) or Oscar (the league’s first triple double) would have prevailed. They were the season’s dominant stories other than pinball-like scoring and Elgin Baylor getting saddled with military duty and only playing 48 games—all on weekends, all without ever practicing with the Lakers—but somehow averaging an ungodly 38–19–5.25
I would argue that Elgin’s 38–19–5 was more implausible than Wilt’s 50 a game or Oscar’s triple double. The guy didn’t practice! He was moonlighting as an NBA player on weekends! ?Wilt’s 50–25 makes sense considering the feeble competition and his gratuitous ball hogging. Oscar’s triple double makes sense considering the style of play at the time. But Elgin’s 38–19–5 makes no sense. None. It’s inconceivable. A United States Army Reservist at the time, Elgin worked in the state of Washington during the week, living in an army barracks and leaving only whenever they gave him a weekend pass. Even with that pass, he had to fly coach on flights with multiple connections to meet the Lakers wherever they were playing, throw on a uniform and battle the best NBA players, then make the same complicated trip back to Washington in time to be there early Monday morning. That was his life for six months. The only modern comparison would be Kobe’s ’04 season, when he was accused of rape26 and flew back and forth between Colorado (where the hearings were taking place) and either Los Angeles or wherever the Lakers happened to be playing, and everyone made an enormous deal about Kobe’s “grueling” season even though he was flying charters and staying at first-class hotels. Can you imagine if Kobe had been reenacting Elgin’s ’62 season? The world would have stopped. We would have given him a Nobel Prize. And yet I digress.
In the sixties, first-place votes counted for 5 points, second place for 3 points and third place for 1 point. You could only vote for three players. The ’62 MVP voting broke down like so:
Russell: 297 (51–12–6)27; Wilt: 152 (9–30–17); Oscar: 135 (13–13–31); Elgin: 82 (3–18–13); West: 60 (6–8–6); Pettit: 31 (2–4–9); Richie Guerin: 5 (1–0–0); Cousy: 3 (0–0–3).
You’re not gonna believe this, but I have a few thoughts. First, Elgin’s season was so freaking amazing that he missed 40 percent of the season and still finished fourth (even grabbing three first-place votes). Second, Wilt’s “legendary” season impressed his peers so much that only nine players (10 percent of the league) gave him a first-place vote, proving how silly the ’62 statistics were (as well as the level of Wilt’s selfishness).28 Third, West, Pettit, Guerin and Cousy grabbed as many first-place votes as Wilt and stole another twelve second-place votes and fifteen third-place votes. West averaged a 30–8–5 and wasn’t the best guy on his own team; Pettit averaged a 31–19 for a 29–51 Hawks team; Guerin averaged a 30–7–6 for a 29–51 Knicks team; and Cousy had his worst season in 10 years (16–8–4) and only played 28.2 minutes a game. Should any of them have sniffed the top three? You could say they split the “I hate blacks and they’re ruining our league” vote. Anyway, I’m fine with the Russell pick: he was the dominant player on the dominant team. Thirty years later, Wilt or Oscar would have won and I’d be ranting and raving about it. Let’s move on.
Bill Russell (1963)

Great two-man race between Russell (17–24–5, superhuman defense for a 60-win Boston team) and Baylor (34–14–5 for a 53-win Lakers team). Both legends were at the peak of their respective powers, which seems relevant because Russell was valued a little more highly than Baylor at the time.29 Here’s how the voting broke down: Russell: 341 (56–18–7); Elgin: 252 (19–36–18); Oscar: 191 (13–34–21); Pettit: 84 (3–14–27); West: 19 (2–1–6); Johnny Kerr: 13 (1–1–5); Wilt: 9 (0–2–3); Terry Dischinger: 5 (1–0–0); John Havlicek: 3 (0–1–0); John Barnhill: 1 (0–0–1);30 Walt Bellamy: 1 (0–0–1). Good God! The NBA logo in ’63 should have had a Ku Klux Klan hood on it. The votes for Dischinger (26–8–3 in just 57 games for a 25-win Chicago team) were particularly appalling. Even if some votes were strategic back then—no Laker was voting for Russell, no Celtic was voting for Elgin, and maybe no Royal was voting for Elgin or Russell—it’s telling that inexplicable votes always seemed to be for white guys.
Back to Elgin and Russell. In modern times, Elgin would cruise to the MVP for the typical bullshit reasons of “He’s never won it before” and “He’s overdue and we need to recognize him.” That same faulty logic led to many of the egregious MVP crimes on this list (we’ll get to them), as well as Marty Scorsese finally winning an Oscar for a movie that ended with a rat crawling on the balcony as a big neon SYMBOLISM! SYMBOLISM! sign flashed in the background. So I can’t endorse Elgin’s candidacy here. With that said, of every “He’s overdue and we need to recognize him with an MVP” season in NBA history, ’63 Elgin ranks right up there. It’s an absolute shame that he never won the award.
(And if the Lakers had won the ’63 Finals, then I’d be pleading his case. But they didn’t.)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1972)

Here we have the league’s reigning alpha dog and MVP averaging a career-best 34.6 points, 16.8 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game for a 63-win team. From 1969 to 2008, that’s the single greatest statistical season by a center; Young Kareem was also the best defensive center of that decade other than Nate Thurmond. So I can’t kill this pick. But we should mention—repeat: mention—that the Lakers broke two records (69 wins, 33 straight) en route to Jerry West’s first championship. Unfortunately, nobody could decide which Laker was more responsible: West (26–4–10, led the league in assists) or Wilt (15–19–4, 65% FG, led the league in rebounds)? Check out the bizarre voting, the only time that one team placed two of the top three: Kareem: 581 (81–52–20); West: 393 (44–42–47); Wilt: 294 (36–25–39).
This raises an interesting question: Should a special “co-champs” choice be added to the ballot for every season with a memorable team that didn’t have an identifiable alpha dog? The ’58 Celtics (Cousy and Russell), ’70 Knicks (Reed and Frazier), ’72 Lakers (West and Wilt), ’73 Celtics (Hondo and Cowens), ’97 Jazz (Stockton and Malone), ’01 Lakers (Shaq and Kobe), ’05 Heat (Shaq and Wade) and ’08 Celtics (Pierce and Garnett) all qualify and solve many of the problems in this chapter. The ’72 season was the ultimate example: Kareem was the singular MVP and West and Wilt were co-MVPs. Right? (You’re shaking your head at me.) Fine, you’re right. Dumb idea.
Bill Walton (1978)

Even an unbiased observer would admit that for the eleven months stretching from April ’77 through February ’78, the Mountain Man was the greatest player alive and pushed that Portland team to surreal heights.31 Right as that team was cresting, the February 13, 1978, Sports Illustrated—one of the watershed issues of my childhood because of an insane Sidney Moncrief tomahawk dunk on the cover—ran an extended feature on the Blazers in which Rick Barry called them “maybe the most ideal team ever put together.” Everything centered around Walton (19–15–5, 3.5 blocks), the next Russell, an unselfish big man who made teammates better and even shared killer weed with them. Two weeks after the SI story/jinx, the big redhead injured his foot and didn’t return until the Playoffs, when he fractured that same foot in Game 2, killing Portland’s playoff hopes and leading to his inevitable messy departure.32
Now …
It’s hard to imagine anyone qualifying for MVP after missing twenty-four games, much less taking the trophy home. But we’re talking about an especially loony season, as evidenced by our rebounding champ (Mr. Leonard “Truck” Robinson) and assists champ (the one, the only, Kevin Porter). Kareem sucker-punched Kent Benson on opening night, missed 20 games and struggled for the remainder of the season. Erving submitted a subpar (for him) season.33 The strongest candidates were George Gervin (27–5–4, 54% FG) and David Thompson (27–5–5, 52% FG), both leading scorers for division winners who weren’t known for their defense. Guards weren’t supposed to win MVPs back then; only Cousy and Oscar had done it, and as much as we loved Skywalker and Ice, they weren’t Cousy and Oscar. So Walton drew the most votes (96), Gervin finished second (80.5), Thompson third (28.5) and Kareem fourth (14); a dude from Venice named Manny, the league’s unofficial coke dealer, finished fifth (10).34
The case for Walton: He played 58 of the first 60 games and the Blazers went 50–10 over that stretch. He missed the next 22 games and the Blazers stumbled to an 8–14 finish (hold on, huge “but/still” combo coming up), but they still finished with a league-best 58 wins and clinched home court for the Playoffs. So yeah, Walton missed 24 games and had an abnormally profound impact on the regular season, winning 50 games during a season when only two other teams finished with 50-plus wins: Philly (55) and San Antonio (52).
The case against Walton: Borrowing the Oscars analogy, would you have accepted the choice of No Country for Old Men for Best Picture if the movie inexplicably ended with thirty-five minutes to go? (Actually, bad example—that would have been the best thing that ever happened to Old Men. I hated everything after we didn’t see Josh Brolin get gunned down.35 You’re never talking me into it. I hated English majors in college and I hate movies that are vehemently defended by English majors now. The last twenty minutes sucked. I will argue this to the death.) Take two: Would you have accepted The Departed as Best Picture if the movie inexplicably ended with thirty-five minutes to go and you never found out what happened to DiCaprio or Damon? No.
Ultimately it comes down to one thing: even if Walton and the Blazers only owned 70 percent of that season, still, they owned it. Nobody else stood out except Kareem (for clocking Benson), Kermit Washington (for clocking Rudy T.), Dawkins (for breaking two backboards), Thompson/Gervin (for their scoring barrage on the final day), the Sonics (who started out 5–22 and staged a late surge to make the Finals) and Manny (the aforementioned coke connection that I made up, as far as you know). That’s good enough for me—I’ll take 70 percent of a Pantheon season over 100 percent of a relatively forgettable season. I’m signing off. We’ll make an exception here with all the missed games. Just this once.
Tim Duncan (2002)

The ’02 season featured a ballyhooed battle between Duncan (a career year: 25–13–4 plus 2.5 blocks and superb defense) and Jason Kidd (15–7–10 and superb defense), with Kidd owning the season because of a much-argued-about trade the previous summer, when Phoenix swapped Kidd to New Jersey for Stephon Marbury a few months after Kidd was charged with domestic assault.36 Energized by the change of scenery, Kidd led the perenially crappy Nets to 52 wins, swung the New York media behind him and stood out mostly for his unselfishness and singular talent for running fast breaks, as well as his attention-hogging wife, Joumana, who brought their young son courtside and seemingly knew the location of every TV camera.37 Maybe Kidd’s ’02 season didn’t match his ’01 season in Phoenix (17–6–10, 41% FG), but mostly by default, Kidd became the featured story in a historically atrocious Eastern Conference,38 leading to one of the closest (and dumbest) MVP votes ever: Duncan: 952 (57–38–20–5–3); Kidd: 897 (45–41–26–9–3); Shaq: 696 (15–38–40–25–5); T-Mac: 390 (7–5–28–45–10).
Um … why was this close? Duncan topped 3,300 minutes, 2,000 points, 1,000 boards, 300 assists and 200 blocks, carried the Spurs to a number two seed in the West, didn’t miss a game and had a greater effect on his teammates than anyone else but Kidd. Look at his supporting cast: Bruce Bowen, Antonio Daniels, Tony Parker, Malik Rose, Danny Ferry, Charles Smith, a past-his-prime David Robinson, a pretty-much-past-his-prime Steve Smith and a past-being-past-his-prime Terry Porter. That’s a 58-win team? Had you switched Duncan with someone like Stromile Swift, the Spurs would have won 25 games. Meanwhile, the Lakers swept the Nets in the Finals in a mismatch along the lines of Tyson-Spinks, Ryan-Ventura and any Melrose Place cast member acting in a scene with Andrew Shue.39 That’s when we all realized, “We knew the East was bad, but we didn’t know it was that bad!” That a 39 percent shooter for a 52-win team in a brutal conference nearly stole the MVP from the greatest power forward ever during his finest statistical season for a 58-win team … I mean, you can see why I don’t trust the MVP process so much.
(By the way, Shaq retained alpha dog status this season, remaining on cruise control for 82 games—partially because he was lazy, partially because this was the year when he fully embraced his abhorrence of Kobe—before turning it on for the playoffs and averaging a 36–12 in the Finals. From there, he spent the entire summer eating. In fact, I think he grilled one of the Wayans brothers, covered him in A-1 sauce and ate him at one point.)
CATEGORY 2:
FISHY AND ULTIMATELY NOT OKAY

Bob Pettit (1959)

Again, any time you’re putting the MVP in the hands of mostly white players competing in an era marred by racism and resentment toward black athletes, you’re definitely hitting a few speed bumps. The league had an unwritten “only one or two blacks per team and that’s it” rule in the fifties; even as late as 1958, the Hawks didn’t have a single black player. So it’s a little suspect that Pettit (a white guy) won the ’59 MVP award in a landslide over the league’s reigning MVP and most important player (Russell, a black guy) when 90 percent of the votes were from whites. Check out their numbers during ’58 and ’61 (when Russell won) and ’59 (when Pettit won), factor in their defensive abilities (Pettit was mediocre; Russell was transcendent), then help me figure a coherent explanation for Pettit nearly tripling Russell in the ’59 voting that doesn’t involve a white hood.
Here are the numbers:


Here’s how the ’59 voting shook out: Pettit: 317 (59–7–1); Russell: 144 (10–25–29); Elgin: 88 (2–20–18);41 Cousy: 71 (4–11–18); Paul Arizin: 39 (1–7–13); Dolph Schayes: 26 (1–6–3); Ken Sears: 12 (1–1–4); Cliff Hagan: 7 (1–4–0); Jack Twyman: 7 (0–1–4); Tom Gola: 3 (0–1–0); Dick McGuire: 3 (0–1–0); Gene Shue: 1 (0–0–1).
Here’s what happened in the ’59 playoffs: Elgin’s 33-win Lakers team shocked Pettit’s Hawks in the Western Finals, then were swept by the Celtics in the Finals.
You know how the host of The Bachelor always says going into commercial, “Coming up, it’s the most dramatic rose ceremony ever”? Well, this was the most racist MVP voting year ever. You had Pettit’s bizarre landslide win (really, six times as many first-place votes as Russell?), half the league ignoring Elgin, the Cooz stealing four of Russell’s first-place votes and four other white players (Arizin, Schayes, Sears, and Hagan) unaccountably earning first-place votes. You can’t even play the “Pettit was a sentimental choice” card because he’d already won in ’56. And if you’re not buying the race card, remember the times (pre-MLK, pre-JFK, pre-Malcolm, pre-desegregation), the climate (in baseball, the Red Sox signed their first black player in ’59: the immortal Pumpsie Green), and stories like the following one from Tall Tales about the Lakers playing an exhibition game in Charleston, West Virginia. Their three black players (Baylor, Boo Ellis, and Ed Fleming)42 were not allowed to check into their hotel or eat anywhere in town except for the Greyhound bus station. Here’s how Hot Rod Hundley and Baylor remembered the incident:
Hundley: “The people who put on the game wanted me to talk to Elgin about playing. After pregame warmups, I went into the dressing room and he was sitting there in his street clothes. I said, ‘What they did to you isn’t right. I understand that. But we’re friends and this is my hometown. Play this one for me.’ Elgin said, ‘Rod, you’re right, you are my friend. But Rod, I’m a human being, too. All I want to do is be treated like a human being.’ It was then that I could begin to feel his pain.”
    Baylor: “A few days later, I got a call from the mayor of Charleston and he apologized. Two years later, I was invited to an All-Star Game there, and out of courtesy I went. We stayed at the same hotel that refused us service. We were able to eat anywhere we wanted. They were beginning to integrate the schools. Some black leaders told me that they were able to use what had happened to me and the other black players to bring pressure on the city to make changes, and that made me feel very good. But the indignity of a hotel clerk acting as if you aren’t there, or people who won’t sell you a sandwich because you’re black … those are the things you never forget.”
So yeah, things eventually did change; some of those changes were already in motion in 1959. But Russell and Baylor were pushing the sport in a better direction and some of their peers weren’t, um, down with the new movement yet. That’s the only explanation for the lopsided voting. I don’t mean to come off like Sam Jackson screaming, “Yes, they deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!” in A Time to Kill, but at the same time, bigotry affected the ’59 vote and that’s that. Russell was the MVP.
Wes Unseld (1969)

As a rookie with the Bullets, Unseld made a name for himself with bone-crushing picks and crisp outlet passes, averaging a 14–18 and shooting 47% for a 57-win team. Willis Reed played a similarly valuable role in New York, averaging a 22–14 and shooting 52% for a 54-win Knicks team, but Unseld’s total in the MVP voting more than doubled Willis (310 to 137) and Unseld grabbed first-team All-NBA honors. In the first round of the ’69 playoffs, Reed and the Knicks swept Baltimore and everyone felt stupid.43
Here’s my problem: if you’re giving the MVP to the fifth-best re-bounder in the league and he’s only responsible for 20 points a game (in this case, 14 points and three assists), he’d better be a cross between Russell and Dikembe Mutombo on the defensive end. Poor Unseld was only six foot six and eventually grew a Fletch-like afro to make himself look taller—shades of Tom Cruise wearing sneakers with four-inch lifts—and it’s not like he was defending the rim and spraying shots everywhere. If anything, his value lay in subtle talents like outlets and picks. Maybe Big Wes was a wonderful role player, the perfect supporting piece for a contender, someone who made his team better (and eventually other teams better when he made a brief run at being the worst GM ever). But he was never a dominant player, you know?
No matter. By the holidays, everyone had decided that something special was happening with this Unseld kid; in the simplest terms, he stood out more than everyone else. His outlets were fun, his picks were fun and his rebounding stats were good enough that you could sell him as MVP and not get laughed out of the room. That doesn’t mean he was more valuable than Willis, Billy Cunningham (a 25–13 for a feel-good Sixers team that overachieved), or even a stat-monger like Wilt (21–21 plus shotblocking and 59% shooting). Much like Steve Nash in ’05 and ’06, this was the proverbial “nobody else jumps out, I really like watching this guy … f*ck it” vote. You felt good about yourself if you voted for Wes; it meant you knew your hoops and appreciated the little things about basketball. The following year, Unseld had an even better season (16–17 with 52% shooting) for another good Bullets team, only they left him off the ’70 All-Star Team and both All-NBA teams. In fact, he never made a first or second All-NBA team again and only played in four more All-Star Games. You know what that tells me? It tells me that everyone felt like they got a little carried away with the ’69 MVP award—like sending a girl a dozen roses after the first date or something.44
Here’s how the voting went down: Unseld: 310 (53–14–8); Reed: 137 (18–11–14); Cunningham: 130 (15–16–8); Russell: 93 (11–8–22).45 I thought Cunningham earned the MVP and here’s why: even after dumping Wilt to L.A. for 45 cents on the dollar, Philly rallied for 55 wins and second place in a ferociously competitive conference. The key to everything? Cunningham. After rugged rebounder Luke Jackson blew out his knee in Game 25, Dr. Jack Ramsey’s ’69 Sixers willingly embraced small-ball, moving Cunningham to power forward along with guards Archie Clark, Hal Greer and swingman Chet Walker, pressing all over the court and running as much as they could. Their chances hinged solely on Billy C. playing bigger than his size (six foot six), logging gargantuan minutes (82 games and 3,345 minutes in all) and battling the likes of Elvin Hayes, Jerry Lucas, Gus Johnson, and Dave DeBusschere every night. Not only did he pull it off, he finished third in scoring and tenth in rebounds. In a transitional season devoid of an alpha dog, it remains the league’s single most impressive feat. For whatever reason, everyone was more interested in Wes Unseld’s picks and outlets. My vote goes to Billy C.
Bob McAdoo, 1975

One of the top twenty-five players ever (Rick Barry) peaked during the regular season (31–6–6, league leader in steals and FT%) for a team that finished first in the West, then carried his underdog Warriors over Washington in the Finals with a vintage performance (28–6–6, 50 steals in 17 playoff games). One of the top sixty-five players ever (McAdoo) peaked during that same season (35–14, 52% shooting, 3,539 minutes) for a team that finished third in the East, then lost in the first round in seven games to Washington (whom Golden State eventually swept).46 McAdoo may have been an ahead-of-his-time offensive player enjoying a banner year, but Barry’s passing, unselfishness and overall feel separated him from everyone else. Unfortunately, we were still stuck in the Look, Big Guys Are More Valuable Than Anyone Else and That’s That era, a mind-set that wasn’t helped by the lack of titles for Oscar and West in the sixties and never changed until Bird and Magic showed up.
But that’s not what was so galling about this MVP race. Here’s the one time where we can definitively say, “The other players stuck it to Player X.” Check out the top five: McAdoo: 547 (81–38–28); Cowens: 310 (32–42–24); Hayes: 289 (37–26–25); Barry: 254 (16–46–36); Kareem: 161 (13–21–33). So Barry was the league’s best player and proved as much in the playoffs … and he finished fourth? What happened? Barry was the Association’s most despised player, someone who whined about every call, sold out teammates with a variety of eye rolls and “why the hell did you drop that” shrugs and shamelessly postured for a TV career (even moonlighting for CBS). We can’t discount residual bad blood from Barry jumping to the ABA, as well as his reputation for being a gunner and not clicking off the court with black players.47 So what if he turned his career around, became a team captain, led the league in steals and free throw percentage, finished second in points, finished with most assists (492) of any forward ever and led his team in every relevant statistical category except for rebounds? Rick Barry didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with the other players voting. They thought he was a dick. That may have been true, but nobody was more valuable in 1975.
Julius Erving (1981)

This season featured a two-man jog48 between division rivals Erving (25–8–4 for a 62-win Philly team) and Bird (21–11–6 for a 62-win Celtics team that clinched home court by beating Philly in Game 82). Doc became the “sexy” media story that season because Philly blossomed as an unselfish team, so everyone collectively decided at the halfway point, “Okay, this is Doc’s year.” Meanwhile, Bird quietly gained steam as the season went along, putting up a series of 20–20 games (36–21 at Philly, 35–20 in Chicago, 21–20 in Cleveland, 28–20 in New York) during an absurd 25–1 streak before suffering a painful thigh bruise, playing in pain for a month and healing in time for a February West Coast trip in which he tossed up a 23–17–8 with four steals in Seattle, then a 36–21–5 with 5 steals and 3 blocks in Los Angeles less than twenty-four hours later (with an injured Magic watching from the sidelines). By the last month of the season, everyone should have agreed that (a) Bird and Doc were dead even and (b) the guy whose team clinched home court should get MVP. Didn’t happen. In that eighty-second game in Boston, Bird scored 24 in the victory and was all over the place—5 steals in the first quarter alone—while Erving struggled to tally just 19 points. When the Sixers and Celtics met in the ’81 Eastern Finals, Philly self-destructed with a three-games-to-one lead and Bird banked home the game-winning shot in Game 7. Bird for the series: 27–13–5. Doc for the series: 20–6–4. Two weeks later, the Celtics captured the title in Houston. So much for it being “Doc’s year.”
Does that mean Bird was the league’s best player? Not necessarily. You could make a strong case for Moses, the league’s best center from 1979 through 1983, only Moses was toiling away on a subpar Rockets team that finished 41–41 in 1980 and 40–42 in 1981. (Note: It’s hard to argue anyone was supremely valuable when he couldn’t drag his team over .500, even someone trapped on a bad defensive team with teammates who were either too young, too old or lousy to begin with.)49 So if we’re giving the MVP to someone who wasn’t the alpha dog, then it’d better be a great player having a career year—again, not in play in 1981—which means the time-tested “best guy on the best team” theory comes into play. And that was Bird.
Now, you might be saying, “Screw it, there was no clear-cut MVP that year and everyone knew Bird would get one eventually, so I’m glad Doc got it because he meant a lot to the league.” First of all, you’re a sap for thinking that; we showed Doc how much he meant six years later when he got showered with gifts during his retirement tour. Second, the MVP trophy isn’t a token of our affection—it’s not a diamond ring, a plasma TV or even a cock ring. What is it? An honor that says definitively, “The majority of us agreed that this guy was the most important player of this particular season.” And since that’s the case, everyone screwed up because four months after the ’81 Playoffs ended, Bird graced the cover of SI for a feature titled, “The NBA’s Best All-Around Player.” Why didn’t they realize that when he was tossing up 20–20’s? You got me. But if Bird was considered the NBA’s best all-around player during a year without a definitive MVP and his team won the title, and we gave the award to someone else, then we made a mistake and that’s that.50
Dirk Nowitzki (2007)

An edited-for-space version of what I wrote in my 2007 MVP column after realizing that Nowitzki didn’t qualify under any of my three MVP questions51 but remained the consensus choice:
Statistically, Nowitzki submitted superior seasons in 2005 and 2006, and his 2007 stats ranked behind Larry Bird’s best nine seasons, Charles Barkley’s best 10 seasons and Karl Malone’s best 11 seasons. Nowitzki’s shooting percentages were remarkable (50 percent on field goals, 90 percent on free throws, 42 percent on 3-pointers), but his relevant averages (24.6 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.4 assists) look like a peak season from Tom Chambers. He can’t affect games unless he’s scoring, doesn’t make his teammates better and plays decent defense at best. If you’re giving the MVP to someone because of his offense, he’d better be a killer offensive player. You can’t say that about the 2007 Nowitzki.
The argument for the big German is simple: He’s the most reliable crunch-time scorer in the league and the best player on a 66-win team. Of course, when the ’97 Bulls won 69 games, you could have described Jordan the exact same way … and he finished second to Malone. Then again, maybe we should scrap the historical comparisons after Steve Nash’s back-to-back trophies transformed the award into what it is now: a popularity contest. It’s a 900-number and Ryan Seacrest away from becoming a low-key version of American Idol. And since people want the big German to win the award this year, he’s going to win it. In the irony of ironies, Nash played his greatest season at a time when everyone took him for granted and paid more attention to Nowitzki…. You could have switched Dirk with Duncan, KG, Bosh, Brand or any other elite forward and the Mavs still would have won 55–65 games. But the 2007 Suns were built like a complicated Italian race car, with specific features tailored to a specific type of driver, and Nash happened to be the only person on the planet who could have driven the car without crashing into a wall. The degree of difficulty was off the charts. So yes, this was my favorite Nash season yet.
Did I vote for him? In a roundabout way, yes—Nash earned my vote for second place (I couldn’t give my MVP vote to a total defensive liability) and the Fans earned MVP because we had endured one of the least entertaining seasons ever. I know, I know, lame.52 But as I wrote in the column, “I wish we handled MVP awards, the Oscars and the Emmys the same way—if there’s no deserving candidate in a given year, let’s roll the award over to the following year and make it worth two awards, kinda like how golfers roll over a tie in a skins match and count the next hole for twice as much. I never understood the concept of dispensing awards out of obligation over anything else. An award should be earned, not handed out.”
You have to admit it’s a fantastic idea. At the very least, every MVP ballot should include another choice: “This year sucked; I refuse to make a first-place vote. Please make my vote next year worth two.” Anyway, you know how the Dirk debacle turned out: Golden State shocked Dallas in one of the biggest NBA upsets ever, although it stopped being so unrealistic right as the Warriors were butchering the Mavs in Game 3 in front of a frenzied G-State crowd. Here’s what I wrote between Games 4 and 5, when it became apparent that so many had made such an enormous mistake vouching for the MVP-ness of Mr. Nowitzki:
We’re headed for the most awkward moment in NBA history within the next 10 days. Here’s how it will play out:
(We see Jim Gray, David Stern and Dirk Nowitzki standing awkwardly in front of a single camera at halftime of a Round 2 playoff game.)
GRAY: Now to present the 2006–7 Most Valuable Player Award, NBA commissioner David Stern.
STERN: Leave. Now.
(Gray slinks off.)
STERN: Well, Dirk, maybe the playoffs didn’t turn out the way you planned, but for 82 meaningless games during one of the worst seasons of my 23-year tenure, you were the best player in a terrible league. Unfortunately, voting for the award happens right after the regular season, so voters weren’t able to factor in your complete meltdown in Round 1 against Golden State. You didn’t just fail to step up like an MVP should, you whined and complained the entire series, disgraced your teammates and embarrassed your fans. Not since David Hasselhoff has America been so embarrassed by someone with a German-sounding name. I don’t know whether to hand you this trophy or smash it over your head. Lucky for you, this is being televised, so I can only hand you the trophy and congratulate you on the 2006–7 Most Valuable Player Award. I’m going to leave now so I can throw up.
DIRK NOWITZKI (taking the trophy): Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
(Stern waves disgustedly at him and walks away.)
And … scene!
That’s pretty much what happened. Never before had a so-recently-disgraced player accepted the trophy in such awkward fashion. Poor Dirk ended up fleeing to Australia to clear his head like Andy Dufresne or something. Now that we’re examining this stuff retroactively, if you’re ignoring my skins match suggestion, then Nash gets the ’07 MVP because he shouldn’t have won in 2005 or 2006 (we’ll get to that), so in a weird way, he was due even though he wasn’t due. I know it’s like voting for a DH to win a baseball MVP, but there’s no other option. You have to believe me.53
CATEGORY 3:
OUTRIGHT TRAVESTIES

We’re counting these down in reverse order from eight to one:
8. Kobe Bryant (2008)

He bitched for a trade and disparaged teammates before the season started. He spent the first few weeks on businesslike cruise control before “embracing” his teammates, then fully committing himself after the Gasol trade. From there, we spent the next two months hearing that it was Kobe’s year, that he was finally “getting it,” that this was the best all-around ball he’d ever played, that he was becoming a leader on and off the court, that he was even going out to dinner with his teammates and picking up checks. This revisionist fairy tale gained steam through the first three rounds before going up in flames during the Finals, when Kobe didn’t play a single great game and stink-bombed a must-win Game 6 (going down with surprising meekness). The Lakers splintered as soon as things got rough, proving something I had been arguing all along: the whole “Kobe is a leader” thing was a complete and total crock.
This should have been Chris Paul’s trophy—nobody meant more to his team or his city—and if not him, then Garnett for salvaging professional basketball in Boston, teaching everyone how to play defense, carrying the team with unbridled intensity for 82 games, and even convincing James Posey, Eddie House and P. J. Brown to take discounts to play with him. I still can’t believe everyone bought into Kobe’s Bee Ess. Let’s just move on before I punch something.
7. Steve Nash, 2005

A baffling choice that gets more baffling with time. When they changed the hand check rules and ushered in the “let’s make basketball fun again” era, Nash jumped out as Phoenix’s quarterback of a thrilling offense. Everyone (including me) was enthralled that someone had revitalized the Cousy-like potential of the point guard position; at some point, things escalated and writers started throwing him out as an MVP candidate, which initially seemed preposterous because it would have been the first time (a) a table setter won the award; (b) a non-franchise player won the award; and (c) a defensive liability won the award. Those are three pretty big leaps.
Were there racial implications to the Nash/MVP bandwagon? In a roundabout way. It was fun to root for Nash. Here was a Canadian dude with floppy hair and a nonstop motor who looked like Kelly Leak, made throwback plays (like his trademark running hook), knew how to handle a fast break, made teammates better and always handled himself with class. His style (unique, exciting) and color (white in a predominantly black league) made him stand out more than anyone else in any given game. Beyond that, he was the league’s biggest new wrinkle and a “Steve Nash is fun to watch, why can’t he be the MVP?” column or radio angle stood out.54 Everything snowballed from there. When Shaq battled minor injuries and Dwyane Wade escalated his game to “poor man’s MJ” heights, there were just enough cracks in Shaq’s MVP campaign that the door opened for Nash, colored by a slew of “It’s been such a delight to watch someone this unselfish who handles himself with so much class” media comments (in columns or on the radio), a nice way of saying, “I’m glad he’s not one of those me-first black guys with tons of tattoos who pounds his chest after every good play.” By then, the Nash bandwagon was running amok like the runaway train that freed Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Throw in the NBA’s vested interest in pushing Nash—remember, the guy considered to be the future of the league had been dealing with a rape trial just twelve months before—and as soon as the “nobody else jumps out, I really like watching this guy … f*ck it” logic came into play during awards time, just enough people were feeling that way that poor Shaq ended up getting robbed. Our final voting for 2004–5: Nash: 1,066 (65–54–7–1–0); Shaq: 1,032 (58–61–3–3–1); Nowitzki: 349 (0–4–43–30–16); Duncan: 328 (1–0–40–13–19); Iverson: 240 (2–4–20–20–23).55
My vote went to Shaq because of a simple mathematical exercise revolving around two indisputable facts:
The Lakers won 57 games in 2004 and 34 games in 2005.
Miami won 42 games in 2004 and 59 games in 2005.
I’m no Bill James, but even I can crack those numbers: Shaq caused a 40-game swing, shifted the balance of power from West to East and would have won the title had Wade not gotten injured with a three-games-to-two lead in the Eastern Finals. As I wrote at the time, “This year has been special in the sense that people get him now—he’s had a breakout season, only in the personality sense. Now there isn’t a more beloved, charismatic, entertaining athlete in any sport. When I think of the 2004–2005 season, I’m going to think of Shaq first … and that’s the very definition of an MVP. At least to me.” I still feel that way.
6. Magic Johnson, 1990 MVP

If you ever run into Charles Barkley for any social reason—at a blackjack table, boxing match, Gambler’s Anonymous, wherever—bring up the 1990 MVP race and watch him go. Here’s what he’ll say: “I had the most first-place votes! That’s the only time that ever happened! First of all, I wanna know how I could get the most first-place votes and not win the award! I think you should only vote for one guy—I don’t get why you have to rank the votes. Number one, they don’t do the Oscars that way. And first of all, either you’re the best guy or you’re not. So number one, if the most people thought I was the best guy, then that makes me the MVP. First of all, if I’m the best guy, then I’m the MVP, anyway. So number one, I should have been the MVP. And second, Magic should give me that damned trophy!”
Here were the three candidates:
Magic: 22–12–7, 79 games, 2,937 minutes, 63 wins … a world-class defensive liability by this point … received credit for keeping L.A. going without Kareem even though they were better off with the Vlade Divac/Mychal Thompson combo … best four teammates: James Worthy, Byron Scott, A. C. Green, Divac … Playoffs: 25–6–13, 49% FG (9 games, second-round loss) … the weakest of his three MVP years.
Barkley: 25–12–4, 1.9 steals, 60% FG, 79 games, 3,085 minutes, 53 wins … below-average defender … best four teammates: Johnny Dawkins, Rick Mahorn, Hersey Hawkins, Mike Gminski … Playoffs: 25–11–6, 54% FG (10 games, second-round loss) … best all-around year to that point.
Jordan: 34–7–6, 2.8 steals, 53% FG, 82 games, 3,197 minutes, 55 wins … league leader in scoring and steals … first-team All-Defense … best four teammates: Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright, John Paxson … Playoffs: 37–7–7, 51% FG (18 games, Eastern Finals loss)
    And the voting: Magic: 636 (27–38–15–7–4); Barkley: 614 (38–15–16–14–7); Jordan: 571 (21–25–30–8–5).
    Everyone remembers Barkley getting screwed when Jordan had a bigger gripe. Look at his superior offensive numbers and remember that (a) he was the league’s best defensive noncenter and (b) Barkley/Magic couldn’t guard anyone.56 Why didn’t Jordan cruise to the award? First, the media kept perpetuating the bullshit that Bird and Magic “knew how to win” and Jordan “ didn’t know how to win yet.” (What a farce.) Second, Barkley emerged as somewhat of a hip choice, becoming the Man on a raucous Sixers team that memorably brawled with Detroit on the final night of the season. And third, MJ was still facing a “selfish” rap even though he was making 53% of his shots. Wouldn’t you want him shooting as much as possible? When everyone was calling him a ball hog in ’89 and ’90, MJ averaged a combined 7.2 assists, 23.2 field goals and 8.5 free throws per game. In ’93, when everyone claimed he embraced the triangle, trusted his teammates, and all that crap, he averaged 5.5 assists, 25.7 field goals and 7.3 free throws per game. I’d argue that Jordan started cresting in ’88 and it took his underwhelming supporting cast three full years to stop murdering him every spring. He’s my ’90 MVP.
5. Dave Cowens, 1973 MVP

Four factors collided this season: Boston nearly broke the record for regular-season wins by going 68–14 (so everyone felt obligated to vote for a Celtic); Kareem won in ’71 and ’72 (so everyone felt obligated to vote for someone else); the league was heading into the “everyone’s overpaid and doesn’t give a shit” era (so someone as intense as Cowens stood out); and the players (still voting) didn’t realize that Boston shared a division with 21–61 Buffalo and 9–73 Philly (padding their record by going 14–0), whereas Milwaukee finished 60–22 in a tougher division and had the same point differential as Boston. Besides, you couldn’t really pick a best player on those Celtics teams—Cowens (21–16–4 and the rebounding duties), John Havlicek (24–7–7 and the crunch-time duties), and Jo Jo White (19–6–6 and the ballhandling duties) were equally indispensable. It’s hard for me to believe that Cowens was more valuable than Havlicek. Even the voting reflects this: Cowens: 444 (67–31–16); Kareem: 339 (44–24–27); Nate Archibald: 319 (44–24–27); Wilt: 123 (12–16–15); Havlicek: 88 (12–16–15).
Sounds like we needed a co-MVPs choice on the ’73 ballot. Meanwhile, the league’s best player (Kareem) averaged a 30–16–5 and provided superior defense for the troubled Bucks (other than a slew of injuries and a suspicious Wali Jones meltdown that led to his release,57 the Big O became the Really Big O), also suffering a personal tragedy when seven coreligionists living in his Washington, D.C., house were murdered by a rival Muslim faction. (A February 19 SI feature about Kareem was even headlined “Center of a Storm.”) And you know what? The Bucks still won sixty. Kareem’s candidacy was crippled by dubious support for Archibald, the first player to lead the league in points and assists—and beyond that, minutes (a jaw-dropping 3,681), field goals, free throws, field goal attempts and free throw attempts—for a 36-win team that missed the playoffs. Can you really be “most valuable” when your team lost 46 freaking games? And don’t get me started on the foolishness of a point guard averaging nearly 27 shots and 10 free throw attempts per game. Isiah could have hogged the ball like that; same for Chris Paul, Kevin Johnson or Tim Hardaway before he blew out his knee. None of them did it. Why? Because it would have killed their teams! They were point guards! We haven’t seen anything like Tiny in ’73 before or since and it’s definitely for the best. Anyway, Kareem got robbed.
4. Charles Barkley, 1993 MVP

First, if any of the four media members who gave their ’93 first-place votes to Patrick Ewing are reading right now, please put down this book and spend the next hour trying to ram your head up your ass. You did it in 1993; I want to see you do it again. How can you live with yourself? Second, the quality of the top three in ’93 ranks up there with the races in ’62, ’63, and ’64, as well as the back-to-back Bird-Magic-MJ battles in ’87 and ’88.58 Check out these numbers:
Barkley: 835 votes (59–27–10–2–0): 26–12–5, 52% FG … 62 wins … his greatest all-around season.
Hakeem: 647 (22–42–19–12–2): 26–13–4, 53% FG, 150 steals, 342 blocks (league leader) … first-team All-Defense … 55 wins … his greatest all-around season to that point.
Jordan: 565 (13–21–50–12–2): 33–7–6, 50% FG, 221 steals (league leader) … first-team All-Defense59… 57 wins … retains alpha dog status for the season.
That’s right, signature seasons from three of the best twenty players ever! Unfortunately, eighty-six voters overlooked the fact that Jordan and Hakeem were two of the most destructive defensive players ever and Barkley couldn’t guard Ron Kovic. Don’t you have two tasks as a basketball team: to score and to stop the other team from scoring? At the time, I would have voted for MJ first, Hakeem second and Barkley third. And I would have been vindicated because Jordan cremated the Suns in the ’93 Finals. So there.
3. Steve Nash, 2006 MVP

I picked Nash fifth in my ’06 MVP column, writing, “A cute choice last season, mainly because none of the other candidates stood out and I could see why someone would have been swayed. (Like ordering one of those fancy foreign beers at a bar, the ones in the heavy green bottles with the 13-letter name that you can’t pronounce, only someone else is drinking it, so you say to yourself, ’Ah, screw it, I’m tired of the beer I always drink, lemme try one of those.’) But this year? I’m not saying he should be ignored, but if you actually end up picking him, either you’re not watching enough basketball or you just want to see a white guy win back-to-back MVP’s.”
Here’s what I wrote in that same column after picking Kobe (edited for space):
You don’t know how much this kills me. Actually, you probably do. But Mamba passes all three MVP questions …60
Answer for Question No. 1
Kobe. The dude scored 62 in three quarters against Dallas, then 81 against Toronto a few weeks later. He’s about to become the fifth player in NBA history to average 35 points a game (along with Wilt, MJ, Elgin and Rick Barry). He made up with Shaq. He made up with Phil. He made up with Nike. He appeared on the cover of Slam magazine with a mamba snake wrapped around him. He did everything but make the obligatory cameo on Will and Grace. No player took more abuse from writers, broadcasters and radio hosts this season, but Kobe seemed to feed off that negative energy. It was almost Bondsian. And just when it kept seeming like he might wear down, he’d toss up another 50 just to keep you on your toes. Kobe was relentless. That’s the best way to describe him this season.61
Answer for Question No. 2
Kobe. He’s the best all-around player in the league, the best scorer, the best competitor, and the one guy who terrifies everyone else. Plus, if you didn’t pick him, he would make it his mission to haunt you on the other team.
Answer for Question No. 3
If you replaced Kobe with a decent 2-guard (someone like Jamal Crawford) for the entire ’06 Lakers season, they would have won between 15 and 20 games. I can say that in complete confidence. Terrible team. When Smush Parker and Kwame Brown are your third-and fourth-best players, you shouldn’t even be allowed to watch the playoffs on TV. Throw Kobe in the mix and they’re headed for 45 wins. So he’s been worth 25 victories for them. Minimum.
    Here was the voting in 2006: Nash: 924 (57–32–20–8–6); LeBron: 688 (16–41–33–23–7); Nowitzki: 544 (14–22–25–36–17); Kobe: 483 (22–11–18–22–30); Chauncey Billups: 430 (15–13–22–18–25).
(Translation: I give up.)
2. Willis Reed, 1970 MVP

With Russell retired and the Celtics floundering, the Knicks took command of the East, won a league-high 60 games, ignited Manhattan and became the media darlings of the ’70 season. Their two best players were Reed and Frazier: Reed averaged a 22–14, shot 50 percent and protected his teammates; Frazier averaged a 21–6–8, ran the offense, guarded the best opposing scorer and would have led the league in steals had they kept track. If there was ever a season for co-MVPs, this was it. Since the belief was that centers were more valuable than non-centers, Reed (498 votes, 61–55–28) squeaked by Jerry West (457 votes, 51–59–25). And nobody ever thought about it again.
Well, check out West’s season again. He averaged a 31–5–8 for a 46-win Lakers team that lost Wilt at the 12-game mark with a torn knee (he never returned in the regular season) and had its other two top players (Baylor and Happy Hairston) miss 55 games combined. The next four best players on that team? Mel Counts, Dick Garrett, Keith Erickson and Rick Roberson. Even Charles Manson had a better supporting cast than the Logo that year. Somehow the Lakers finished second in the West, then Wilt returned for the playoffs and they rallied to make the Finals. Statistically, this was West’s finest year: he led the league in points, finished fourth in assists and shot 50 percent from the field and 83 percent from the line. From a big-picture standpoint, West carried the Lakers all season and dragged them to within one victory of the title. From an alpha dog standpoint, if you had to pick someone who bridged the gap between Russell’s retirement and Kareem’s ascension, you’d pick West. And beyond that, he’s one of the best eight players ever, as well as the guy they selected for the freaking NBA logo, only he never captured an MVP. So why wasn’t this his year? Because the New York media were too busy losing their minds over an admittedly entertaining Knicks team. This was an eight-month circle jerk that eventually led to something like seventeen books being written about that season.62 A Knick was getting the MVP and that was that. The Logo never had a chance. Just know that the trophy was pilfered from him.
1. Karl Malone, 1997 MVP

This wasn’t an MVP race, it was a crime scene. The previous season, Jordan averaged a 30–7–4 for a 72-win team, finished with 109 first-place votes and would have been the unanimous MVP if not for the four morons who voted for Penny Hardaway, Hakeem and Malone.63 During the ’97 season, Jordan’s credentials “dropped” to 69 wins and a 30–6–4—in other words, he was 98 percent as good as the previous season—only Malone stole the award with a 27–10–5 for a 64-win Jazz team. Here’s the voting from that year:
Malone: 986 (63–48–4–0–0)
Jordan: 957 (52–61–2–0–0)
Look, I was there—this was inexplicable as it was happening. We’ll cover Malone’s inadequacies in a later chapter, but here’s the best analogy I can give you: For my buddy House’s bachelor party in 2008, a group of us trekked to Vegas for four days and landed at the world-renowned Olympic Garden one night. Normally in strip joints, I suggest we find a corner and surround ourselves with those big comfy chairs—I call it the “Chair Armada”—so we aren’t continually approached by below-average strippers trying to pull the “Maybe if I plop right down on his lap, he’ll feel bad for me and buy a lap dance” routine. There wasn’t a corner this time around, so we grabbed a few chairs facing the stage and it worked almost as well. Unable to dive-bomb us from behind, the strippers settled for circling repeatedly and trying to catch our eyes. This strategy could have worked if most of them didn’t look like Hedo Turkoglu. One mediocre Asian with fake cans probably circled us twenty times in two hours—never drawing an extended glance from any of us—before our buddy Monty checked her out on the twenty-first approach, gave up on finding a more appealing option, and said, “F*ck it.” And off they went. When we made fun of him the next morning, he said simply, “It was getting late.”
What does that have to do with Karl Malone? Just like that fake-boobed Asian stripper, the Mail Fraud circled the MVP voters for ten solid years and never finished higher than third. Meanwhile, the NBA was becoming more and more diluted—expansion had ravaged the league, some younger stars (Shawn Kemp, Penny Hardaway, Larry Johnson, C-Webb, Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman) weren’t panning out, and Hakeem, Barkley, Robinson, Drexler and Ewing were past their primes—which meant Utah, a team that was worse in 1997 than they were in 1988 or even 1992, suddenly became a juggernaut in the West.64 There also wasn’t a dominant story in ’97. Everyone was Jordaned out. The “Shaq goes to Hollywood” and “Here comes Iverson” stories had been beaten to death. So had the “Hakeem, Drexler and Barkley are three future Hall of Famers and they’re all playing together” story. Latrell Sprewell hadn’t strangled P. J. Carlesimo yet (although he’d definitely considered it). The Grizzlies, Spurs, Celtics and Nuggets spent the last two months desperately trying to outtank each other for Tim Duncan. By mid-March, once everyone realized that the Bulls couldn’t win 73 games, we were just plain bored and awaiting the playoffs. Then, SI’s Jackie MacMullan wrote the following piece for her March 19 column:
Headline: “The Jazz Master”
    Subhead: “Malone is playing like an MVP—not that anyone has noticed.”
    First sentence: “Jazz forward Karl Malone knows Michael Jordan will win the league MVP trophy again.”
You get the idea. You can’t blame Jackie for looking for a cute angle—she spent about 800 words talking about how underappreciated Malone was over the years. (Which was true, to a degree.) That got the ball rolling, and within a couple of weeks, this became the cute story du jour. Why couldn’t the Mailman win the MVP? I hadn’t started my old website yet but remember thinking, “Why couldn’t he win the MVP? Because MJ is in the league! How ’bout that reason?” I just thought this was the dumbest thing ever. I couldn’t believe it. So the playoffs rolled around and fifty-three voters turned into Monty at the OG: Malone strolled by them for the umpteenth time, they shrugged, stood up and brought him into the VIP room. And that’s how Michael Jordan got robbed of the ’97 MVP. Fortunately for us, he exacted revenge in the Finals over (wait for it) Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz! In Game 1, after Malone missed two go-ahead free throws in the final 20 seconds, Jordan swished the game-winner at the buzzer, turned and did a clenched-fist pump, a move that Tiger Woods later would hijack without paying royalties. And that’s when everyone who voted for the Mailman felt really, really, really dumb. I love when this happens.
1. Or at a Lakers game, where you can hear Kobe bitching out teammates and coaches! That reminds me of the highlight of the ’08 Finals: Matt Damon cheering the Celts in Game 5 when Phil Jackson turned and hissed, “Sit down and shut the f*ck up!” Had they won, I think I would have sacrificed a pinky for Damon to snap into Will Hunting mode and pull the “Hey, Phil, you like apples? … How ’bout them apples?” routine.
2. Another classic example: Olajuwon sounded like Prince Akeem in Coming to America, only if he hung out in downtown Oakland for 10 years.
3. The half-court shot is my lifelong passion. It should only be shot one way—a three-step start, followed by a heave from under your collarbone. After spending 15 years watching fans shoot it like a free throw or whip it like a baseball, I asked the Clips to let me shoot one for an ESPN segment. That morning, they let me practice at the Staples Center and it took 20 minutes to adjust to the glass backboard and the rows of seats behind it (you have to shoot it 2 feet farther than you’d think). By game time, I was ready but had too much adrenaline and banked it off the front of the rim—one inch lower and I would have banked it home. Story of my life. Here’s why I’m telling you this: if you ever get picked, do the three-step heave and aim two feet farther than you think.
4. Let’s hope that’s the first and last time anyone writes that sentence.
5. My favorite Stern story: he held up the 30th pick in the ’08 draft for four full minutes to ream ESPN officials for reporting rumors about Darrell Arthur’s supposedly problematic kidneys, dropped roughly 800 f-bombs, put the fear of God into everyone and then calmly strolled out and announced Boston’s pick. The man has no peer.
6. It’s the Hart Memorial Trophy, named after Dr. David Hart, the father of Cecil Hart (coach and GM of the 1924 Canadiens). Dr. Hart donated the trophy that year to the league, so they named it after him. I’m not making this up.
7. You know it’s a memorable flick when fifteen years later you can remember exactly where you saw it. I saw Shawshank in Braintree and Pulp Fiction at a scummy Loews Theater in Somerville. (Whoops, cue up the porn music.) “Bow-cha-cha bow-bow-bow … thank you for coming to Loews … sit back and relax … enjoy the show!”
8. The only way that title could have been worse was if they called it 500 Yards of Shit-Smelling Foulness or The Prison Rape Redemption.
9. The Cleveland crew: Daniel Gibson, Damon Jones and Eric Snow, whose shooting prowess I described in 2007 by writing, “If my life were at stake and I had to pick any NBA player to miss a 20-footer that he was trying to make, or else I’d be killed, I’d pick Snow and rejoice as he bricked a set shot off the side of the rim.”
10. This is a hypothetical example. As far as you know.
11. Actually, with the way the NBA works now—players from different age groups bonding by coming through the ranks at the same time and, in some cases, knowing each other since AAU ball—it’s not far-fetched to think that there’d be more politicking now. The whole Bron-Melo-CP generation loves each other. Wouldn’t those guys have swung 2008 votes behind Paul? Wouldn’t the older guys have gravitated toward KG?
12. That’s not a lie. I spent as much time working out the kinks for this MVP theory as Jonas Salk did on the polio vaccine.
13. Come on, he was the heart and soul of the Tankapalooza All-Stars in Miami! Do they get Michael Beasley without him?
14. I think this is how the annual Rucker League tournament works in Harlem. I’m not kidding.
15. Do you think they created the verb “wilt” because of Wilt Chamberlain? It’s an honest question.
16. The NBA definitely needed a Barkley charisma injection that season. Look at the elite veterans other than MJ: Malone, Stockton, Ewing, Hakeem, Dumars, Drexler, Mullin, Pippen, Robinson, Brad Daugherty, Mark Price. All nice guys, but would you want to spend the weekend in Vegas with any of them?
17. I keep typing “Chris Paul” because he’s one of those guys whose name has to be said all at once. It’s weird to call him “Chris” or “Paul.” He’s like my friend Nick Aieta in this respect.
18. The same phenomenon happens with parents: they spend so much time with their kids that they begin to think, “There are no other kids like this!” and “He’s so far advanced over every baby his age!” By the way, you should see my daughter run. Fast jets, phenomenal balance. Much better than the other four-year-olds.
19. They didn’t hand it out this year, but Cousy averaged a 21–8–6 and finished second in scoring and first in assists. He was the Imaginary MVP.
20. Kareem was a wash with McAdoo in ’76 and Walton in ’77–’78.
21. Can’t pick between Magic and MJ in ’89–’90. Impossible.
22. I hated the 50-game, strike-shortened season when everyone was out of shape. I refuse to pick an alpha dog. You can’t make me. It’s like choosing between syphilis and anal warts.
23. The case for Wallace: 23 games, 10.3 PPG, 14.3 RPG, 100 combined blocks/steals, excellent D on Shaq in the Final, and a splendid afro.
24. Again, I’m ignoring the ’99 season. I went to most of the Celtics games that year because my dad never wanted to go—the lockout ended too abruptly and three-fourths of the league was out of shape. Awful season. No award should have been given out other than the Eff You Award. Which, by the way, would be an awesome award. “Ladies and gentlemen, our five-time Eff You MVP, Mr. Vince Carter.”
25. Goes to show you where the league was in 1962—it couldn’t even pull some strings to get its most exciting player out of military duty.
26. Kobe settled with the alleged victim for a significant amount of money before the case went to trial. We never heard from her again. You could have a good “Has anyone ever paid more money for one sexual encounter that we know about because of ensuing legal arguments?” argument between Kobe and Michael Jackson.
27. Those numbers stand for first-, second-and third-place votes. Russell’s 51–12–6 means he had 51 firsts, 12 seconds, and 6 thirds.
28. The ’62 Knicks were outraged by his 100-point game against them, specifically how Wilt hogged the ball and the Warriors fouled near the end to get him the ball back. It’s safe to say he didn’t get any of their votes.
29. Here’s how we know this: If Boston called L.A. and proposed a Russell-Elgin trade, L.A. would have initially thought, “Wow, Russell is available?” and maybe even had a meeting. If the Lakers proposed the same trade, Auerbach would have hung up on them.
30. Barnhill was a rookie guard for St. Louis who averaged a 12–5–4 and didn’t make the ’63 All-Star team, but somebody gave him a third-place vote. Inexplicable. His nickname was “Rabbit.” Don’t you miss the days when athletes had animal nicknames?
31. I am not an unbiased observer. Wait until we get to the Pyramid section; I do everything but splooge on Walton’s ’77 Topps card.
32. “Messy” is an understatement: Walton demanded a trade, filed a medical malpractice suit, lost some friendships and signed with the Clips in 1979. This was one of the ugliest sports divorces ever. Right up there with Clemens and McNamee.
33. That was also the year he cut down his afro. Big mistake. That afro made him look six foot ten and added at least a foot to his vertical leap.
34. I have no clue what the scoring system was this season; all they released were final points. For all we know, the players voted right after plowing through a pile of cocaine the size of a Gatorade bucket. I can’t make enough coke jokes about this era.
35. If I ruined the movie, too bad—it’s been out for two years. That reminds me: at a New Year’s Eve party in ’95, my buddy JackO told me that he hadn’t seen The Usual Suspects; I had a few in me and blurted out, “Kevin Spacey is Keyser S?ze.” He’s still pissed 14 years later. And you know what? I don’t care. If you haven’t ruined a movie twist for a friend as a way to bust his balls, you’re missing out in life. I’m telling you. We’ve had probably a hundred hours worth of conversations about me blowing The Usual Suspects for him. Even right now, he’s fuming. This is great.
36. Anytime “he smacked his wife, let’s get him the hell out of here” is the only reason for dealing one of the best top-ten point guards ever, I’m sorry, that’s a shitty reason. By the way, this footnote was written by Ike Turner.
37. This backfired when Kidd dove into the stands for a loose ball, landed on his son and broke his collarbone. Karma is a bitch, isn’t it? No young child should be allowed to sit courtside or in the first few rows of a basketball game. It’s too dangerous and any worthy parent would know that. I never liked Joumana after that. Hold on, I have to get off my high horse.
38. Ironically, Kidd had a career year in ’03 (19–9–6, 41% FG) and finished ninth in the voting because everyone was still mortified by how ’02 turned out.
39. You can still find pieces of Todd MacCulloch’s body sticking to the ceiling of the Staples Center after Shaq ripped him apart like a pit bull.
41. Elgin won Rookie of the Year and finished with a 25–15, yet earned as many first-place votes as Sears and Schayes combined. Huh?
42. Totally underrated sports nickname: “Boo.” When I’m the tsar of sports, I’m going to demand that we always have athletes nicknamed “Boo,” “Goo,” “Night Train,” “Blue Moon,” “Goose,” “Rabbit,” “Cool Papa,” “Turkey” and “Bad News.”
43. The Bullets were weakened before the playoffs when Gus Johnson blew out his knee, but still … an MVP can’t get swept in the first round, right? The Grumpy Old Editor says Bullets coach Gene Shue blew that series with the not-so-brilliant idea of having Unseld bring the ball up like a point guard. The ruining-to-helping ratio over the course of history with NBA coaches has to be 8:1.
44. As a freshman in college, I made the rookie mistake of buying Janine Cunningham a half dozen roses after sucking face with her a few nights before. She left treadmarks running the other way. I could have given her a handful of plutonium and it would have gone better. And she was a cool chick. In fact, I guarantee she loves being referenced in this book. The point is, don’t overreact with women or MVP votes.
45. The real outrage was that Russell didn’t win Coach of the Year. Name me another coach that was also playing 45 minutes a game.
46. In fairness, Mac had a monster series, averaging a 37–13 in a whopping 327 minutes and even interacting with a teammate two different times.
47. Barry defended himself from this rap in a December 1974 SI feature with this eye-popping quote: “We like each other for what we are, not for the color of our skins. I was kidding Charlie Johnson the other day, saying, ‘Don’t tell me about you guys being put down. You had all the great detectives, didn’t you? There was Boston Blackie, Sam Spade, The Shadow …’ It’s a great atmosphere.” Yikes! Cut off his mike! Imagine if somebody said that now. ESPN would have a 12-hour town hall meeting about it. I think Rick Barry made this book 3 percent better. I really do.
48. You couldn’t really call it a “race” because neither guy was at his peak.
49. The complete list: Barry (retired after the ’80 season), Calvin Murphy, Rudy Tomjanovich, Allen Leavell, Billy Paultz, Mike Dunleavy, Tom Henderson, Bill Willoughby. Oof.
50. I made that decision using the same facts, theories, and rules of thumb that govern every other inch of this chapter. If you still think I’m a homer, then allow me to introduce you to my law firm, Buh Low Mee. P.S.: Bird got screwed out of the ’81 Finals MVP as well; Cedric Maxwell won by a 6-to-1 margin in a Duncan/Parker-type situation. Personally, I think people were just excited to vote for someone nicknamed “Cornbread.”
51. The answers: Gilbert Arenas (question 1); Kobe (question 2); either Nash, T-Mac, or LeBron (question 3). As I wrote, “Usually, the most logical MVP candidate owns two of those questions (and ideally, three). Not this season.” Question 4 hadn’t been created yet.
52. It was part protest (for the shitty season) and part parody (because Time magazine had named “You” the 2007 Man of the Year). One of my dumbest ideas ever. It almost caused an Internet riot. I still get emails about it.
53. Nash and the Suns nearly toppled the San Antonio Donaghys in the playoffs. By the way, the MVP debate should have been decided by a Dallas-Phoenix game in mid-March when Nash emerged as the top dog, notching a 32–8–16 and nearly every clutch play in a double-OT victory. I watched the game with House and JackO and we agreed that it was a seminal moment of the 2007 season; Nash just wanted it more than Nowitzki did. You could see it. I still remember House hissing, “So much for the MVP race.” How did Dirk end up winning? I have no idea. The one silver lining: when we learned in 2009 that Dirk was engaged to a thirty-seven-year-old former stripper with eight aliases and outstanding warrants for credit card fraud, I spent a solid week refreshing eBay hoping she put his 2007 MVP trophy on there.
54. That’s not a racial argument. The same process would have happened had he looked like Earl Boykins. People will always gravitate toward an underdog, especially if he has bad hair.
55. My favorite MVP voting fact of 2005: some idiot gave a first-place vote to Amar’e Stoudemire, whose career had been invigorated and reinvented by Nash. That’s like giving your vote for the Nobel Prize in Medicine to Frankenstein’s monster instead of Dr. Frankenstein.
56. The Lakers were shocked by Phoenix in the ’90 playoffs mainly because Kevin Johnson ripped them to shreds. Put it this way: if you were a speedy point guard from 1987 to 1991 and you couldn’t light up the Lakers, you really needed to reevaluate things.
57. The Bucks believed Jones was using drugs, hired PI’s to follow him, placed him on medical suspension for “loss of weight and stamina” and finally fired him. Jones professed his innocence and sued the Bucks for the rest of his owed salary, getting his money when Milwaukee’s “Any time someone loses weight and acts irrationally they’re on drugs” defense held about as much legal weight as the “She was asking for it” defense.
58. I say ’87 was the best modern race. Magic finished first with a remarkable 24–12–6 and finally seized control of L.A. from Kareem. MJ averaged 37 a game, officially became the Next Great Player and finished second. And Bird submitted his finest season ever (28–9–8, 53% FG, 40% 3FG, 90% FT and a superb blondafroperm) and finished a distant third only because everyone was tired of voting for him. When you get career years from the greatest forward and point guard ever, along with a breakout year for the best player ever, that’s a pretty good MVP race.
59. This had to be the greatest first-team All-D ever: Pippen, Hakeem, Rodman, Jordan and Dumars, all in their primes. Wow. Not a bad Best Starting Five of the ’90s if you wanted to kick ass defensively.
60. He also passed question 4: none of the fans from opposing teams would have been outraged by a Kobe pick.
61. His stats: 35.4 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 4.5 APG, 45% FG, 27.2 FGA … and he won 45 games with Smush, Kwame, Brian Cook, and Chris Mihm playing big minutes—or, as Lakers fans called them at the time, the Shit Sandwich.
62. Shades of the ’04 Red Sox here: the event itself was eventually exceeded by the media and fans telling everyone how great it was and desperately trying to put everything in perspective. By the way, I include myself—my Red Sox opus was called Now I Can Die In Peace. Still in bookstores with a third edition!
63. That’s reason number twenty-five why MVP votes need to be made public: if you make a pick that dumb, you should be obligated to defend it. I’m against anonymous incompetence in all forms.
64. I’m springing one of my favorite theories here: the Tipping Point Friend. Every group of female college friends goes between eight and twelve girls deep. Within that group, there might be three or four little cliques and the backstabbing is through the roof, but the girls get along for the most part and make a big deal about hanging out, doing dinners, having special weekends and everything else. Maybe two of them get married early, then the other ones start dropping in their mid-20s until there’s only five left—the cute blonde who can’t get a boyfriend because she’s either a drunk, an anorexic, or a drunkorexic; the cute brunette who only attracts a*sholes; the 185-pounder who’d be cute if she lost weight; the not-so-cute one with a great sense of humor; and the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who isn’t quite cute enough to land anyone but hooks up a lot because of the 36DDs. In this scenario, the cute brunette is the Tipping Point Friend—as long as she’s in the group, guys will approach them in bars, clubs or wherever. Once she settles down with a non-a*shole, now all the pressure is on the drunkorexic and if she can’t handle it, then the girl with 36DDs has to start wearing crazy shirts and blouses to show off her guns. My point is this: the Jazz were the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who hooked up often but never found a serious suitor. By 1997, their competitors had dropped out and they were suddenly the hottest friend in their group. Does that mean they were hot? No!!! No!!!!!!!!! For the love of God, no!!!!!!!!!