Tower of Power: Breaking Down the NBA MVP Race

(Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

One of the best things about the NBA is its MVP award and its permanence. Most people couldn’t tell you who the NFL MVP is more than two years after it’s been issued, and MLB’s significance is mitigated by there being an award for each league.

But the NBA’s is always hotly contested and possess additional merit; since the award was first handed out, every single NBA MVP is in the basketball Hall of Fame, the only sport with such a distinction.

The other thing that makes the award so fascinating is that there is no clear cut criteria for who ought to win, and different players have won for vastly different reasons. Thus, in order to break down who I believe should win the award, I’ve devised my own four rule criterion:

If you take the player off the team and replace them with an average player, how would the team perform?  The award is Most Valuable, not Most Outstanding and this is the best test possible.

The closer to playoff time, the more important the stats. It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Unless the player’s team is the dominant team of the season, March and April games matter the most because of playoff races and positioning

Do they make the players around them better?

The player must be the best player on their own team. Often forgotten. If you aren’t the best player on your own team, there’s no way you are the most valuable player in the league.

One more thing, I don’t believe in creating arbitrary lists of contenders. So as an alternative, I’ve devised the “Tower of Power,” in which the contenders are ranked in different stratums. Not all MVP candidates are equal, and there is always a hierarchy.

2009 was one of the best races in recent memory, one in which a few performances could have won the award and several others would have been play in a different season. As such, I found 13 players that I felt bore mentioning in the discussion.

So without further ado…

Tier V: The Red Herrings (Otherwise known as “honorable mention”)

13. Chauncey Billups

Trendy consideration pick because of age old classic “the team played a lot better because he got there” defense. Which, and as Allen Iverson’s biggest fan outside of his immediate family it pains me to say this, is true. But Denver only got five more wins than last year and while that’s all well and good, they wound up as the No. 2 seed because the conference as a whole (apart from the Lakers obviously) took a dramatic step down.

He also gets a lot of consideration for Denver’s transformation from a soft, run and gun team into a gritty, defensive squad and this too is overblown.

No question that his steady presence is a big upgrade over Iverson’s free lancing into the passing lanes, but the Nuggets also made an under-the-radar acquisition getting hustle guy Renaldo Balkman, enjoyed the return of Chris Andersen (6.5 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 2.4 bpg in 20.5 mpg) and finally got a full season of health from Nene; that’s a third of a rotation right there.

So was Billups good? Absolutely. But there were much bigger factors at work, and that’s not even getting into the fact that he’s the second best player on his own team (Carmelo being the obvious first) and his numbers (17.7ppg/6.4apg) are nowhere near MVP worthy. Still, Denver’s very good and ironically enough, one Marcus Camby away from being a serious threat to the Lakers.

12. Tim Duncan

The era of him being among the elite players in the league has officially ended.

Want proof? In March, he averaged 16.5/7.5/1.4 on 45 percent shooting in 30.6 mpg. In April, it became 15.3/11.3/0.9 on 48 percent in 28.6 mpg. His career averages are 21.4/11.7/2.4 on 50 percent in 36.9 mpg.

And this isn’t a case of San Antonio resting him for a playoff stretch. Last week against Portland, in a game they HAD to win at home, he could only go for 24 minutes and put up four points and five boards on 2-for-8 shooting.

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