Which NBA Star Has Best Chance at Entering 2014-15 MVP Conversation?
For the past three seasons, the NBA's MVP award has been a two-horse race.
Combined, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have received 355 of the 367 available first-place votes over that stretch of time—96.7 percent. Durant won last season's award, with LeBron being recognized the two seasons before that.
Their dominance in the top two spots has been thorough. However you rank them, LeBron and Durant are still the consensus two best players in the league, and there is no reason to think they'll be loosening their collective stranglehold on the award this season.
The MVP is a funny thing. Research I did at the end of the 2012-2013 season showed that only about 51 percent of MVP voting can be explained by the players' statistical profiles. The other 49 percent is driven by which player has the most compelling story.
Although it is hard to imagine anyone approaching the statistical dominance of LeBron and Durant, the race for most compelling narrative is wide-open. All a serious contender needs to insert himself into the MVP race this season is a statistical profile that puts them in the discussion. From there, they simply need to have a better story than the Big Two.
To try to get an idea of who could legitimately challenge LeBron and Durant, I've combined the objective and subjective. I used this logistical regression model, from Brian Browning, on last year's statistics to get a sense of which players should have the statistical credentials to put themselves in the discussion this year.
The model looks at how many games a player played, their team's win percentage and their basic per-game statistics: points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. From there I sifted through the candidates in search of players who might be able to outdo LeBron and Durant in the story department.
If someone is going to rip the MVP away from LeBron and Durant this season, it will likely be one of these players.
Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, Los Angeles Clippers
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It's rare to find multiple MVP candidates from the same team. A pair of stars may drive a team's success, but usually one of the two is subconsciously awarded the lion's share of the credit.
Statistically speaking, both Paul and Griffin were legitimate candidates last season. According to the logistical regression model, their likelihood of winning MVP finished third and fourth, behind only LeBron and Durant.
It's tough to imagine either player dramatically improving their per-game numbers next season, so if either is going to wriggle their way to the top, it will require some improvement on the team level.
The Los Angeles Clippers won 57 games last season and finished third in a loaded Western Conference. If they were able to surpass their win total from last season, firmly establishing themselves as the team to beat in the West, it would draw a lot of attention to the performance of both players.
Both players already have an MVP-worthy profile. Carrying this franchise to new heights and rising above the field in the Western Conference could be exactly the kind of narrative that pushes one of these two teammates to the top.
Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors
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If there is a player who can come close to matching LeBron and Durant in both offensive efficiency and beautiful basketball aesthetics, it's Stephen Curry. There is a psychological certainty to watching Curry take a jump shot, one that can be found almost nowhere else in basketball.
According to the logistical regression model, Curry's per-game statistics last season—24.0 points, 8.5 assists, 4.3 rebounds—placed him in a tightly-packed group just outside the top four. That group—Curry, James Harden and LaMarcus Aldridge—all followed the same formula: great offensive players on good Western Conference teams.
The Golden State Warriors are bringing back essentially the same team as last season. For Curry to really make a jump in the MVP conversation will require one of two possibilities. The first is that the Warriors, as a group, make a leap, pushing themselves towards the top of the Western Conference. The second, infinitely more fun possibility is that Curry pushes his individual offensive brilliance to a new level.
Last season, LeBron and Durant had two of the most efficient offensive seasons of all time by high-usage scorers. If Curry were to push himself into that territory, increasing his offensive load without wearing down his incredible efficiency, he might be able to catapult himself into the discussion.
MVP voters like team narratives, but they also like those of individual brilliance. Curry seems uniquely suited to make a point on the latter.
James Harden, Houston Rockets
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James Harden has firmly established himself as one of the most dangerous offensive players in the league. On the back of those huge numbers, the logistical regression model pegged Harden as the fifth-most likely MVP candidate last season.
As big as his offensive reputation is, Harden's stature around the league has fallen as his defense continues to be laughably inept and his struggles in big moments continue to mount. Every viral GIF of him standing still, staring at empty space while his man backcuts for a dunk chips away at the legitimacy of any claim he might make to being the best player in the league.
Next season, Harden will score boatloads of points for the Houston Rockets, and at rates of efficiency that will be the envy of almost every wing in the league. His MVP chances rest on the ability to supplant that offense with passable defense and channel those points into a meaningful narrative.
Like several of the players we mentioned before, Harden plays in the Western Conference, which offers a built-in slate of enormous foes. Helping drive the Rockets to the top of the West would cement his place at the top of the pyramid and prove that he's more than a conjurer of empty points.
LaMarcus Aldridge, Portland Trail Blazers
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LaMarcus Aldridge's story is very similar to that of Curry and Harden. However, he has a big advantage—putting himself into the MVP conversation in what was actually a down year for him shooting the ball.
Aldridge's per-game numbers—23.2 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.6 assists—all tied or surpassed career highs. However, he did it on a career-low 45.8 field-goal percentage. Aldridge shouldered a larger role in the Portland Trail Blazers offense than he ever had before, and some decline in shooting percentage is to be expected with the expansion of his responsibilities.
His poor shooting created a narrative about his inefficient devotion to the long two-pointer and led to a perception, in some places, that Aldridge was actually a drag on the Trail Blazers offense, despite his impressive production.
Holding everything else equal, if Aldridge had shot his career average from the field last season, he would have averaged an extra point per game and likely defused the narrative about his inefficiency in an otherwise high-functioning offense.
If he can do that this season, keep his averages up while shooting the ball a little bit better, and the Trail Blazers stay toward the top of the Western Conference, Aldridge could find himself much closer to the top of the MVP voting.
Joakim Noah, Chicago Bulls
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Joakim Noah led the Chicago Bulls to a surprisingly strong finish last season. In doing so, he worked his way up to a fourth-place finish in the MVP voting.
Noah is an example of a player whose case was helped dramatically by narrative. His per-game stats—12.6 points, 11.3 rebounds, 5.4 assists—cause the logistical regression model to rank him has as just the 18th-most likely MVP winner. The Bulls' success last season begged credulity, and Noah was right in the middle of it, inflating the perception of his value well beyond his bare numbers.
With the addition of Pau Gasol, a (theoretically) healthy Derrick Rose and some added shooting on the wings, the Bulls look to be a much improved team this season. Both Gasol and Rose are themselves MVP candidates, but Noah's production seems like the surest bet out of the three.
Winning 60 games—which seems entirely plausible for the Bulls in the Eastern Conference this season—paired with the same statistical profile would have the model ranking Noah as the eighth-most likely MVP winner—right around Stephen Curry, James Harden and LaMarcus Aldridge.
All of those Western Conference stars will likely have more impressive statistical resumes, but Noah is the screaming, frothing, chest-pounding center of the Chicago Bulls. If his team is in the conversation as the league's best, his intangibles may be enough to close the gap on LeBron and Durant in the MVP race.
John Wall, Washington Wizards
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Wall may seem like the longest of long shots, given that he's never received a single MVP vote in his four-year NBA career. This season Wall may have both the statistics and the narrative breaking in his favor.
Last season, the statistical model projected Wall as the 14th-most likely MVP candidate, just behind Damian Lillard and just ahead of Kyle Lowry. The biggest shortcoming in his statistical profile was the low winning percentage of his team—just .537 for the Washington Wizards last season.
After a strong postseason performance, the Wizards are a team that looks to be on an upward trajectory. Even if Wall averaged the exact same statistical line as he did last season, doing it on a team that won 55 games would have moved Wall up to the eighth-most likely MVP candidate, jumping ahead of players like Paul George and Kevin Love.
That kind of team improvement could also be the kind of story that captures voters' imaginations—a young team building a new legacy of dominance for themselves, a young leader remaking himself into a star that can't be ignored.
