After Finishing 3rd for MVP, LeBron James Faces Hurdles in Quest for 5th Award
The best player on the planet.
Those six words have been used to identify LeBron James so frequently over the past several years, by NBA players, coaches and media, that if you put them on a postcard, without anything else in the address line, the correspondence would likely arrive at his Akron-area estate.
And yet, he won't need to make room there for another MVP trophy.
This one is going to California, to Stephen Curry, after last season's headed to Oklahoma, to Kevin Durant. This follows James' run of four MVP awards in five seasons, a run interrupted only by a third-place finish behind Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard in 2011.
This time, he finished third behind Curry and James Harden, with five first-place votes (his fewest since getting one in 2007-08), 12 second-place votes, 62 third-place votes, 32 fourth-place votes and 12 fifth-place votes. He was left off seven ballots. (For the record, I voted him third as well, with the same order of Curry, Harden, James, Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis in which the candidates finished.)
Following Monday's shootaround in preparation for Game 1 of the second round, reporters asked James whether he was disappointed.
"Disappointed?" James repeated, smiling. "No...not disappointed. When I saw that yesterday, if I was on social media and my phones were on, I would have definitely congratulated him a lot. I think it's well deserved.
"I mean, you see, first of all, the team success. That's the first thing that pops out. The franchise record for wins. [The] franchise record for home wins, I think, they even broke at 39-2. And he's the catalyst of that whole ship. He's had an unbelievable season. It's very well deserved. And it's always great that another kid born in Akron, Ohio, can win an MVP, too. So I like that."
Nor did it take him, or anyone, by surprise.
Basketball-Reference.com's MVP tracker, which is based on a model using previous voting results, projected James to finish sixth, with just a 4.7 percent chance of winning. That model couldn't even account for another variable: that James, unlike his peers, is always measured against his previous achievements prior to being measured against the most recent ones of others. And this season, he played his fewest games (69) of any non-lockout season, shot his lowest percentage (.488) since 2007-08 and committed the most turnovers per game (3.9) while playing the fewest minutes (36.1) of his career.
With those factors, placing behind the leading men of the two top teams in the West is entirely explainable. Nor does it diminish what he did accomplish in Cleveland this season, doing no less than transforming an organization.
Still, in the context of James' career, the vote does raise a couple of questions.
If James didn't win this season, when he started the season with several circumstances in his favor, when will he win another, if he ever does? And does he still have a chance to win two more and catch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the all-time record of six trophies?
While it would be shortsighted to rule that out just because James came a bit short of ruling the NBA's most recent regular season, he's clearly facing some headwinds in that chase.
Start with age.
James is still extraordinarily spry and has the intellect and diversity to age gracefully.
Even so, history isn't especially encouraging.
He turned 30 this season and will start next season at nearly 31. Curry just turned 27 in March, making him the 47th winner, in the 60 years of the award, who was still in his 20s. Abdul-Jabbar turned 30 just five days after the 1976-77 season ended, a season for which he won his fifth of six MVPs. Then, three years later, he won his sixth, making him one of only nine men who have won in their 30s. Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Steve Nash and Wilt Chamberlain did it twice, while Magic Johnson, Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon and Bill Russell also did it once. Eight of those nine are in the Hall of Fame, and the now-retired Nash—while not widely deemed quite the caliber of the others—will likely join them soon.
James belongs in that company, so it's not like he's incapable. Still, consider that the likes of Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Moses Malone and Oscar Robertson, all winners in their 20s, did not accomplish it.
Then start to consider what voters do.
Voters typically like win jumps.
The Cavaliers were assured of making an enormous leap as soon as James signed last offseason, and they did, from 33 to 53 victories, a much greater improvement than the Heat—a more stable organization—made after James arrived in 2010, as their total increased from 47 to 58. James didn't win that season, largely because Rose's Bulls won 62, and even though James led the league in win shares as well as win shares per 48 minutes.
Cleveland, like Miami in 2010-11, finished second in the East, even further behind the leaders—in this case, Atlanta. But the Hawks didn't have a candidate. Instead, James was beaten in the voting by two players in the West. That's one of the other factors working against James—he's in the weaker conference, so he may lose ties to those with similar accomplishments in the West.
But even if the East greatly improves, and even if the Cavaliers progress enough to take the top seed, there's no way they make another season-over-season jump of 20 games, not unless James misses most of one season due to injury and then returns to full health in the next. And what if Kyrie Irving, just 23, continues to get better? It's likely he will get more of the credit.
That can be overcome. After all, James won in 2011-12 and 2012-13 while playing with Dwyane Wade, and Kevin Durant won last season while playing with Westbrook. But Wade missed 30 games in those two seasons, and Westbrook missed 36 last season. There's little that voters like more than a superstar soaring while his sidekick's absence would seem to have left him in the lurch.
So, unless Irving is injured, he may help pad James' win total but cut into his vote total.
Then there's the tendency toward voter impatience and the itch to anoint the next "it" guy. That helped Rose in 2010-11, and certainly it helped Curry this season, though it's hard to quarrel with the latter's candidacy, not only as the best player on by far the best team (most wins by any team since the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks). Curry posted exceptional traditional and advanced statistics, tops in the NBA in win shares per 48 minutes, ahead of Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Harden and Westbrook (with James 12th), and tops in VORP (value over replacement player), ahead of Harden, Westbrook, Paul, James and Davis.
He's undoubtedly deserving.
And maybe Davis, who led the league in player-efficiency rating and just turned 22, will be equally deserving when he becomes a made man by the media, winning his first MVP. But there's no question that day is coming soon, with Kawhi Leonard and John Wall among the others currently gaining steam, and Harden and Westbrook (especially if Durant leaves in 2016) likely to remain viable options, especially for those who felt they should have won this time.
So what's in James' favor?
His pride, for starters. He still believes he's the game's best—note how, for all his praise of Curry, throughout the season and after the announcement of the award, he didn't concede the race this season in the same way he did for Rose and Durant, concessions that probably made it easier for voters to go that direction. He's not likely to slip much from his current levels, at least not in the next couple of years, especially now that he's re-established a comfort level in Cleveland.
James will need to show more consistent engagement on defense than he has the past three seasons. He'll also need to get back to something closer to his usual game load, something closer to 76; voters docked him for the 13 games he missed, rather than boosting him because the Cavaliers lost 10 of those without him.
His minutes may not matter as much. Curry averaged only 32.7 minutes, the lowest for any MVP winner in history. So James can sit out some fourth quarters if the Cavaliers are comfortably ahead. He just needs to be a bit more dominant, on both ends, before he does.
What might help him win the award again, maybe as soon as next season?
That he's lost the last two.
For him and no other active player, that qualifies as a while. Jordan won five but likely would have won a couple more if voters hadn't become a bit bored by his greatness, seeking excuses to celebrate someone else. Now that a couple of younger elites have had their turn, James may appear a fresher choice than in previous years.
No, it wouldn't be a lifetime achievement award. More like a return to normalcy, with the consensus best player on the planet receiving an award that would seem the logical accompaniment.
Ethan Skolnick covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @EthanJSkolnick.
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