Derrick Rose Handed NBA MVP Award? 2011 All-Star Reserves Prove Rose Is Best

The NBA All-Star Game is usually a reward for players who are playing well on teams that are doing well, not necessarily just the best players in the league. You saw this with Tim Duncan making the game over Kevin Love. To summarize, good players on good teams get the nod sometimes over better players on bad teams. 

So let's check it out.

San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili

Boston Celtics: Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen

Miami Heat: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh

And that takes us through all the teams with better records than the Bulls. Let's look at some more just for fun.

Los Angeles Lakers: Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol

Oklahoma City Thunder: Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook

Atlanta Hawks: Joe Johnson, Al Horford

Wait, three teams had multiple All-Stars in the East, but none of them were the team half a game back of the third-best record in the whole league? And two teams with worse records than the Bulls in the West had multiple All-Stars as well?

Well Derrick Rose must be the MVP. 

Thus far into the season, the other MVP contenders are Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant. The Lakers are a game back of the Bulls and the Thunder are three games back. Both of the teams mentioned have multiple All-Stars on the roster. The Hawks are the same and are 3.5 games back.

Ok, so the Heat are half a game up on the Bulls, but how could they have a 3:1 All-Star advantage? LeBron is the two-time defending MVP. Dwyane Wade is a Finals MVP. Yet the coaches still feel the need to put another player on the team for the Heat so that they could be in the running with the Bulls and Celtics. 

The Bulls are merely half a game behind the Heat, and are on pace for 58 wins—surely an elite team in this league. However they only have one All-Star. Not only that, but they have only had their starting frontcourt for merely nine of their 48 games. 

So if the Bulls have been hobbled and still make their way to half a game back from the third-best record in the league with a single All-Star, that All-Star must have been really, really good.

And that is Derrick Rose. The coaches' picks prove that the Bulls only need one superstar to be elite while the Heat need three. The Lakers need two. The Thunder need two. The Celtics need four. 

By being the only All-Star on one of the elite teams of the league, Derrick Rose has solidified himself as the MVP of the NBA.

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