LeBron James vs. Derrick Rose: Who Is the NBA MVP?

LeBron James or Derrick Rose? Who is the most deserving of the NBA's MVP award? There is a case that could be made for about five different players right now, but the conversation seems to be down to these two players.

So, the question remains, who is the league's MVP?

There are two schools of thought when it comes down to the NBA's Most Valuable Player award.

There are those that take the words literally and say it should go to the player who is most valuable to their team, saying if Player X were injured, how well would the team be doing?

Then there are the minimalists who decide that the MVP should go to the best player in the league, with no frills attached to the definition.

So, here I would like to look at both definitions of the award from the perspective of each player.

Most "Valuable" Player

LeBron James

When looking at the value that LeBron James brings to the Miami Heat, you must take everything into account to give the whole spectrum of this argument.

And when you look at it this way, there just seems to be no way that LeBron James can win.

LeBron James has the unfortunate task of playing with Dwyane Wade, another top five player in the NBA and Chris Bosh, at least a top 30 player (so very sad, I know).

So if you were to remove LeBron James from the Heat this season, chances are the team wouldn't suffer too much.

The top five rotations for the Heat feature both James and Wade, the top rotation without the dynamic duo is with Wade as the featured scorer, not LeBron. So from that, you could argue that Wade, alongside Bosh, could hold down just fine without LeBron. Sure, the team would have fewer wins, but it probably wouldn't be that much fewer.

This is just a ballpark number (a.k.a. a random guess), but I would put the Heat at no fewer than 38 wins at this point without LeBron, a loss of eight wins.

Derrick Rose

Rose has been the most important part of the Chicago Bulls this season; there is no question about that.

For a team that has dealt with as many injuries as Chicago, with Joakim Noah going down for nearly a month and Carlos Boozer missing the first third of the season, if they were to not have him on this team, they would be in serious trouble.

Consider this for a second if you would. While he is on the floor, Rose has an assist on 40 percent of the plays run by the Bulls. On top of that, he scores 25 points a game.

So, when taking his assist numbers into account (eight a game), Rose is involved in anywhere between 41 and 49 points a game, around half of the Bulls points.

If the Bulls were to lose Rose for some unforeseen reason, they would be forced to run C.J. Watson with their first team. Watson is a good defender and a decent point guard, but he would never threaten to score 30 night in and night out, and he would never average eight assists for this Bulls team.

At best, Watson would be a 14-6 guy with some good defense thrown in (although he did score 40 a year ago against the Kings with Golden State).

If the Bulls lost Rose, they probably wouldn't have more that 33 wins, and that would be giving them some credit.

Rose wins this category by a stride.

Best Basketball Player

LeBron James

This is my favorite definition of the award. It is what we all want to know, not some crazy thought where we want to try and estimate how many wins a team would have without a certain player. There is an actual way to figure out who is the best basketball player in the league.

One the surface, with the classic points, rebounds and assists approach, LeBron is magnificent as usual, with a 26-7.5-7. Then there is his shooting percentages, which are 49 percent from the floor, 33 percent from downtown and 76 percent from the line.

If we want to dig deeper, LeBron's true shooting percentage is 58 percent and his win share number (a bizarre calculation that tires to tell how many wins each player contributes which I don't truthfully understand completely or put too much faith in, but will still use) is 12.3, third in the league.

Beyond that, James is a stellar defender, a clutch shooter (even if he has come up short in the final seconds in the past month) and just a complete monster on the court.

Finally, John Hollinger's all-knowing and all-powerful Player Efficiency Rating (PER) is 26.6, the best in the league.

I say all of this, and I am a Cavs fan, so I'd say if anything I am underselling him.

Derrick Rose

Rose has really come into his own this season, but does that mean he is the best basketball player in the NBA?

He is averaging 25 points, eight assists and four rebounds to go along with 44 percent field goal shooting, 34 percent from downtown and 85 percent from the charity stripe.

His true shooting percentage is 54 percent, he has contributed a calculated 10 wins this season and his PER is 23.0.

Beyond that, he is also a good defender, the unquestioned leader of the best team in the Eastern Conference and the reason the Bulls are this good with as many injuries that they have had, and that is something that you can't put a number on.

So in this category, I would conclude that LeBron wins by a stride. Unfortunately for Rose, LeBron is 6-8 while he is 6-3, so that stride that he won by in the "value" category is slightly shorter than LeBron's here.

My MVP vote, which the NBA has refused to give to me yet again this season, has to go to LeBron James.