Derrick Rose: Is His MVP Run More Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant?

As Derrick Rose has supposedly been awarded the MVP award already, there's a growing and increasingly hostile kind of clamor to taint Rose as a candidate. One increasingly common thread is to compare him to  Allen Iverson and mention that there stats are "incredibly comparable."

The thing is they actually aren't, except in the most casual of ways, or rather, way.

They are both smaller guards that drive to the rim and have a high usage rate. That's where the similarity ends. In reality, if you  compare the MVP seasons of Rose, Iverson and Kobe Bryant, Rose is far closer to Bryant than Iverson. 

Don't believe me? Look at these per 36 minute stats.

Player	Points	Rebounds	Assists	Steals	Blocks	Turnovers	FG Attempts
Derrick Rose	24.0	4.1	7.6	1.0	0.6	3.3	19.4
Kobe Bryant	26.2	5.8	5.0	1.7	0.5	2.9	19.1
Allen Iverson	26.7	3.3	3.9	2.2	0.2	2.9	21.9

And here are the rates and percentages. 

Player	APER	eFG%	AST%	USG%	ORtg	DRtg	WS/48	WS
Derrick Rose	25.88	.478	39.8	32.5	112	102	0.202	12.9*
Kobe Bryant	25.80	.503	23.9	31.4	115	105	0.208	13.8
Allen Iverson	???	.447	23.0	35.9	106	99	0.190	11.8

For better or for worse, Rose's numbers are closer to Bryant's than Iverson's in points, assists, steals, blocks, field goal attempts, APER (same as PER but it takes actual rather than estimated unassisted field goals), effective field goal percentage, usage percentage, offensive rating, win shares and wins shares per 48.

The difference is the same turnovers and defensive rating. The only area where it's closer to Iverson is rebounds, and even there, his numbers are better. 

So why the insistence on comparing Rose to Iverson? Is it because Bryant is a shooting guard and Iverson was a point guard?

That would make a lot more sense were Iverson a point guard, but I'm sure Eric Snow is wondering what position he played in 2001 with the Philadelphia 76ers since he was the starting point guard. 

You could argue that he played like a point guard, except his assist totals indicats otherwise. In fact, Bryant arguably was more of a point guard in that he played in a triangle offense where he operates as more of a facilitator than most shooting guards.

Truthfully, if you were to determine which two players statistically are closest it would be Iverson and Bryant. They statistically resemble one another than they do Rose, but the five-time NBA champion is closer to Rose than Iverson. 

Is it that Iverson represents the "guard narrative?" That hardly makes sense.

Bryant was no more statistically dominant the year he won MVP than when Iverson won or than Rose is now. And let's bear in mind that Bryant's award had a good bit of narrative assigned to it as well, often described as "career achievement." 

That's not the whole of the narrative though. It was the will to win that Bryant had, the way he shouldered the team and dominated when the game was on the line. 

The 32-year-old's will to win more than made up for the advantage that LeBron James had in PER. 

In fact, when you consider the type of year Rose has had, there are a lot of the narrative things that are downright "Kobe-esque" when you get into it. His sheer will to win, his shouldering the team and taking over in the fourth quarter. 

The Chicago Bulls have outscored their opponents by more points than any other team in the fourth quarter. Throw into that mix that they've been outscored by 13 in the three fourth quarters when Rose didn't play.

It's completely fair to say that in the narrative there are similarities.

The career achievement part of it is obviously a long way off,  but that will to win part of it is there. It can be said that Iverson was similar on those lines too. 

The real reason that Rose is compared to Iverson is that Iverson is seen in a negative light now. He's seen as a me-first player, a selfish player, a player didn't involve his teammates, a player who dominated the ball to the detriment of the team and a player who took excessive shots that cost his team games.

In short, it's a smear campaign. 

If people want to argue stats, they should do that. If they want to argue win shares, they shouldn't stop half way. They should go all the way and argue that Kevin Love is the MVP.

But why stop there?

If you're going to stick to win shares as the true value of a player, argue for the "proof" that Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph, Al Horford, Blake Griffiin and Joakim Noah are all better players than LeBron James. 

If people want to argue PER, then why not argue APER? It's Hollinger's own improvement on the stat, in that it accounts for actual, rather than estimated unassisted field goals.

Could it have something to do with the fact that when you do argue for APER, Rose is only 6th instead of 13th? 

If you're going to argue about how much "worse" the Bulls defense is while Rose is "off the court," why not go all the way with on/off stats and argue for Paul Pierce, who leads the NBA in that category as the MVP?

If you're going to accept advanced stats that work against Rose, why not the ones work for him? Why not point to the fact that his teammates' field goal percentage is 6.5 percent higher when he's on the court as when he's off it? 

If arguing about the team's "barely above average" offense, why not point to the fact that in isolation offensive sets, they are first in the NBA. Similarly, in pick-and-roll situations, the Bulls are seventh when the ball handler takes the  shot and 26th when the "roll" does.

In any set that doesn't depend on the point guard, the Bulls are in the low to mid 20s in the NBA rankings. 

So why not present this information? Could it have anything to do with the fact that it would show that the reason the Bulls are "barely above average" and not decidedly below average is Derrick Rose?

And frankly, isn't 45 percent of barely above average more "valuable" than 30 percent of a lot? If what remains is less, doesn't that make it more valuable?

This notion that the Bulls "win with defense" is sophistry.

Yes, they win, and yes, they have great defense. Guess who had the best defense in the NBA last year. Did you guess the Charlotte Bobcats? They were 44-38 because they had a below average offense. 

The Chicago Bulls lead the NBA in margin of victory. They don't just do that because they keep their opponents from scoring. They aren't pitching shutouts. They score too, and 45 percent of their scoring depends on Rose. 

Furthermore, if you're going to argue about the Bulls great defense, stop dismissing Rose's role in it. Stop pretending that guarding Chris Paul for 38 minutes is equal to guarding Jarrett Jack for 10. 

If you're going to accept advanced stats, accept them all. Why persist in ignoring what is the single best defensive stat available, where someone actually watches every single NBA play and categorizes it?

People who make that argument, make an informed opinion about who gets credit for every stop or dinged for every score. 

And in making those observations, those same people categorize the type of play, and then they document it.

If you wonder if it's right, then you can actually watch the play.It cannot possibly be any more specific. According to that measure, the single most accurate measure available, Rose is the best defensive point guard in the NBA.  

And if you don't believe that, look at the point guards he's been dominating for the last few months: Deron Williams twice, Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo and Tony Parker.

He's been shutting them all down and gave Williams the worst night of his career. 

If you want to argue the stats, argue them, don't cherry pick them. 

It's this whole, go half way but not all the way; talk out of one side the mouth here and the other side there that makes it seem more and more like a smear campaign. 

The worst part of the smear campaign is to smear the value of "narrative."

This might come as a shock to some, but narrative actually has value. You can go on ebay right now and people will be buying and selling things like hats and gloves, jerseys and jackets for literally thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars. 

Someone bought a baseball for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Why? Narrative. It's who wore it, who signed it, or who it it out of a park that give it value. In other words, people are paying for narrative. 

Stop dismissing the narrative value of Rose. It has value on the court too. Call it an opinion, but based on Dwight Howard's free throw shooting and LeBron James's closing "exploits" this season, I don't think it's too far fetched that the Bulls belief in Rose in the closing minutes outweighs either of those two.  

Perhaps in that regard, even Bryant doesn't surpass Rose any more though for different reasons. His team believes in him just as much but they are more confident in what they can do without him.

There's  nothing wrong with arguing for Howard or James, but the likes of John Hollinger, Colin Cowherd and Neil Pane have just gone too far in even actually arguing for anyone, but just in generally attacking Rose.

Comparing him with Iverson solely to taint the narrative, is malicious, ugly and personal.

If that's not the intent, then just answer the question, why not compare him to Kobe Bryant?