2014-15 Regular Season MVP

[Mike G]

Mike G exaggerates things again

I think of it as extrapolation. Reductio ad absurdum.
It wouldn't bother me in the least to see Curry win MVP, even if it's seen as a disincentive to play more minutes. If your team is better by keeping your minutes short, you should be happy to take fewer minutes.

The flip side is that a coach and mvp candidate may think that better per-game averages are conducive to gaining MVP votes. And that isn't necessarily good for the team, or for the game. I doubt that either McHale or Harden is so motivated; but that the team really did need him to do all that he did. And getting the #2 seed is very nearly as good as #1, whether by one game or 11.

Curry is cute, Harden is not; so I suppose Steph will take it.

[permaximum]

And getting the #2 seed is very nearly as good as #1, whether by one game or 11.

Curry is cute, Harden is not; so I suppose Steph will take it.

We are trying to value players' impact on the game, not the team's playoff seed. I strongly disagree that cuteness has any considerable effect on the voting outcome.

[Dr Positivity]

I think Curry was a better per minute player than Harden or Paul, but it's a tough call because of the dueling ideas of

- A lot of the minutes Curry lost out on in comparison to Harden and CP3 (Harden +14% minutes, CP +9%), were victory lap/garbage time minutes, so if Curry played it wouldn't have affected GSW's W/L. Somewhat similar to Bill Walton's year where the last 25 games of Portland's season weren't going to affect their regular season seeding anyways since they were so far ahead, so did Walton really contribute less to his team's #1 overall ranking than MVPs in other years?

- But even if we say Curry wasn't any less valuable for missing those minutes, it can still be possible to give credit to Harden and Paul for the amount their teams depended on them to win those toss-up games. More of a what Harden and Paul did minutes/contribution wise, than what Curry didn't do, in terms of minutes.

I would vote Curry

(I don't mean to say the race should only be between Curry, Harden and Paul, but some of the other players I'd have normally put in the mix like Lebron, Davis, Butler, Westbrook were under 70 games, so it's hard for me to build a case for them when Curry, Harden and Paul were 80+, as if a player like Davis was better than Steph and Harden, it was hardly by much, at least it would appear)

[Mike G]

I saw Jason Collins discussing it, and he went for Curry because:
- He plays better defense than Harden.
- He makes his teammates better.

I don't watch them enough to know, so I'll defer to others' opinions on their D.
"Making teammates better" is probably one of the most loosely defined descriptions out there. Does Harden make his teammates worse? Makes no difference?

[permaximum]

Curry's MVP was one of the most obvious ones in the context of what qualities made MVPs in the history which I described in an above post.