Top Five Most Annoying MVP Criteria

5. Scoring- This is not just annoying as a criterion for MVP voting. Scoring is vastly overrated as a general method of judging players. More important than scoring is efficiency. Efficiency means getting the most output (points) out of the least input (possessions), and defensively, allowing the fewest points per possession. Successful teams are efficient in their offense and force their opponents to be inefficienct defensively. Successful players help their teams to be efficient on offense and prevent opponents from being efficient on defense.

Efficient players shoot a high field goal percentage, shoot a lot of free throws, especially at a high percentage(1), help teammates get high percentage shots, and maximize the number of possesssions (rebound well for their position, don't commit turnovers), and force the opposing team to take low percentage shots and turn the ball over.

Example: What's more valuable, 28.7 points on 19.2 field goal attempts, or 31.1 points on 25.5 attempts?(2) That's 2.5 more points with 6.3 more attempts. Well, in 2001, Allen Iverson and his 31.1 points on 42% shooting, high turnovers, overdribbling, and lack of synergy with teammates got 93 first-place votes compared to 7 votes for 28.7 points on 57% shooting Shaq, who rebounded well for his position, and made Derek Fisher look like an NBA caliber point guard, and convinced people that Kobe was a young Jordan.

Wait, what am I talking about? Iverson led the league in scoring! He's the MVP!

4. Team success- An MVP candidate's team's win/loss record is one of the biggest factors in MVP voting. It's probably the number two thing voters consider after the player's statistics. Unfortunately for the validity of this criterion, there are factors besides a player's greatness that affect his team's win/loss record. I feel like the point of an MVP award is to factor out those other things, and consider strictly the merits of a specific player.

I would have ranked this higher, but it's not terrible as a tiebreaker or x-factor that could push one candidate past an otherwise similarly deserving player. Also, as annoying as the reasoning behind it is (Premise 1. Player A's team won more games than Player B's. Premise 2. The better player's team wins more games. Conclusion: Player A is better), it's usually at least a little true.

Example: Are averages of 24.6 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 3.4 assists MVP-worthy? Hell no, you say? Well, what if I told you that his team won 67 games? Ladies and gentlemen, the second worst MVP in at least 30 years, Dirk Nowitzki.

3. Lifetime Achievement Award- This one's pretty self-explanatory. It should be noted that in the same way that veterans have a foot in the door, younger players are not given enough consideration (see Paul, Chris 2007-8).

Examples: Karl Malone 1997 (over Jordan!) and 1999. If you could go in a time machine and tell the 1997 voters that Malone would win the award in 1999, do you think they still would have voted him over Jordan? Me, neither. Also, Julius Erving 1981 (over Bird and Abul-Jabbar), and Kobe Bryant 2008 (you know this was decided in February, right?)

2. Foundational players vs. X-factors- Foundational players lay the foundation for team success. They do the things that are taken for granted: play efficiently, make teammates better, protect the rim or control the tempo, depending on their postion and role, of course. Those kinds of things. X-factors are players who can swing a game one way or the other, but really they need more effective teammates to put them in a position to win.

Without its foundational player, a team collapses. This is why they're more valuable than X-factors. If you take Barbosa off the Suns, the offense loses a little of its firepower. If you take Nash off the Suns, even with Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Raja Bell, Leandro Barbosa et al., the offense falls apart.

People realize this with Nash and the Suns, in part because he's a point guard, and because the offense is so Nash-centric, but they often don't in other cases. People were calling Daniel Gibson the player of the game over Lebron in last years Eastern Conference Finals Game 6 with his 31-6-2 performance over Lebron's 20-14-8 (and a lot of hockey assists). Here's the problem with that: two days earlier, Lebron had his 48-points-including-the-last-25-for-the-Cavs game, and the Pistons decided they would allow any result besides Lebron going off again, even if it meant Gibson went berserk. Take Lebron off the team and and Boobie wouldn't get an open shot.

Or take the next round, the NBA Finals. Tony Parker, a point guard who doesn't set up his teammates or really make things easier for them, but who is nonetheless a co-anchor of the offense, wins the Finals MVP over the team's offensive co-anchor, who makes teammates better, and is also the defensive anchor.(3) Take Parker off the Spurs and they struggle. Take Duncan off the Spurs and they crumble. Which one is "Most Valuable?"

1. The Compensation Vote: MVP voters are instructed to vote for the number-one choice, a number-two choice, and a number-three choice. But they often don't. They vote for a player who simply and obviously does not belong in the top three because they want to make sure that a certain player gets some recognition.

Take last year. Carmelo Anthony, Baron Davis, and Tony Parker each got a third place vote. Amare got two, and Dwyane Wade and Shaq each got three points. Chauncey Billups got four. You can see the rest of the voting here. As good as they guys were, you'll never convince me that any of them, or a few others as well, deserve to be in the top three.

It's going to happen again this year, too. Voters are going to turn in their ballots and say with a straight face, "I believe that Turkoglu/Gasol/Bosh deserves a top-three vote over some combination of Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, or Lebron James. Not that those guys have been bad. I just don't think they have been on the same level as Turkoglu/Gasol/Bosh." They don't really think this. At least I hope not. More likely, they don't think the gap between the Turkoglus and the Ginobilis is as wide as the voting gap will surely show, so they skew the voting by turning their votes into honorable mentions.

Here's a litmus test that any candidate should have to pass: Can I picture David Stern saying into a microphone, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm proud to present the award for the 2007-2008 National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player to (insert player) of the (insert team)." No offense to the Elton Brands and Chauncey Billupses of the NBA, but there are only a handful of players each year who can legitimitely be considered top-three candidates, so stop skewing the voting.

More importantly, stop annoying me.



(1) Even a relatively low percentage is efficient in the grand scheme of things. A 60% free throw shooter going to the line for two is like a 60% field goal shooter taking a shot, i.e. it's good.
(2) Obviously, there are a lot more factors that go should go into determining the MVP, but these facts alone should settle it between the two mentioned.
(3) The same thing nearly happened in 2005, but with Manure Ginobili instead of Parker.