This year’s NBA Most Valuable Player race will be one of the more tightly contested ones in recent memory. With just about a month left in the regular season, there are four legitimate contenders: Stephen Curry, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and LeBron James. Each of them has been instrumental in their team’s success, and each has been absolutely dominant this season. There will certainly be intense discussions amongst the voters, and one of the mechanisms that will be used is statistics. However, team circumstances often dictate player statistics in the NBA. With that in mind, the question must be asked: should stats matter in the MVP race?
In short, the answer is yes. One argument against this position is what I referenced earlier, where some team situations dictate player statistics. For example, the Golden State Warriors have been so dominant this season that Stephen Curry often sits for large portions of the game. The Warriors have won so many games by double digits that he often does not play in the fourth quarter, or at the very least plays only a couple of minutes. This means his raw points, assists, rebounds, and other stats will all be lower than they would be if the games were closer. While this is entirely true, the recent analytics boom has rendered this argument invalid.
If you asked this question ten, or even five years ago, there would be legitimate gripes with the MVP process. The Warriors would be faced with a difficult decision: forego Curry’s potential MVP candidacy or risk an injury by playing him in pointless situations with the game’s outcome no longer in doubt. Now, however, advanced metrics have resolved this problem. New statistics like WAR (wins above replacement), win-shares, offensive and defensive win-shares, statistics per 48 minutes, and many, many others have allowed us to quantify performances that were once impossible. They have essentially standardized performance across the NBA to take into account these many variables that may be out of the individual’s control. There are great websites that keep track of these statistics, and they all paint a similar picture.
What all of this means is that statistics now have the versatility to remedy problems that are created by these game situations. Curry is still an MVP leading candidate, and the voters now have a new arsenal of numbers to look at. The simple fact is that stats are the most useful and most relevant way of evaluating performances. How else would we know who was having the largest impact on each game? It is unrealistic to rely on the eye test to judge every performance of the season, and with so many games and so many players it is simply not prudent. Yes, statistics are only a measuring tool, but they are the best tools we have.
Curry will get his due when it comes down to it. James Harden’s performances will be judged without the presence of Dwight Howard, and Kevin Durant’s absence will impact how we view Russell Westbrook. However, stats allow us to compare performances for all of these players. If there is something you want to examine, there is almost undoubtedly a stat for it. Usage rates, player efficiency rating, and so many others standardize performances so we can paint a clearer picture, and a fairer one as well. Without numbers to guide our analyses, we’d simply be guessing when it comes to determining who really is the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.