Cleveland Cavaliers’ superstar
LeBron
James is currently in the NBA Finals for the sixth straight season, with
his team having won the Eastern Conference the past six times. While the championship
is the ultimate prize in the NBA, winning an NBA conference is itself not an
insignificant feat, given that there are 15 teams in each conference. If
the NBA as a whole now was the same size as it was in the 1960s then James may
well have got a whole handful of rings, or more, by now.
Thinking about James’
dominance in this way made me wonder about how many Most Valuable Player awards
he would have won if a separate MVP was handed out for each conference each
season. This is essentially what happens in Major League Baseball, with
an MVP awarded for both Leagues, where the baseball Leagues are about the
same size as the NBA conferences.
To work out how many
hypothetical Conference MVPs LeBron James would have won I assumed that the
player in each conference who got the most votes in the MVP voting each season
would have won the Conference MVP. Perhaps, given the part that narrative seems
to play in MVP voting the voting would turn out somewhat differently if there were
two separate Conference MVPs to vote for, but otherwise I think it is a
reasonable assumption.
Under that assumption,
LeBron James would have won nine Eastern Conference MVPs by now, including the
past five. Below is the player who led the MVP voting in each conference in
each season since the NBA-ABA merger.
LeBron’s dominance in leading
his conference in MVP voting however is not unprecedented. Magic Johnson had
the most MVP votes of any Western Conference player for an amazing nine straight
seasons, from 1982-83 to 1990-91. Michael Jordan would also get nine Conference
MVPs; three ‘three-peats’ of MVPs in fact.
Given the emphasis in the NBA on
MVP awards in assessing players – which admittedly may be diluted if two such
awards were handed out each season – it is interesting to consider how
differently some players may have been viewed if Conference MVPs were awarded
instead. Consider the following points:
*Magic Johnson would have nine
MVPs and Larry Bird would have just four, instead of them having the same
number (three each). Bird of course was in the same conference as Jordan,
reducing his chances of winning.
*Kevin Durant would have been
a four-time MVP by the age of 25.
*Kobe Bryant and Shaquille
O’Neal would have received three MVPs each, instead of just one.
*Shaquille O’Neal would have
three MVPs with three different teams.
*O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kevin
Garnett, and Moses Malone would be the players to have won MVPs in both
conferences.
*Scottie Pippen would have an
MVP, making it back-to-back wins by different Bulls players following Jordan’s
win in ‘93.
*Alonzo Mourning would have
two MVPs, one more than Hakeem Olajuwon.
*Tracy McGrady would have an
MVP. And so would Jermaine O’Neal. Jason Kidd, George Gervin, and Pete Maravich
would each have one too.
*Clyde Drexler would be the
only extra MVP from the Western Conference; that is, all of the other Western Conference
MVPs already have an MVP award.
*Isiah Thomas, Chris Paul,
Patrick Ewing, Dwyane Wade, and Russell Westbrook would all still be MVP-less.
Magic and Durant are the
big winners for me from this exercise. Nine times Magic was considered the best
player in the Western Conference, even with the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
on the same team. Based on that, maybe the difference between him and Michael
Jordan in terms of the NBA’s best-ever guard was closer than I thought.
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