Preface:
Every year, the MVP competition will attract heated discussion at the moment when the results are announced, after all, there are a thousand Hamlets in the hearts of a thousand readers. For the selection of MVP, fans naturally have their own best players of the season. Even a player like Duncan will inevitably be questioned when he wins the MVP, and this happened in the 2001-02 season.
At that time, the alliance was still in the era of dominance, although it belonged to the most golden era of division has not yet fully begun, but Maddy, Kobe, and Iverson have already set off a wave in the league. At the same time, in the battle for the front, several players who were later inducted into the Hall of Fame were also fiercely contested.
In the end, in a very cruel competition, Duncan became the player who stood out, he finally won the MVP of the 2001-02 season, let's go back to that season and see who Duncan beat and whether his performance is worthy of this MVP?
1st Place: Duncan (954 points)
After successfully helping the team win the first championship of the post-Jordan era, the league began to enter the OK combination stage, and the Spurs, despite having a strong combination of Duncan and Robinson, were completely unable to shake the status of the Lakers, who have lost the Western Conference playoffs for two consecutive seasons.
To the 2001-02 season, the Spurs basically completed the handover of leadership, the elderly Robinson has no way to lead the team to a breakthrough, all hopes have been pinned on Duncan, this year's Parker is still a very young player, Ginobili has not yet come to the team, the entire Spurs are basically relying on Duncan alone to support the forward, the whole season in addition to Duncan, only Robinson and Smith can score doubles.
In terms of statistics, Duncan has played in all 82 games for the team this season, averaging 40.6 minutes per game, contributing 25.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists, shooting 50.8%. As can be seen from the fifth-place playing time in the league, it is necessary to rely on the Duncan Spurs to win the whole season.
Defensively, Duncan averaged 9.4 backcourt rebounds per game, the highest number in the league. He also had 2.5 blocks and 0.7 steals, ranking third in the league in blocks. The performance of blocks and rebounds in the backcourt is enough to prove Duncan's contribution on the inside, and he completely single-handedly carried the entire Spurs' interior defense.
Throughout the season, Duncan's complete statistics have 9 data that are in the top 10 of the league, and 5 of them are in the top three in the league.
In terms of high-level stats, Duncan has a true shooting percentage of 57.6% (30th in the league), a player efficiency of 27.0 (third in the league), and a winning contribution (1st in the league). From the efficiency and contribution value, it can be very intuitively realized that the Spurs at this time belong to Duncan's team, and the team's victory or defeat is entirely to see his overall play.
In terms of team records, Duncan single-core led the team to help the Spurs get an excellent result of 58 wins and 24 losses, ranking second in the West. To know that at that time, no team in the West could be easily defeated, and Duncan was able to lead the team to victory, which also showed his excellent ability to lead the team.
Combining the above data, it is not difficult to find that Duncan can get this MVP mainly because of three factors:
- The difficulty of his single-core team is much higher than that of other players, and the team that can really become a star player and play is really Duncan alone.
- Whether it is basic data or high-level data, Duncan has several performances that are in the top few of the league, and he has successfully achieved the integration of attack and defense.
- The team's record is good enough, able to break through the West at that time, but also to suppress such a strong team as the Lakers, which shows Duncan's leading strength.
2nd place: Kidd (897 points)
The 2001-02 season was Kidd's first season with the Nets, and the team was in one word. Looking at the team's lineup can not find a familiar name, the last time the team entered the playoffs is traced back to the 1994-95 season, in the previous season the Nets only got a record of 26 wins and 56 losses, ranking 4th from the bottom in the East, it can be said that Kidd who came here directly opened the hell mode, but all this obviously can't defeat Kidd.
In terms of statistics, Kidd has played all 82 games for the team this season, averaging 37.3 minutes per game, can contribute 14.7 points, 9.9 assists, 7.3 rebounds, shooting 39.1%, the number of assists ranks second in the league, he is more often trying to find ways to string the team offense, after all, facing such a team, if only to score himself, it obviously can not change the status quo. Under Kidd's tandem, the overall data of the Nets players has been well improved, they have successfully played the team basketball cooperation, 4 people have got double-digit data, and many others have been able to get 9+ performances.
Defensively, Kidd also showed his excellent defensive awareness and ability, he can contribute 2.1 steals, 5.7 backcourt rebounds and 0.2 blocks, the second highest steals in the league.
In terms of high-end data, Kidd's true shooting rate is 48.4%, which basically belongs to the league's very low data. The 42.5% assist rate ranks 9th in the league, and Kidd is basically outside the league's 30th in other statistics, which actually shows from the side that Kidd is more about driving his teammates to successfully complete the end game, he is just to act as an indirect participant.
In terms of leading results, Kidd should be the most ferocious player among all the people that season, under his leadership, the Nets directly completed the rebirth of Nirvana, got a record of 52 wins and 30 losses, successfully won the first place in the East, directly completed an incredible big turnaround, and returned to the playoffs stage after many years.
In terms of playing against the Spurs, Kidd successfully led the team to a double kill of the season. Kidd had a triple-double in the first game, and the second game contributed 28 points, 11 rebounds and 4 assists.
Comparing it with Duncan reveals that Kidd was a very crisp failure at the data level. However, in terms of playing records, especially the ability to lead the team, Kidd is definitely able to surpass all the players in the MVP list. It's just that Duncan was the darling of the entire league at that time, and everyone still attached great importance to the front, so Kidd, despite his ability to lead the team, was still unfortunately defeated in the MVP competition.
3rd place: O'Neill (696 points)
Completely different from what the two men met above, it was an era ruled by O'Neal and the Lakers. Before the arrival of the 2001-02 season, they had successfully completed two consecutive championships, and O'Neill had no suspense to win two consecutive FMVPs, and the whole person was at the peak of a career.
And at that time, O'Neill's side, surrounded by a group of very strong combat power, Kobe Bryant naturally needless to say. In addition, there are very important role players such as the old fish Fisher and Horry, which are still a proper championship configuration, so O'Neill's difficulty in leading the team can be said to be completely absent.
In terms of statistics, O'Neill played in 67 games, averaging 36.1 minutes per game, contributing 27.2 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.0 assists, shooting 57.9%. In terms of basic statistics, O'Neal's shooting percentage ranks first in the league, which undoubtedly reflects his terrifying finishing ability under the basket. The scoring was second in the league, and the rebounding data clearly did not reach his best, only 7th in the league.
In terms of high-end data, O'Neal's efficiency value, victory contribution value, offensive plus and minus value are all ranked in the top three in the league, which shows that the Lakers at that time, he is a well-deserved team leader.
In terms of team performance, O'Neal did have a group of excellent players around him at that time, but because O'Neal had suffered from injuries during this period, the Lakers' record was not good during his absence, and in the end they got a record of 58 wins and 24 losses, ranking third in the West behind the Spurs.
At that time, Duncan and O'Neill were also very much looking forward to the match, and the two teams finally drew 2-2 in the regular season stage. O'Neill participated in three of these matches, and the two were almost equally divided in this regard, averaging data at the level of 20+.
O'Neill's loss to Duncan in this year's competition is first of all Duncan's stability in terms of data performance, especially in terms of high-end data. Secondly, due to the impact of injuries, O'Neill directly missed 15 games, which also made him suffer a certain loss in the rating value.
4th place: Maddy (390 points)
This year's Maddy also lacked enough firepower support around him, and Hill was reimbursed early in the season, and the whole season could only rely on Maddie alone to lead the team forward.
In terms of statistics, Maddy played in 76 games for the team, averaging 38.3 minutes per game, contributing 25.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, 5.3 assists, shooting 45.1%, and his scoring ranked fourth in the league.
In terms of high-end statistics, Maddy ranks in the top ten in the league in terms of ball usage, player efficiency value, and offensive plus/minus. It's just that Maddy's super high possession of the ball did not bring too good results to the team, and the Magic finally achieved a record of 44 wins and 38 losses in the regular season, ranking 4th in the East.
The reason why Maddy lost the MVP competition is naturally obvious, his overall data performance is completely inferior to Duncan, especially in the high-end data, it is not comparable to the previous Kidd and O'Neal, and the results he led the team to come up with are also very bad.
In addition to the above four relatively high scoring players, the other two points, Kobe Bryant and Iverson, also managed to enter the MVP list, and the two handed over 25.2 points and 31.4 points per game, respectively. In addition, Nowitzki and Omoto also entered the selection.
It can be said that this year's Duncan defeated the three major points and two of the league's most outstanding interior players to finally win the MVP trophy, and the gold content of this trophy is naturally needless to say.
So how did these guys end up playing in the playoffs that season. MVP Duncan encountered the OK combination in the Western Conference semifinals, and finally the Spurs lost 1-4, once again being blocked by the Lakers.
Kidd in the second place successfully led the team to continue to create miracles, successfully reached the finals, but unfortunately it was also a 0-4 defeat in the end, watching the Lakers complete the great cause of three consecutive championships.
Maddy, who finished fourth, was eliminated directly in the first round, and the Magic 1-3 directly missed the second round, basically starting at that time, the spell of the round trip has always revolved around Maddy's career.