Preseason is underway, which means the new season is getting closer and closer, and it's time for the most promiscuous once of the year. The war drums have been beaten, and the battle has not yet begun, it is a good time for our ball critics to predict, at this point in time the disadvantage of prediction is that the uncertainty is too high, and the advantage is that the uncertainty is too high, after all, the failure of challenging a one-dimensional quadratic equation and the failure of challenging the Goldbach conjecture will get different audience reactions, the former is most likely to be suspected of IQ, while the latter even sounds a little brave. So today I'm going to predict who the MVP will be next season.
First of all, it's clear that we should exclude Kyrie Irving, who has already won the "D'Angelo Russell G.O.A.T." award without bloodshed, and it's time to cede this little honor to other ordinary people. Every player who aspires to immortalize history will not chase the MVP as a great award, Irving, James, and the elder James has his own goals to chase, whether it is Abdul-Jabbar or Jordan, will be more convincing than the MVP. Of course, behind this ambition is the accrual of honor and realism driven by 19 years of travel — realism tells all Jamie a simple fact, the Lakers and James need a championship more, and this championship needs more health. This long list of health is filled with every inch of James' groin, Will's knees, and thick eyebrows. For a reward to let James fully output in the regular season, obviously hinder the realization of the goal, since the choice to be a group of ambitious old ji, the focus is the most important thing.
But for the vast majority of people, MVP remains the most important individual award in the regular season, not only establishing your place in the current league, but also changing your place in history. Historically, the probability of MVP entering the Hall of Fame is 100%. Not to mention that MVP is not only an honor so simple, sometimes it also means real money, "Rose clause" is written very clearly, one of the conditions for young people to get 30% of the maximum salary in the first big contract is to get MVP, for example, Downs did not get MVP that year, less than tens of millions, it is very regrettable.
As for the criteria for judging, the first one is super data. Of course, data is very important, like Haslem in the field of the mouth of the lotus scolding 82 games street at most let you get the "best team daddy award", but it will not let you get close to the MVP at all, enough beautiful data is a prerequisite for getting MVP, it is better to have a dominant performance, but "dominant performance" is difficult to directly quantify with super data, and there must be another criterion to support it. As we all know, MVP is translated as most valuable player, and we have to talk about who is the most valuable, first of all, to understand what the values of the NBA are.
The MVP is voted by a group of journalists in the United States and Canada, and the person with the highest number of vote points is the final MVP. As long as it is a small number of people who choose the award, there must be different values, such as in 2000, someone voted for Iverson, which led to O'Neill failing to become the first MVP with full votes, for which the old fat man is still angry. Unlike cross-talk and feminism, the value deviation of elites in the basketball media industry will not be particularly large, and it is most convenient to talk about dominance based on beautiful data.
Since the merger of the NBA and the ABA in 1976, the players who have been able to get the MVP have at least the top ten in the league's overall record, and the three people with the worst record: Moses Malone got the MVP in 1982, and his Rockets record was tied for 7th in the league, Jordan got the MVP in 1988, his Bulls league record was 7th, and in 2017 Westbrook got the MVP, his Thunder League record was 10th.
Since it is a competitive sport, the most valuable player should lead the team to win more goals.
Win as much as possible to be sure, then there is the word "lead the team", in short, you have to be the boss of the strong team, and you have to be the one who is unmistakable, everything is because of you, winning or losing depends on you, you are a light in the dark room, a fire in the cold winter, a stream in the desert, a cat in the women's bathhouse, although you are the most dazzling, you still have a lonely and independent posture between the shoulders, no teammate or coach can approach your light.
There's a classic here, the 2008 Green Kai record is a top pick, but you have to say that Pierce, Garnett, Ray Allen is not one person who stands out enough to completely cover the contributions of the other two, and it seems that it is not possible to make a clear choice. Are you saying that KG is contributing a little more? We can indeed say this in that year, but to say that you are so much older than Pierce and Ray Allen, it is difficult for you to convince yourself, after all, Pierce and Ray Allen are also wrists, listen to their nicknames, one is "truth", one is "Jesus", which dare you not take it seriously? If you replace "truth" with "alien" and "Jesus" with "madman," the result is the MVP garnett got in 2004.
Therefore, the person who can get the MVP in the strong team, it is best not to have teammates who seem to have a relatively close contribution. In the days when Jamal Murray fell last season, Jokic led the team to 17 wins and 2 losses, all the way back to the top three in the West, Embiid has won the first place in the East on the other side, but there is still a first-defense All-Star Simmons around him, and in the end, he can only rank second behind Mr. Yo.
By this measure, Jokic remains the strongest MVP candidate in the coming season, as Murray will be absent for a long time and the main rotation around him is not much different from last season, which means that the team's combat strength will not fluctuate much. Unless Porter Jr. suddenly shows the ability to play the ball toward Durant, Jokic will still be the nuggets' brightest star.
The same principle will be shown in the alphabet brother. Alphabet Brother's personal performance last season still maintained the level of two consecutive MVP periods, he also did not have the presence of teammates who could approach him, Holliday was more defensive, Middleton was unpredictable, we regarded the Bucks as a team with Alphabet Brother alone, there was no problem, and the Bucks lineup was relatively good, it is difficult to imagine that they will fall out of the top four in the East. And all doubts about Alphabet Brother's ability to lead the team in the playoffs in the past have also disappeared with a championship he has just won. Alphabet Brother's road to his third MVP looks like everything is ready, and the only question is whether Budenholzer and the Bucks will manage Alphabet Brother health in the regular season, thus weakening his sense of explosion in the data.
But the same situation would be a little different when considered in Embiid's case.
Assuming that the Emperor alone can maintain last year's personal performance without getting hurt, the longer Simmons and Philadelphia's Palace Scraper show this year, the higher the probability that the Lone emperor will be able to get the MVP, but there are two downsides:
First, if Philadelphia can't trade Simmons back for a useful pile of role players, can Embiid lead the team to play a strong team style. The question is essentially asking: Can a team draw a first-defense All-Star out of thin air and maintain its original standard. Historically, the answer to this question has been largely no.
Second, if Philadelphia does achieve the goal of exchanging Simmons for a higher-level controller. This seems impossible to achieve at the moment, but over time, the probability of this kind of thing being realized has increased, such as by the trade deadline, the Blazers have a bad record, Lillard has decided, and philadelphia's opportunity has come; the same situation may also occur in the Nets, if Irving's performance in and out of Brooklyn hurts the team's performance and Durant's feelings, then Philadelphia can also mention such a deal. Of course, the latter possibility would be a little less likely, after all, Simmons' emotional problems are only for the Philadelphia family, Irving's problems are the same everywhere, and Philadelphia should not drink and quench its thirst to this point. Combined with the first paradox, if Lillard went to Philadelphia to join the Emperor, and then the team's record improved significantly, then the Emperor's absolute boss status as the team in the eyes of observers would actually decline, which was also not conducive to taking votes from the media.
The problems that the Emperor is about to face in the new season are not fundamentally different from Doncic. In fact, before the start of the season in the past two years, the people with the highest MVP odds from the bookmakers were All Doncic, and Doncic did live up to expectations, and has played quite excellent data year after year. According to his 28+8+9 stats, Doncic is enough to be MVP for many years. Doncic took the MVP problem without him, the team's record. Looking at the Mavericks' operations in the offseason — that is, not doing anything other than changing coaches — it's hard to imagine that the Mavericks can currently make it to the top four in the West. Even if Doncic goes further, we can't let the league appear in Westbrook again: with a whole year of beautiful historical data, we finally broke the last line of defense in people's minds about the performance requirements.
But if you think about it in reverse, you can also come to a completely different conclusion: if Doncic or the Emperor leads the team to the top four of the division without their teammates being so good, their MVP probability will be greatly improved.
By the same token, in teams that are generally looked down on, if their boss suddenly explodes and leads the team to a particularly good record, then they also have a certain probability of winning the MVP, but it seems that the probability is much smaller than that of the Emperor and Doncic, which will be a large range, but it should include at least Tatum and Paul George.
And in our discussion, there are three more interesting options that are not mentioned.
Jazz's Mitchell is one of them. The Jazz were the first in the regular season league last year, and the only person on the team who got the MVP vote was Only Gobert, and the points could only rank 10th in the league, which was not as good as Rose, who got a first vote from the Internet fan vote. This somewhat confirms James's statement, "I can't play games with jazz", this is the stereotype of this team, they are "team first", just like the Pistons in 2004, everyone is important, no one is particularly prominent, it is difficult for you to achieve real team spirit and chemistry in the game, this kind of team is naturally difficult to be favored.
If that's the case, there's nothing to say, but the key fact is not, the Jazz are obviously a typical twin star team, and there is no essential difference between the two-star combination teams in history. If it's almost impossible for Gobert to win the MVP with defense, what about letting Mitchell fight for it with offense?
Mitchell, we know, the regular season data is really not so brilliant, but Mitchell's two consecutive years of playoff explosions let us see what he can do, that the ceiling is always high. As Mitchell himself put it: "I'm used to saving effort in the regular season because I know where the more important games are." "If both Mitchell and the Jazz have MVP goals in mind, the concerted efforts to make Mitchell more individualistic in certain games where the situation has been decided, as long as the data is a little more than two steps to the playoffs, who can guarantee that Mitchell will not play an explosive year." As long as this individualistic explosion takes into account the record, with the Jazz's stable lineup configuration, mature playing style and expected excellent record, it is not as difficult to raise an MVP.
Two other interesting candidates besides Mitchell are actually the ones who are in the group, Harden and Durant.
First of all, as most people look forward, the Nets' record will not be a problem, there will be no large-scale injury situation, even if there is no Irving, with their current configuration, the top two in the East should be clutched, and then it depends on how Harden and Durant play. First of all, Harden, around Durant, Harden is difficult, there is no need to return to the Rockets period of squirming offense infinite single-headed extreme individualism model, he will become the Nets in the true sense of the master, there will be beautiful data output, but the explosiveness of his election as MVP is obviously not the same, and Durant will have problems in data maintenance, whether Nash will squeeze Durant's surplus value like last year, which needs to be drawn with a big question mark, Health management will be a matter that will be clearly arranged in place for the two giants. One factor that Durant will be more favorable than Harden in the MVP competition is clear:
There is no doubt that Harden, who has won 0 career titles, has only a championship, and Durant, who has won 2 career championships, has more than just a championship.
What Durant wants to prove in the next season is that he can win a championship in an absolute boss posture. Although they are all going for the championship, Harden will have more sacrifices to make, he will have a greater willingness to make more sacrifices, and Durant will need to play his imaginary better personal performance in the long journey of the next year to consolidate the arch of his team boss - he wants to prove that he is not with Curry, Klay and Dream, but also has the strength to win championships around Harden and Irving.
It may sound like a cold joke, but it's a fact, Curry and his Warriors gang have proven themselves to win the championship, Durant can't change that fact, but Harden hasn't won the championship, and Durant can create a whole new fact.
Durant wants to get the MVP, relying on a super record, but not necessarily relying on an absolute advantage of the data, he just needs to be the stronger person in his team. This brings us to another criterion in MVP judgment: story.
Yes, to win the MVP, in addition to personal performance, team record, and unshakable boss status, there is also an important influencing factor called the story line. As mentioned earlier, sometimes there are many people in a season who meet the previous conditions, so who can tell a more "valuable" story in a season will have more advantage.
The MVP story told by Rose in 2010-2011 is the story of a native boy who leads his hometown team to create good results, and behind this simple story, there is a more magnificent background, his potential competitors have just fled their hometown, and people need another urban hero to repair the values they once believed in.
2016-17 Westbrook in addition to getting the super data of the ancient and modern, in fact, the same back to a very good script, his team's former boss, MVP players, top superstar naked departure, and left a string of disdain and contempt, this time Westbrook chose to renew the contract, choose one person one city, we know these story backgrounds after looking at Westbrook's data, you will find that someone easily trampled, it is what others are trying to practice, So it's hard not to be moved by the story of the year that belongs to Westbrook and the Thunder, and then you see that his team record is really OK, and of course you will give the votes with both hands.
This MVP may be controversial, but the "value" we agree with is not much controversial.
So who can tell another moving story next year?
Yes, there is one more of us who has not come out to tell, and we have an old babyface there waiting to tell their own story, which will be full of restoration, old dreams, joy, tenacity and sadness. The story is like the kind that only happened in the last generation, the last old and lonely superhero in the league, who fell from the peak to the bottom, but still with the first few people, trying to create the last glory.
The last time I saw a script with a similar frame was in the Holy City, but this time I had a bit of a premonition of immaturity. The framework of the script belonging to Oakland may be roughly similar, but the actions of the core characters will be very different, the man in the holy city has removed his heavy armor very early, the man in the Golden State will still be fierce, a champion may be too far away, and an MVP is the best reward possible.
Of course, this will be a story that is too difficult to complete, but it can only be moving if it is difficult.