What makes an MVP in basketball?
Minutes matter.
On Monday, I spotted the tendencies of NBA MVP voters. The MVP of the league is one who:
Is on a team that won a lot of games
Played in all or nearly all of those games
Has a high Player Efficiency Rating (PER)
As a shortcut, I'd vote the same way, and even created Wilson's Simple NBA MVP Formula. But while it's accurate, something's missing. The PER measures how well a player plays in losses as well as wins.
While a high PER and other statistical measures should lead to other accolades such as all-NBA teams, the "value" in MVP should be in contributions to victories.
Let's say Bradley Beal has 40 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals, and 0 turnovers in a loss. If he does that every game, should he be considered the games best player? Yes. All-NBA? Yes.
Most valuable? Not if his team keeps losing.
And that's where we should begin when we talk about the MVP: who's winning?
If a Most Valuable Player award is given for every game, it will go to someone on the winning side. One would think it would go to one who contributed the most to the victory.
How do we determine that? Points scored? Assists? Rebounds?
I suggest something that may be counter-intuitive, or maybe it is the most intuitive: who played the most minutes, and what was the scoring differential when he was out there?
This absorbs almost every other statistic, as well as attributes that statistics can't quantify, especially on the defensive end. If the team plays better when you're on the court, it matters less whether you are personally getting the buckets or rebounds; you're probably facilitating them for teammates.
In other words, I'd use a stat that simply adds minutes played (MP) plus +/-. (+/- is the difference between points scored and points allowed when a player is on the floor, regardless of who scored or who was scored on).
In each victory, players on the winning team can be ranked by the sum of MP plus +/-. Here's how I would do it:
In a victory, determine the top eight contributors based on MP plus +/-.
Assign MVP points to them: the top player in MP plus +/- is assigned 8 MVP points, on down the line so that the eighth is assigned one point.
Here's an example. On May 11, the Lakers beat the Knicks 101-99. Nobody on the Knicks gets any MVP points for the night, no matter how well they played. So we scroll past their box score and go to the Lakers. We see:
Anthony Davis played 43:27 with a +7 +/-, or 50:27 total, 8 MVP points
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope: 40:29+9=49:29, 7 MVP points
Andre Drummond: 35:31+8=43:31, 6 MVP points
Wesley Matthews: 23:37+14, 37:37, 5 MVP points
Talen Horton-Tucker: 34:20+2, 36:20, 4 MVP points
Kyle Kuzma: 32:53-11=21:53, 3 MVP points
Ben McLemore: 20:43-9=11:43, 2 MVP points
Alex Caruso: 7:11+3=10:11, 1 MVP point
If I collect the same data for the winner of every game of the season throughout the NBA, I believe the player with the most MVP points in the league at the end would be the same player as the consensus MVP according to traditional voting standards. This is something I'd like to do next season.
Many advanced statistics are looked at by MVP voters, but what advanced stats really do is determine the "best" player on an average or "per game" basis, win or lose.
My proposal isolates each victory to determine how much a player contributed relative to his teammates, and then adds those contributions together.
The player who contributed the most to the most victories is deserving of the MVP.
During the NBA Playoffs, I will tabulate each game and use this method to determine who is the overall Playoffs MVP, an award not currently given out by the NBA.
I will particularly look at the NBA Finals, to see if my method could accurately determine who is actually awarded the Finals MVP
Stay tuned.
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you find value in his articles, your support through Paypal helps keep him going. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution. You may contact him for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.