Monday, April 9, 2012
A Bear in the Clutch, and a Bull Under Heat
First thing's first — for those Chicago Bulls fans who saw the title and excerpt and immediately got angry enough to make Mike Ditka blush, calm down. It's not that Derrick Rose is a bad player, or even that he's not an all-star. The problem I have with the reigning MVP is that he's not MVP material.
He had less assists and a lower field goal percentage than fellow PG Chris Paul. He didn't lead the league in PPG, APG, or any other offensive or defensive category. In fact, the thing he came close to leading the league in was turnovers-per-game. His plus/minus was 10th in the league, and not even the best on his own team.
All this to say, a guy top-10 in the league in multiple categories is certainly good, but when the advanced statistics indicate he may not even be the best player on his own team, it's hard to figure out what makes him the MVP in the minds of voters.
Don't get me wrong, Derrick Rose is good. Bad players don't average 25 points and 8 assists per game. It's just that truly elite players don't average almost as many turnovers as rebounds in the same game, or fail to provide as much of a lift as other players on their own team.
This might go against conventional wisdom, and fly directly in the face of the hype on ESPN or even around the water cooler, but LeBron James is currently one of the most clutch players in the NBA. Don't believe me?
If you don't, it's probably because Kobe Bryant popped into your head when you saw an article mentioning MVP accolades and shots in the clutch. Kobe is a surefire Hall of Famer — and he is a career 28% shooter on game-winning shots in the playoffs. LeBron James shoots 42% on such attempts.
I've used that stat in conversation with some friends before, and they jumped right into the argument of "but Kobe takes more shots at the end of games, and LeBron passes the ball away." To be fair, if that were accurate, it would be a good point. But LeBron has attempted a game-winning shot in 13% of his career playoff games, while Kobe has done so in 12% of such games.
In other words, LeBron James attempts more game winning playoff shots, and with a much higher success rate, than Kobe Bryant. Without a large enough sample size from Derrick Rose (who famously missed two free throws with the national championship on the line) yet, I'm going to have to give him the back seat to LeBron in terms of clutch play.
So after all of this, it's really no mystery why LeBron James is clearly ahead of Derrick Rose in the MVP race. What continues to baffle me, however, is why Derrick Rose is considered a top-tier player. Top-10? Maybe. Top-five? Not a chance. In my mind, he's probably only the third- or fourth-best PG in the league.
That may make him an all-star, but if the voters would start looking a little deeper, he probably wouldn't be in the MVP conversation again.