My Ballot

With the end of this season fast approaching, talk in the NBA has centered around who should win the various individual awards given out at season's end. I wish I had a vote, but since I don't, this blog post will have to do.

Most Valuable Player

Chris Paul, New Orleans Hornets. In previous posts, I've allowed Celtic Pride to overcome my objectivity. But after watching Chris Paul play over the past few weeks, it's hard to argue against the League's best point guard. No one among the four consensus MVP candidates (which include Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and Lebron James) does more with much less. James' team is crappy, but he hasn't elevated their play the way Paul has elevated his team's, hence Cleveland's lousy record (fourth in the East will not cut it).

Garnett has elevated the performances of the Boston Celtics, but how much better can these players be? Ray Allen and Paul Pierce are All-Stars on their own, and it's giving KG too much credit to say that it was he alone who convinced them to buy into the team concept. Allen and Pierce, as much as KG, deserve praise for contributing to the culture of winning that the Celtics now have.

If not for Paul's great season, Bryant would be my MVP. But man for man, he has a better team. The Lakers are ten men deep, and he has a great coach to boot. The Hornets' bench is laughable, even after acquiring Bonzi Wells and Mike James for Bobby Jackson.

The amazing thing about Paul is that he does his thing on both ends of the floor, orchestrating an efficient offense and giving the opposing point guard headaches on the defensive end. He leads the L in both assists and steals, while scoring just over 20 points a game, for a team that now sits atop the tough Western Conference. With him leading the Hornets, New Orleans has convincingly beat San Antonio (by 25!), Phoenix (ate Steve Nash alive), Dallas (made Jason Kidd look old), and LA (two times out of three). New Orleans, for God's sake.

Absolutely no one thought the New Orleans Hornets would be as good as they are now. They've exceeded all expectations, and they've done so because of this year's MVP, Chris Paul.

Best Defensive Player

Kevin Garnett, Boston Celtics. He probably won't win the award because his stats don't reflect the amazing defense he's played over the course of the year. He just changes the way teams play. I remember the Celtics' first game, they played the Washington Wizards, and when Gilbert Arenas drove in for a layup, KG just blocked the hell out of that ball. That was a portent of things to come. Boston has the NBA's best defense, and it's anchored on the broad shoulders of Kevin Garnett.

Rookie of the Year

Kevin Durant, Seattle Supersonics. Good as advertised, the lanky Durant has shown that he's an unstoppable scorer when he's in the groove. He should run away with this award.

Most Improved Player

Rajon Rondo, Boston Celtics. When the Boston Celtics got KG and Ray Allen, people thought that the point guard position was the starting five's weakest. But sophomore PG Rajon Rondo has played like he belongs on the court with the Big Three, holding his own against the best point guards of the L, like Steve Nash and Chris Paul. His shooting has improved immensely since last year, as teams sagging off him have painfully learned. His playmaking and decision-making is one of the reasons the Celtics are playing so well; he knows when to push the ball and when to slow it down. His defense has also been incredible, as he's used his speed to cover his man and pick off passes left and right. Few players have seen their play improve at such a degree this season, which is why Rondo should win this award.

First Team, All-NBA

Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Amare Stoudemire. This one was easy.

All-Defensive Team

Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Shane Battier, Kevin Garnett, Marcus Camby. Bruce Bowen should probably be in here, but Shane Battier is, to me, the better all-around defender right now.

More KG-for-MVP Talk

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks that Kevin Garnett deserves to be MVP for being the catalyst for the Boston Celtic's renaissance.

In this article, True Hoop's Henry Abbot discusses some ways the Boston Celtics have come up with to quantify KG's contributions on the court.

Sports Illustrated's David Dupree, on the other hand, says here that KG is "perhaps the most singularly responsible for the Celtics' resurgence, guiding them to the league's best record and changing the culture and mind-set of the team and its belief in itself," and that he deserves to be named MVP, although he probably won't win the award.

Dupree adds:

His statistics aren't that earth-shattering, as this is the first time in 10 seasons that he hasn't averaged at least 20 points and 10 rebounds (18.9 points and 9.4 rebounds going into Tuesday's games). He is shooing a career-best 53.7 percent and committing a career-low 2.0 turnovers, but he is also averaging a career-low 1.2 blocked shots and his assists average of 3.5 is his lowest in the last 11 seasons. He's also playing the fewest minutes (33.6) since he was a rookie. But his impact is immeasurable.

Here is a team that many critics felt would have trouble accommodating three big scorers such as Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, yet with two weeks left in the season, the Celtics are the league's best defensive team. From Day One, Garnett said that the offense would take care of itself and that champions are made at the defensive end. He made that his mission, and the Celtics have responded by allowing NBA lows in points (90.2) and opponents' shooting (41.9 percent).

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Garnett this season is that when he missed nine-straight games in late January and early February with an abdominal strain, the Celtics went 7-2. The argument can be made that if he is so valuable, his team shouldn't have won so many games without him? But the reality of it could be that he has helped instill such confidence and belief in each other that his team can win, at least for the short term, without him.

Celtics coach Doc Rivers, however, puts forth an intriguing proposition. Rivers argues that while it's true that the who should win the MVP award is debatable, who should win Defensive Player of the Year award isn't, because to him, it clearly belongs to KG.

Somehow, I think all these things mean crap to KG. All he wants at the end of the season in the NBA Championship, and it's obvious that he'll do anything––i.e., sacrifice his stats, downplay MVP talk––to get it.

And that's why he deserves to be MVP.

Kevin Garnett, MVP

When it comes to choosing the L's MVP, I'm averse to choosing a player on the basis of his stats. Yes, statistics reveal much about how well he's performing. But numbers alone do not an MVP make. If that were the case, then Lebron James, the triple-double machine that he is, should probably win the award every year.

I've always been partial to winners and players you make their teams better, and usually judge the MVP-ness of a player by assessing his impact on the team he plays on. On this basis, I really felt that Jason Kidd should've won the award in 2002, when he brought the New Jersey Nets to the Finals. The Nets made a dramatic turnaround that year, with players like Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, and yes, even Lucious Harris, suddenly looking like the great, solid players people knew they weren't.

Jason Kidd raised their games then, just as Kevin Garnett has raised the games of this year's Boston Celtics.

Yeah, his stats are underwhelming. He has, for the first time in years, failed to average at least 20 points and 10 rebounds a game. He is no longer among the league leaders in double-doubles, a title he contested annually with the Tim Duncans and Shaqs of this world. That he has chosen to not give a f*ck about his stats, and pour his heart and soul into the NBA's best team should serve as an example of how to judge the L's MVP. In the end, the stat that matters the most is a team's win-loss record, and how big a part a player contributes to that record.

Boston is on track to make the biggest one-season turnaround in League history. It has what Houston Rockets superstar Trace McGrady called the best defense he had ever seen in his career, a statement bolstered by the fact that the Celtics established a record for the least number of field goals by an opponent in the shot-clock era when it held the Miami Heat to 17 field goals in a blowout win. The Boston Celtics are where they are because of a defensive intensity unmatched in recent history, and the success of this D can in a large part be attributed to Kevin Garnett, who anchors the defense and has inspired his team-mates––including fellow stars Paul Pierce and Ray Allen––to play the best defense in their lives.

Garnett has raised his team's play in a way that Lebron James and Kobe Bryant haven't. The Cavs are nine games shy of the 50 games expected from a serious contender. The Lakers, while doing very well, have not consistently played at the level of Boston, even with a roster that is as good––if not better––than the the Celtics'. Chris Paul, while without a doubt the only reason New Orleans is a real threat in the Western Conference, has carried his team as much as KG has, but not as successfully.

This year's MVP race will probably be very, very close, with most pundits already making it a tossup between Kobe Bryant and Lebron James. I say throw out the stat sheets and choose a guy whose play––not his stats––has made his team the best in the League: Kevin Garnett.