I'm Not Very Bold

I don't want to throw in an imaginary MVP vote before the regular season is over, but I'll happily try to boost hits by putting a bunch of popular names in one post. I'd much rather take away than give, so eliminating a player from an individual race sorta works for an already semi-aimless piece of internet babble.

MVP yack is unfortunately filled with globs of superfluous guidelines that can make anyone's choice the right one. I prefer to keep the 'what it all means' aspect as simple as possible; whoever's having the best season deserves the award. It's a simple approach, and thanks to metrics that are adjusted for teammates, and competition, the best player on the best team nonsense can be flushed.

Determining the best season is the hard part. I can't simply add up PER, BoP stats, and adjusted +/-. I can interpret them, prove and disprove my visual (with my eyes) assessments of players, and make an educated guess. I can't say I'll make the right decision, but I'll be close.

LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Amare Stoudemire, and Chauncey Billups are at the top of the important leaderboards. Kobe Bryant is not. Kobe Bryant never has been. Kobe Bryant is not an MVP candidate. Kobe Bryant is 8th in adjusted +/-, 8th in PER, and 7th in Win Shares. He doesn't deserve consideration.

I've seen Kobe score a lot of points, and play good defense. I haven't seen him rebound, distribute, or do pretty much everything else as well as the aforementioned leaderboard toppers. Yes, Kobe is quite capable of filling up all sorts of non-scoring related box score stats, but he doesn't do it as well, or as much as other players. The logic based box score metrics prove that, and the non-box score metrics show that there is indeed more to making an impact on the court than scoring. The Kobester isn't even the scoring leader.