The "Best Player on the Best Team" MVP Criterion is Stupid

Watching SportsCenter this morning, several NBA "experts" argued that the true definition of MVP is "the best player on the best team." They did this to demonstrate that Kobe Bryant should be considered, at this point in the season, the NBA MVP, because he's the best player on the team with the best record.

That's simply ridiculous.

By that line of reasoning, you could argue that if Boston has the best record at the end of the year, Rajon Rondo could be the NBA MVP. Don't get me wrong, Rondo is an incredibly useful (and damned fun to watch) player, but he's no NBA MVP (though he really should be an All Star).

In the same way, Kobe Bryant is not the MVP, was not the MVP last year, and should not be the MVP this year. Every decent statistical measure shows LeBron James and Chris Paul as clearly the two best players in the NBA, and two of the best players ever. Kobe Bryant is well above average, but simply not in the same class as those two.

I agree that to be "most valuable" a player has to create some actual value, which means wins. But it simply isn't the case that the "best player on the best team" creates the most wins. The case of the Celtics demonstrates this pretty well. Statistically, the best player on that team is Kevin Garnett, followed closely by Rajon Rondo. After that come Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. All four of those players are very, very good. But the team wins a great many games not because any of those four are "most valuable," but because those four are very good, and are surrounded by above average players.

The same is true on a smaller scale with the Lakers. Kobe Bryant obviously creates a few wins for the Lakers. He is an excellent player. That has some value. But he is an excellent player surrounded by a few excellent players (Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom) and more than a few good ones (especially the vastly underrated Trevor Ariza).

Being surrounded by those players neither makes Kobe Bryant the most valuable player in the NBA, nor disqualifies him from being the most valuable player. Rather, it helps explain team success. The Lakers have the best record in the NBA right now not because Kobe Bryant is the best or most valuable player, but because they, like the Celtics, have a great many good players on their team.

Remove Kobe Bryant from the Lakers and they still have an excellent front court (Gasol, Odom, and, when healthy, Andrew Bynum) and a decent back court. In fact, given how well Ariza has been playing, they may not lose a whole lot, if Bryant's lost minutes go to him.

The stories are very different for LeBron James and Chris Paul. Tom already noted Paul's value to the Hornets by pointing out how they've played without him. Similarly, picture the Cavs without James. While they'd still have a few good players, would they even be a playoff team?

In this case, advanced statistics do an excellent job of measuring the relative "value" of MVP candidates. Those statistics tell us not only that James and Paul and far and away the two best players in the NBA, but also that their teams would lose many more games and win many fewer games without them.

They both create more value, and more wins, for their team, than Bryant does for his.

Because I'm so pedantic, I wanted to push this a little bit farther: First, identify the best teams, and then identify the best players on those teams, too see if picking the "best player from the best team" would produce a viable MVP choice.

First for the best teams. I'm using John Hollinger's efficiency ratings to identify the best team. The thinking here is that the difference between offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency - efficiency differential - identifies the relative strength of a team. This is like point differential adjusted for pace.

By that (or any other measure) four teams stand out: The Boston Celtics, the Orlando Magic, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the LA Lakers. In terms of efficiency differential, here's how they rank:

1. Cavs: 11.3
2. Celtics: 10.3
3. Magic: 10.0
4. Lakers: 8.8

From this measure it seems clear that the Cavs are still the class of the league, though the Lakers and Celtics each have slightly better won-loss records.

Now for the best player on each of those teams, according to Hollinger's PER (Player Efficiency Rating), one of the two best statistical measures for performance.

1. Cavs: LeBron James 31.86. This mark not only leads the league, but threatens to break Michael Jordan's record for best single season PER. James is having a historic season, and is clearly a worthy choice for MVP. So, did the criterion of "best player from best team" work? Maybe, but the extent to which is worked may have been a coincidence.

2. Celtics: Kevin Garnett 21.23. Here is where the argument begins to break down. If the Celtics catch the Cavs (and, in terms of won-loss record they already have), is Garnett the MVP? His PER ranks 18th in the league. While PER does not measure defense, given James' emerging strength as a defender it is hard to argue that Garnett's defensive prowess makes up a 10.63 point and 16 player gap.

It is worth noting that Rajon Rondo's PER of 18.89 ranks second on the Celtics.

3. Magic: Dwight Howard 25.49. While the distance between Howard's 25.49 and James' 31.86 may seem great, Howard ranks 4th in the NBA in PER. That shows just how stellar James' season has been. Most years Howard would be a pretty good choice for MVP, especially considering his defensive impact.

4. Lakers: Kobe Bryant 25.22. Bryant ranks 6th in PER, behind James, Chris Paul (29.75), Dwayne Wade (28.24), Howard, and Tim Duncan (25.38). In fact, given the stability Duncan has provided an injury plagued Spurs team (2nd in the West despite losing many of their top players for chunks of time) it could be argued that Duncan would be at least as deserving of the MVP as Bryant.

All of this is to say that when two separate commentators argued that Kobe Bryant was clearly the NBA MVP thus far this season, because he's the best player on the best team, they were full of crap. It is neither clear that Bryant is the best player on the best team, nor that choosing the MVP based on that criterion is the best idea.