Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images Most Improved of the Second Trimester: Hassan Whiteside, Miami Heat
Make no mistake: This is still Jimmy Butler's trophy to lose.Especially since it appears that Butler is going to be back in the Bulls' lineup soon from the elbow woes that have been plaguing him since his breakthrough February to the All-Star Game.
However ...
For all the justified attention Butler and Golden State's Draymond Green have generated for their significant step-ups this season on teams with title aspirations, Whiteside has to be highlighted here.
Has to be.
Since Jan. 1, after all, there's only one player in the whole NBA who ranks in the top five in both blocked shots per game and rebounds per game.
Hassan Whiteside.
The same Hassan Whiteside who was cast aside by the Los Angeles Lakers last summer and then released twice by the Memphis Grizzlies before Thanksgiving before his sudden rise to prominence with Miami.
That's improvement!
Utah's Rudy Gobert, our Defensive Player of the Second Trimester, also doubles as a fast-rising MIP candidate, giving Butler and Green a push. But the emergence of Whiteside -- despite his recent, uh, on-court behavioral slippage -- continues to be one of the stories of the season.
Plenty of maturity/dependability questions still persist about Whiteside. As recently as March 11, ESPN.com's Tom Haberstroh alarmingly tweeted that Whiteside has the highest rate of technical fouls and flagrant fouls, per minute, in the league.
But Whiteside isn't just some young player thriving now because he's getting his first big opportunity. It's often forgotten that he was drafted in 2010 by Sacramento, only to find himself in exile in Lebanon after playing his way out of the NBA thanks to such a troubled start with the Kings.
Butler's jump from a 13.1 points-per-game man last season to an All-Star averaging 20.2 points per game this season remains the ultimate headline-grabber in this category. Whiteside isn't far off, though.
Dennis Wierzbicki/USA TODAY SportsCoach of the Second Trimester: David Blatt, Cleveland Cavaliers
Nothing has changed in the grand scheme of the Coach of the Year race.It's pretty much a two-man race that finds Golden State's Steve Kerr and Atlanta's Mike Budenholzer far removed from the rest of the profession and no easier to separate than they were when we covered this ground right around Christmas.
However ...
When focused strictly on the season's middle third, no coach enjoyed a more pleasurable or productive spell than Blatt.
The Cavs were 19-20 on Jan. 15. The subject of Blatt's connectivity with his players, and thus his job security, was a fixture of the daily NBA discourse. The position in which he finds himself now, in charge of the team most Las Vegas oddsmakers suddenly favor to win this season's championship, seemed unimaginable at the time.
But Blatt survived the storms. Not unlike his final season at perennial European power Maccabi Tel Aviv. He was nearly fired after an unfathomable 4-3 start in Israeli League play and then rallied all the way to last May's Euroleague crown.
He has gotten a lot of help from Cavs general manager David Griffin, who showed Blatt an enormous amount of support by first emphatically announcing that the rookie coach's job was not under threat and then making trades to acquire big man Timofey Mozgov and the guard duo of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert. The Cavs have been a different team ever since.
It also hasn't hurt that LeBron James -- whose apparent lack of interest in the new-to-the-NBA coach's message wasn't hard to spot in the days and weeks before the hiatus LeBron took right around his 30th birthday -- has been noticeably more engaged since his return.
Tougher tests for Blatt, of course, are bound to come in the playoffs, when these Cavs get their first taste of adversity -- maybe a bad loss or a series deficit or perhaps just a debatable crunch-time decision -- and he experiences a new level of NBA scrutiny. Yet you have to say that it's been somewhat unfair to Blatt that so little has been said over these past few months about how well he rebounded from his early-season duress.
D. Clarke Evans/Getty ImagesEast MVP of the Second Trimester: LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers
The player widely regarded as the greatest on the planet, as the regular season winds down, might very well be headed for a fourth-place finish in the NBA's MVP race.Or, at best, maybe a third-place finish.
That's the sort of strange 2014-15 campaign it's been: LeBron James is in the chasing pack behind Steph Curry and James Harden.
And quite possibly behind Russell Westbrook, too.
Yet it's likewise true that the second trimester of said campaign is when LeBron started looking like LeBron again. The Cavs are 24-6 since he took a two-week hiatus to recharge himself, both mentally and physically. With a PER of 26.08, he has led Cleveland to the league's best record in that span.
And thanks to the ensemble cast that has positioned the Atlanta Hawks with an unblowable lead atop of the East, James is the only name from his conference that you're going to see in the top five once the league office conducts formal MVP voting in April.
This space belonged to Kyle Lowry when First Trimester honors were handed out after Christmas, but LeBron is running unopposed in his conference now.
Trouble is, LeBron is merely fourth in terms of favorites heading down the stretch, according to the latest MVP odds from our pals at Bovada (as shown in the accompanying chart). You'll recall that, coming into the season, 26 of 28 ESPN panelists picked James as their preseason MVP.
Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty ImagesWest MVP of the Second Trimester: Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City Thunder
I don't know if Russell Westbrook can win the actual MVP race even if he continues to flirt with per-game averages that look like they're lifted straight out of the Oscar Robertson playbook.History, remember, tells us that we haven't seen an MVP in the NBA from a team with fewer than 50 wins since Moses Malone of the 46-win Houston Rockets in 1981-82.
History also tells us, furthermore, that you have to go all the way back to the late '50s for the last time one team served up back-to-back MVPs: Bob Cousy and Bill Russell from the Boston Celtics in 1957 and 1958.
There's also still the small matter of the Thunder making the playoffs, which remarkably remains far from clinched at this late date. There's no denying that it's been Westbrook and his defiant stat-stuffing spree without the ailing Kevin Durant that truly livened up this season's MVP discourse and made it a full-fledged race as opposed to a two-man duel.
James Harden and Steph Curry, for the record, remain at the top of my as-we-speak MVP ballot, with basically one month left to separate them. Harden has the slightest of edges at the top for his continued all-around offensive dominance in propping up the Houston Rockets in the absence of the injured Dwight Howard. And Curry is right there as the clear-cut catalyst and tone-setter for the team sporting the league's best record, having made a decent run at a 50/40/90 shooting season while stepping up his D to show so well in categories such as steals (third) and real plus/minus (first).
The matter at hand, however, is specifically what happened in the season's middle third.
Which, as well you know, is when Angry Russ happened.
Here are Westbrook's averages sans Durant since Feb. 1: 32.3 points, 10.2 assists and 9.3 rebounds per game. I repeat: I don't know if he can ultimately hoist the Maurice Podoloff Trophy, even with such gaudy numbers, when his team is still scrapping so hard just to snag the West's No. 8 seed and just lost Serge Ibaka. Yet he certainly deserves this mythical trophy while we all await the answer ... and wait to see what he has in store without Durant or Ibaka flanking him.
Gary Dineen/NBAE/Getty ImagesRookie of the Second Trimester: Andrew Wiggins, Minnesota Timberwolves
Can't sugarcoat this.Assessing NBA rookies, as a collective, gets bleaker with every passing season.
The season-ending injuries suffered by Julius Randle and Jabari Parker as well as the absence of Joel Embiid slimmed down a rookie class that didn't need an ounce of slimming. It would be more accurate, as a result, to refer to the modest clutch of players we can actually evaluate as a small study group as opposed to an actual class.
Nerlens Noel. Nikola Mirotic. Elfrid Payton.
And the overwhelming Rookie of the Year favorite: Andrew Wiggins.
Who else could we even consider here?
Mirotic happens to be the only rook in the league this season besides Wiggins who can claim more than two 20-point games. Noel has averaged 12.5 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots since the All-Star break -- and Mirotic has rallied back to a solid level of productivity in the wake of Chicago's injuries suffered by Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler -- but Wiggins has the field lapped.
Dismiss his numbers as empty production on a bad team if you wish, but Wiggins is the only 2014 draftee thus far to flash undeniable star potential. Which suggests we could well have a unanimous Rookie of the Year winner looming.
Chris Nicoll/USA TODAY SportsDefensive Player of the Second Trimester: Rudy Gobert, Utah Jazz
One handy tweet from the Utah Jazz earlier this week makes the case quite neatly.Click to that tweet and you'll see that since the All-Star break, when the rise to prominence of Jazz big man Rudy Gobert really began to go viral, Utah ranks:
Draymond Green, DeAndre Jordan and Tim Duncan -- who, amazingly, has never won the DPOY trophy despite being selected by the coaches to the NBA's All-Defensive Team in 14 of his 17 seasons -- are also all prime contenders for this award when ballots are cast in a month's time. Andrew Bogut, Kawhi Leonard and Serge Ibaka would all be right there, too, if not for their respective bouts with injury.
Yet it's Gobert who has undeniably emerged as the NBA's most feared rim protector, limiting opponents to 38.9 percent shooting at the basket, which is the lowest figure for any player who defends at least five shots per game.
So let's just say that another first-time winner of this award, following in the footsteps of recent DPOY honorees Joakim Noah, Marc Gasol and Tyson Chandler, seems likely.
Interesting indeed.
Ron Hoskins/Getty ImagesSixth Man of the Second Trimester: Rodney Stuckey, Indiana Pacers
The Pacers are playing out their 2013-14 season in reverse with this unforeseen 9-4 surge since All-Star Weekend -- even before welcoming Paul George back -- after they had sunk to 15-30 without George at their low point.And one of the biggest reasons they have been turning that script around -- with memories of last season's alarming fade into the playoffs still fresh -- is the increasing number of quality performances from Rodney Stuckey as a non-starter.
At season's end, Stuckey won't have enough appearances as a reserve to actually qualify for Sixth Man award consideration. But when we're strictly looking at the middle third of the season, he has been the prototypical game-changer off the bench, entering Wednesday's play at 19.2 points per game on 51.7 percent shooting in a run of 13 straight appearances as a sixth man. He also shot 47.8 percent from 3-point range, emerging as the Pacers' leading scorer in that stretch.
Houston's Corey Brewer is having a similar impact with his new team, getting precious little publicity for his valuable efforts in assisting James Harden with the heavy lifting required to keep the Rockets in the West's top four despite the ongoing absence of Dwight Howard. Since Brewer's arrival from Minnesota in December, Houston allows 4.8 fewer points per 100 possessions when Brewer is on the floor (98.9) compared to when he's not (103.7).
He also has averaged a helpful 12.6 points in under 25 minutes per game as a Rocket, briefly flashing his own ability to let loose Harden-style by scoring 17 fourth-quarter points in a recent memorable duel with Portland.
Common sense says that the eventual Sixth Man award winner is likely to come from perennial favorites such as two-time winner Jamal Crawford and the timeless Manu Ginobili as well as Isaiah Thomas, Marreese Speights and Louis Williams. But this was our opportunity to spotlight Stuckey and Brewer.
So we took it.
Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty ImagesSpeights has provided a spark off the bench for the league-leading Warriors.Sixth Man of the First Trimester: Marreese Speights, Golden State
The race to be recognized as the best sixth man in the league is everything the Jimmy Butler-dominated MIP race usually is.
Crowded, for starters.
And legitimately complicated with a double-digit list of candidates.
The Los Angeles Clippers' Jamal Crawford has a league-high 12 20-point games as a non-starter and might well win this award come springtime for a record third time. Chicago's Taj Gibson and San Antonio's ever-reliable Manu Ginobili are wreaking their usual across-the-board havoc off the bench. The Phoenix Suns have two legit contenders here in Isaiah Thomas and Gerald Green. New Orleans' Ryan Anderson, assuming his 3-point stroke picks up from its current reading of .332, is likewise bound to have a say in the matter by season's end. Portland's Chris Kaman has made a strong first impression on Blazermaniacs ... and we've been admittedly hooked on Utah shot-changer Rudy Gobert -- no matter how much his young team is struggling in the unforgiving West -- since catching him at the World Cup last summer in France's upset of mighty Spain.
For now, though, our focus is on two sixth men whose importance has only grown in the wake of significant injuries their clubs have absorbed: Golden State's Marreese Speights and Toronto's Louis Williams.
The slight edge here, for now, belongs to Speights, who is averaging a rugged 11.9 points and 5.1 rebounds in just 17.4 minutes per game as a central figure to the Warriors' approach to coping with Andrew Bogut's knee woes. If he can find a way to nudge his scoring average up a tick and his regular allotment of court time holds, Speights has a chance to become the first player in league history to average 12-plus points and five-plus boards in fewer than 18 minutes nightly.
Williams, meanwhile, has helped Toronto weather the loss of DeMar DeRozan by bringing another dose of fearlessness to the Raptors' backcourt alongside Kyle Lowry. He's never afraid to take the big shots and averages 14.6 points per game to complement a heady PER of 20.6.
Which almost puts him in Speights' territory (21.81) and makes this pick even more agonizing.
Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty ImagesJames Harden, who is having a career season, is leading the West MVP race.West MVP of the First Trimester: James Harden, Houston
It has become commonplace on Mondays, when ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings go live, to see Western Conference teams occupy the first five, six or even seven spots.
The same thing would undoubtedly occur if we didn't award separate MVPs in each conference at Trimester time.
James Harden. Steph Curry. Marc Gasol. Anthony Davis. Maybe even Russell Westbrook.
I'm pretty sure all of them would rank ahead of the East's most worthy nominees if real-life MVP voting were being conducted this week … with DeMarcus Cousins likely to have joined all those Westerners at the front of the line if his season hadn't been derailed by that scary bout of viral meningitis.
The superstar wars are so deep out West that the likes of Damian Lillard, Chris Paul and a back-with-a-vengeance Westbrook have struggled to generate much MVP buzz. Harden and Curry, especially, are hogging most of it.
I have to admit I was tempted, as we did with our Eastern Conference picks, to go with Davis as my First Trimester selection, knowing that The Brow's Pelicans aren't going to win enough over the course of 82 games to give the 21-year-old much hope of a shot at the actual trophy in a league that hasn't delivered an MVP from a team with fewer than 50 wins since Houston's Moses Malone in 1982. With that otherworldly PER of 32.57, Davis really can't get enough recognition, even if New Orleans can take a step up from its current 42-win pace.
Ultimately, though, I couldn't deny Harden. Curry is right there, too, in terms of capitalizing on the West MVP void unexpectedly created by Kevin Durant's foot and ankle woes, given what Golden State has achieved despite playing for long stretches without Andrew Bogut and David Lee. The Beard, though, has uncorked three 40-point games in December alone on top of the sterling 8-4 record that the Harden-led Rockets have managed with Dwight Howard out injured.
The numbers have to be gaudy to trump the driving force behind Golden State's recent 16-game win streak. And here they are: Harden is averaging career highs in rebounds (6.3) and assists (7.1) per game, along with a career-best PER reading (26.54), in support of the league's top scoring average to date (27.2 PPG).
Defensive Player of the First Trimester
December, 27, 2014
12/27/14
12:30
PM ET
By
Marc Stein | ESPN.com
AP Photo/Eric GayTim Duncan doesn't appear to be slowing down, averaging 10.8 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game.Defensive Player of the First Trimester: Tim Duncan, San Antonio
Gregg Popovich made it pretty clear the other night what he was hoping for this Christmas.
A few more Spurs, namely, playing with as much tangible care and desire as Tim Duncan.
Pop understands better than most that Duncan is giving San Antonio more than any team should reasonably expect from a 38-year-old, who happens to turn 39 during the first week of the playoffs in April. And he doesn't want Duncan's age-defying effort and effectiveness to go to waste.
A third of the way through his 18th NBA season, Duncan has been the league's most impressive defensive force. Despite the frequent injury absences of key defenders Tiago Splitter and Kawhi Leonard, San Antonio ranks No. 6 in the league in defensive efficiency, thanks largely to Duncan's work as the Spurs' anchor.
Duncan remains one of the league's top five shot-blockers despite his advanced age and is surely playing more (at 32.1 minutes per game) than his coach wants to be using him during the regular season. But it must be hard for even Pop to resist when Duncan sits atop ESPN.com's shiny new DRPM table, which estimates a player's on-court impact defensively based on points allowed per 100 possessions.
Golden State and Houston have consistently ranked in the top two in defensive efficiency throughout the season's first 30 (or so) games, but Andrew Bogut and Dwight Howard have missed eight and 12 games, respectively.
Chicago's Joakim Noah, Memphis' Marc Gasol, Milwaukee's Larry Sanders, Oklahoma City's Serge Ibaka, Dallas' Tyson Chandler and the Los Angeles Clippers' DeAndre Jordan are six more big men who have undeniably made their presence felt defensively -- as has Sacramento's oft-chided DeMarcus Cousins when healthy -- but it has to be Duncan leading the DPOY race, on this scorecard, heading into Trimester 2.
Getty ImagesKyle Lowry and John Wall are pointing the Raptors and Wizards in the right direction early in 2014-15.East MVP of the First Trimester: Kyle Lowry, Toronto
The numbers, as Adam Sandler might say this time of year, are really not too shabby.
Averages of 25.4 points, 7.6 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game wrapped in a PER of 25.4 that still ranks No. 1 among every single basketball player whose address can be found on the Eastern half of the conference divide?
I wish I were slipping in my old age like LeBron James.
But you know by now how we operate at First Trimester time. Although LeBron could easily (and justifiably) serve as our selection here, it's true that we tend to favor candidates at this stage whose chances of figuring in the real-life MVP race come April are on the long-shot side.
Just to show them a little love that likely won't be forthcoming later.
Allow us, then, to slight King James for a trimester and focus on two lead guards playing the best ball of their lives. Ask us to pinpoint the most impactful player in the poor Leastern Conference so far and we find ourselves flip-flopping between Kyle Lowry and John Wall.
Right.
Might as well flip a coin.
If you were forced to choose one to build around in drafting mode, Wall would naturally have the edge as a certifiable max guy known for playing at top gear. He awoke Friday morning averaging a robust 18.0 points, 10.5 assists and 4.7 boards, good for a PER of 21.3 as the high-speed force behind Washington's 20-8 start despite being forced to play without backcourt sidekick Bradley Beal for the season's first nine games.
Statistically, though, Lowry has the edge for now. Narrowly.
With All-Star backcourt mate DeMar DeRozan missing the entire month through injury, Lowry is shooting .407 on 3-pointers in December while hiki ng his PER into the NBA's top 10 at a heady 24.0. Lowry is basically a 20-8-and-5 guy now and has nudged Toronto all the way up to No. 2 in the league in offensive efficiency (111.7 points per 100 possessions) as well as No. 2 in average nightly point margin at a healthy plus-8.1.
I'm guessing King James will understand, with his Cavs off to such an uneven start, once he reads those last two paragraphs again.
Chris Humphreys/USA TODAY SportsNikola Mirotic has made an immediate impact with the Bulls after six years playing in Spain.Rookie Of The First Trimester: Nikola Mirotic, Chicago
A draft for the ages, huh?
Not quite.
Not yet.
The NBA's much-hyped Class of 2014, as a collective, is in the midst of a thoroughly forgettable and deflating introduction to the pros. Only two rookies -- Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker -- are scoring in double figures. And that's with Wiggins leading all rookies at a mere 12.6 points per game, with Parker, after going No. 2 overall, suddenly out for the season after a knee tear that has sadly shelved him just like No. 3 pick Joel Embiid (foot), No. 4 Aaron Gordon (foot) and No. 7 Julius Randle (leg).
So you could make the argument, in this climate, that we should have skipped this category entirely for Trimester purposes. The problem there is that some youngster is eventually going to win Rookie of the Year honors in late April or early May, no matter how underwhelming his production might be, so we're somewhat duty-bound to try to identify a leader at the one-third stage.
Which brings us to Mirotic.
Perhaps he's not a rookie in the truest sense after spending more than half a decade in Real Madrid's system before finally matriculating to Chicago, but what qualifies as big league production from Mirotic in the month of December -- averages of 10.9 points, 5.9 rebounds and .419 shooting from 3-point range -- is enough to put him in the lead.
Who else could we conceivably propose here? Wiggins and Nerlens Noel have shown occasional flashes, as has Noel's Philly teammate K.J. McDaniels, but none of those more celebrated recent draftees is clearly on an upward career arc at this juncture.
As of Christmas morning, Mirotic was the only rookie in circulation with a PER above the league average of 15.0, sitting at a promising 18.2. No. 11 overall pick Doug McDermott was actually supposed to be Chicago's marquee rookie, but McDermott's own Year 1 knee woes have helped open the door for his 23-year-old fellow rook to establish himself as a rotation player.
Who else can say so, for teams with legit playoff aspirations, besides Houston's Kostas Papanikolaou or Brooklyn's Bojan Bogdanovic?
It also doesn't hurt Mirotic's Trimester cause that his new Three-kola nickname, meant to be shouted with the gusto of the guy in the Ricola cough drops commercials, is pretty catchy.
Most Improved Player of the First Trimester
December, 26, 2014
12/26/14
11:30
AM ET
By
Marc Stein | ESPN.com
Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty ImagesJimmy Butler, the East's reigning Player of the Month, is the early runaway favorite for MIP honors.Most Improved Player of the First Trimester: Jimmy Butler, Chicago
After years and years (and years) of whining from us about how hard it is to sift through the wide range of players who are nominated for this award and then zero in on a name or three, 2014-15 appears poised to give us our first overwhelming MIP favorite in memory.
Have to believe Chicago's Jimmy Butler would be a unanimous hoister of the MIP trophy if the voting were done on Christmas.
Even with Draymond Green making his own mega-leap in Golden State, what Butler has achieved defies explanation, even after we've had a couple of months to let the transformation sink in. He's hiked his shooting percentage from .397 last season to .483, which bumped his scoring average from 13.1 PPG to 21.6 PPG and, more than any other Bull, has helped Tom Thibodeau cope with the steady stream of injuries Chicago has faced by happily taking on a league-leading 40.1 minutes per game.
He's tireless. The offensive spike means he's now an impact player at both ends. And Butler has been seen taking shifts at every position but center, which is why Green -- despite his transformative emergence as a perimeter threat out West -- would have to make another leap in-season to close the gap on the guy setting the MIP pace.
The guy who won Eastern Conference Player of the Month honors for October/November out of nowhere.
Rewind to Halloween and Butler was in the headlines thanks to his thoroughly unsatisfying contract extension talks with the Bulls, who were unwilling to offer more than $40-44 million over four years. Now? Butler and agent Happy Walters look rather wise to have opted for patience, with rival GMs routinely saying that Butler is on course to generate four-year max offers as a restricted free agent come July, a la Gordon Hayward last summer from Charlotte.
Best of all? Butler and Green have been so good that we don't even have to launch into our usual speech about how second-year players (like our beloved Dennis Schroder and Giannis Antetokounmpo) and high lottery picks who are supposed to keep developing toward stardom (like Klay Thompson and that Anthony Davis kid) really aren't the sorts of candidates we're looking for in keeping with the true spirit of this award.
An agony-free MIP dissertation?
Butler did it.
Scott Cunningham/NBAE/Getty ImagesAfter a tumultuous offseason in Atlanta, Mike Budenholzer has the Hawks near the top of the East.Coach of the First Trimester: Mike Budenholzer, Atlanta
I know what you're going to say.
You only picked Budenholzer to make yourself look good, Stein.
I get it, too. That's a natural leap to make if you've paid close enough attention to recall that, on both the pages of ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, Budenholzer was my preseason Coach of the Year pick.
Yet I would argue, in response, that you're being overly conspiratorial. Look at Atlanta's roster. Look at the Hawks' record. Look at what they've done these past two weeks alone after everyone dismissed their 16-7 start by citing an easy early schedule.
Don't forget, furthermore, all the Danny Ferry-related turmoil Atlanta lugged into the season and the stability Budenholzer has provided. The Hawks don't have an obvious All-Star and are challenging for the Eastern Conference lead, which is a significant achievement no matter how underwhelming two-thirds of the East looks.
The hard part here, of course, is choosing Budenholzer over Steve Kerr, whose recent 16-game winning streak fell one shy of the record for rookie coaches ... just one win shy of the 17-gamer that a certain Arnold "Red" Auerbach enjoyed as the first-year coach of the Washington Capitols back in 1946-47.
Kerr has made an immediate impact in Golden State, simultaneously making a mockery of the notion -- which yours truly bought into -- that replacing a coach as popular with his players as Mark Jackson would be problematic. Kerr had the Warriors in the top five in offensive and defensive efficiency when he awoke on Christmas morning, spicing things up at the fun end with more ball and player movement without the Dubs losing anything on D ... even with anchor/rim protector Andrew Bogut playing all of two minutes in Golden State's past nine games.
We're simply giving the slightest of nods to Budenholzer, one-third of the way in, because he has less overall talent and less of a ready-made squad when the season started given Al Horford's gradual return from injury. It must be said, though, that the narrow margins here are reminiscent of how taut things are in the West MVP race.
Other names to earn serious COFT consideration: Portland's Terry Stotts, Houston's Kevin McHale, Toronto's Dwane Casey and Milwaukee's Jason Kidd, who has almost matched Milwaukee's 2013-14 win total with 63 games left on its schedule.
Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty ImagesKevin Durant has put together an offensive season that knows few equals.Most Valuable Player: Kevin Durant, Thunder
The 2013-14 MVP race in the NBA should not be as one-sided as ESPN Forecast says it is. Not to me, anyway.
It's rather hard to rationalize the sort of gap between Kevin Durant and LeBron James that survey generated when you remember that Dwyane Wade has missed 28 of Miami's 80 games.
That's only six fewer games than the 34 missed by Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City, which is a stat that’s generally regarded as one of the pillars of Durant's MVP case.
But when we ask ourselves which of these two titans had the better overall season, bearing in mind what their anticipated ceilings were individually and how their teams fared in the face of their respective competition and injuries, Durant has the edge.
It's his time, his turn, whether or not you see the edge as slight or pronounced.
He's about to win his fourth scoring title by nearly five points per game ahead of Carmelo Anthony, which would represent the third-largest gap in league history. You're surely already well-acquainted with a stat touting Durant as just the fourth player ever -- after Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan -- to average at least 32 points, seven rebounds and five assists for an entire season. He’s also about to become the first player since Jordan in 1989-90 to average at least 33 points in three successive months with his January/February/March onslaught. And he's the first player since -- who else? -- His Airness in 1991-92 to average 30+ points and shoot at least 50 percent from the floor.
Durant, to be precise, was shooting 50.6 percent from the field, 39.9 percent from 3-point range and 87.3 percent from the line entering Sunday's play, all of which feeds into a gaudy PER reading of 30.2.
I thought for the longest time that LeBron still had a chance to squeeze past Durant at the finish -- after a preposterous surge of his own sandwiched around both sides of All-Star Weekend to remind us all that James had won four of the previous five MVPs -- as long as Miami found a way to swipe the No. 1 seed in the East away from Indiana just before the regular-season buzzer. And that might well still happen.
But I’d argue that the Thunder, while forced to settle for No. 2 in the West thanks to San Antonio’s ruthlessly efficient ensemble cast, have won more than enough to validate Durant’s candidacy, given that OKC not only swept the four-game season series from the Spurs but also brought a halt to San Antonio winning streaks spanning 11 and 19 games.
It also doesn’t hurt that those doing-it-by-committee Spurs don’t really have a viable MVP candidate of their own, isolating KD versus LeBron at the forefront of this race even more.
As for the rest of the five-man MVP ballot …
Surges from Blake Griffin and Joakim Noah after the calendar flipped to 2014 have swayed us like everyone else, which is truthfully somewhat harsh on Indiana’s Paul George, given that the Pacers’ ridiculous 33-7 start gave them an equally valuable cushion on Miami that amazingly still has enough air left to give Indy a shot to finish atop the East entering the final four days of the season.
So the No. 5 spot on our ballot has to stay somewhat flexible. We’re listing the slumping George there for now after Miami’s loss Saturday night in Atlanta gave the Pacers yet another shot to hang onto the home-court advantage for the Eastern Conference finals that they’ve seemed determined for the past month to throw away. But be advised that Golden State’s Steph Curry, Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki, Houston’s James Harden, Phoenix’s Goran Dragic and Charlotte’s Al Jefferson are among the other names waiting to pounce on George’s spot should we feel the need to recalibrate after seeing the final standings Wednesday night.
Stein’s ballot: 1. Kevin Durant; 2. LeBron James; 3. Blake Griffin; 4. Joakim Noah; 5. Paul George
October prediction: James
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