1. Award Picks: As the NBA season reaches a finish, we don’t have too much to do but wait for the playoffs. While we don’t pay too much attention to the post-season awards, this is a perfect time to throw in my two cents as to whom the awards should go to: –Rookie of the Year: This can be a funny award. Most years, the best rookie is clear cut but some years it’s a bit of mystery. Usually, it turns to a competition between who is best as rookie versus who seems like the best player long term. While long term projectability shouldn’t have any consequence as to who was the best rookie, such issues can’t help but affect voters, who don’t want to miss the potential star. This year is just such a situation. Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook look like the potential stars long term but Brook Lopez and Kevin Love are clearly higher efficiency players right now, if lacking in flash. Throw in Lopez’s solid defense in the middle and it seems like he is the best of the bunch. Should Rose and Westbrook get any credit for being a solid starting point guard at age 20? Frankly, there is no satisfying answer here because Lopez and Love aren’t significantly better than Rose. Given all these facts, we take Rose by a hair over Lopez.
As a side note, I’m wondering how often the rookie of the year was the actual best player in the long run. Let’s take a look at the rookies of the year over the last few decades and see how it turned out:
| Year | ROY | Best Career |
| 1979-80 | Larry Bird | Magic Johnson |
| 1980-81 | Darrell Griffith | Kevin McHale |
| 1981-82 | Buck Williams | Isiah Thomas |
| 1982-83 | Terry Cummings | Dominique Wilkins |
| 1983-84 | Ralph Sampson | Clyde Drexler |
| 1984-85 | Michael Jordan | Michael Jordan |
| 1985-86 | Patrick Ewing | Karl Malone |
| 1986-87 | Chuck Person | Jeff Hornacek |
| 1987-88 | Mark Jackson | Scottie Pippen |
| 1988-89 | Mitch Richmond | Mitch Richmond |
| 1989-90 | David Robinson | David Robinson |
| 1990-91 | Derrick Coleman | Gary Payton |
| 1991-92 | Larry Johnson | Dikembe Mutombo |
| 1992-93 | Shaquille O’Neal | Shaquille O’Neal |
| 1993-94 | Chris Webber | Chris Webber |
| 1994-95 | Jason Kidd/Grant Hill | Jason Kidd |
| 1995-96 | Damon Stoudemire | Kevin Garnett |
| 1996-97 | Allen Iverson | Kobe Bryant |
| 1997-98 | Tim Duncan | Tim Duncan |
| 1998-99 | Vince Carter | Dirk Nowitzki |
| 1999-00 | Elton Brand/Steve Francis | Elton Brand |
| 2000-01 | Mike Miller | Michael Redd |
| 2001-02 | Pau Gasol | Pau Gasol |
| 2002-03 | Amare Stoudemire | Amare Stoudemire |
| 2003-04 | LeBron James | LeBron James |
| 2004-05 | Emeka Okafor | Dwight Howard |
| 2005-06 | Chris Paul | Chris Paul |
| 2006-07 | Brandon Roy | Brandon Roy |
| 2007-08 | Kevin Durant | Kevin Durant |
Obviously, determining who the best player in a draft is a subjective judgment in most cases. For example, choosing Magic as better than Bird is really just slicing hairs when the differences are negligible. Moreover, it’s probably premature to lock in who will have the best career the last few years (it’s an open question if Amare will end up better for his career than Yao Ming). Still, we can review the results and determine how often the voters were found or were close to finding the best player overall. From 1979-80 to 1987-88, the voters found the best player only once (MJ) and were pretty much correct one other time (Bird). But starting in 1988-89, the voters started to do a little bit better, finding the best player 13 times in 20 years and pretty close to on target a few more times (Iverson, VC).
–Defensive Player of the Year: Without having a specific defensive metric, voters generally look at the blocks or steals leader and go from there. This year, Chris Paul is dominating the steals category (he has 0.7 more steals per game than his closest competitor) and Dwight Howard has a commanding lead in blocks (0.5 bpg more than Chris Andersen). The Hornets haven’t actually been a great defensive team, while the Magic are second in defensive efficiency. As tough as Howard has been, my pick is more out of the blue. The Celtics have defended excellently all year, even since Kevin Garnett has been out. While the coaching staff has been a huge factor, I’m convinced that Rajon Rondo (who I previously felt was overrated) is a big reason why the team stays so tough without KG. Based on this fact, I lean toward Rondo as defensive player of the year slighlty over Howard.
Incidentally, did you ever wonder how good this award has correlated to team defense? Let’s look at the winner each year (the award was created in 1982-83) and see his team’s actual defensive ranking:
1982-83: Sidney Moncrief, Milwaukee (6th of 23)
1983-84: Sidney Moncrief, Milwaukee (2nd of 23)
1984-85: Mark Eaton, Utah (1st of 23)
1985-86: Alvin Robertson, San Antonio (16th of 23)
1986-87: Michael Cooper, L.A. Lakers (7th of 23)
1987-88: Michael Jordan, Chicago (3rd of 23)
1988-89: Mark Eaton, Utah (1st of 25)
1989-90: Dennis Rodman, Detroit (2nd of 27)
1990-91: Dennis Rodman, Detroit (4th of 27)
1991-92: David Robinson, San Antonio (1st of 27)
1992-93: Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston (3rd of 27)
1993-94: Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston (2nd of 27)
1994-95: Dikembe Mutombo, Denver (14th of 27)
1995-96: Gary Payton, Seattle (2nd of 29)
1996-97: Dikembe Mutombo, Atlanta (3rd of 29)
1997-98: Dikembe Mutombo, Atlanta (13th of 29)
1998-99: Alonzo Mourning, Miami (8th of 29)
1999-00: Alonzo Mourning, Miami (7th of 29)
2000-01: Dikembe Mutombo, Philadelphia (5th of 29)
2001-02: Ben Wallace, Detroit (8th of 29)
2002-03: Ben Wallace, Detroit (4th of 29)
2003-04: Ron Artest, Indiana (3rd of 29)
2004-05: Ben Wallace, Detroit (3rd of 30)
2005-06: Ben Wallace, Detroit (5th of 30)
2006-07: Marcus Camby, Denver (11th of 30)
2007-08: Kevin Garnett, Boston (1st of 30)
The DPY was generally the best defender on the best (or near the best) team. So, again, the voters have done pretty well. The only real oddity here is Cooper getting the award while coming off the bench for a good but not great defensive team. Cooper was a great defender but it’s unlikely that he was better than Eaton or Jordan. The real issue here, of course, is that we need to seem some sort of better defensive stats to measure players, as anecdotal evidence and block/steals only leave us wondering if we are catching everything.
-Sixth Man of the Year: Manu Ginobili had a bead on this award until injuries totally killed his season. Now we are forced to choose between plenty of pretty good candidates: Jason Terry, Lamar Odom, Nate Robinson, Leandro Barbosa, and Kevin Love. You hate to be dogmatic in assessing the candidates but it seems that a lot more weight should be given to players on good teams. Being a great bench player on bad team (Robinson, Love) shouldn’t be held against someone but you do wonder why the player isn’t starting if the starters aren’t conferring an advantage to begin with. While we could debate whether it’s fair to hold team accomplishments against a sixth man, the issue is academic here because Jason Terry has had the best year of the bunch.
–Most Improved Player: Here’s an award that I really don’t care too much about. The main reason is that this is a hard award to assess. Do we award a good young player who is naturally improving, the vet who gets to another level, the sudden improvement that surprises everyone, or someone else entirely? I like to choose someone who cuts across these categories.
Devin Harris and Danny Granger have gone from nice young players to potential stars but their progress is nice but not entirely surprising from past performance. Jameer Nelson would’ve been a perfect candidate because he gut across all criteria, he was younger with some potential but improving more than expected without seeming flukish. Unfortunately, injuries knocked him out of the running. Paul Millsap is another interesting candidate and has gone from a nice young bench player to a bona fide starter but his rate stats are only up a bit what they were as a role player, which is what you might expect for any player who gets more playing time (for that same reason, Rodney Stuckey isn’t a great candidate). Nene has improved a bit but this is more a comeback from injury than a new level of development. In the end, I think Millsap is the closest to my definition of a “most improved.”
–Most Valuable Player: No matter how you value an MVP, LeBron James seems to me the clear choice. Want the guy with the best raw numbers? LeBron. Want the best player on the best team? LeBron. Want the most popular star? LeBron. Want the player with the best PER or more advanced metric? LeBron does it again. Just for fun, though, let’s put him up against the other potential candidates:
| Player | MPG | PPG | FG% | RPG | APG | SPG | BPG | TOPG | PER |
| LeBron James | 37.8 | 28.3 | 0.487 | 7.7 | 7.2 | 1.7 | 1.2 | 2.9 | 31.6 |
| Kobe Bryant | 36.3 | 27.0 | 0.466 | 5.3 | 4.9 | 1.5 | 0.5 | 2.6 | 24.3 |
| Chris Paul | 38.4 | 22.6 | 0.501 | 5.4 | 11.0 | 2.8 | 0.1 | 3.0 | 29.7 |
| Dwyane Wade | 38.5 | 29.9 | 0.488 | 5.0 | 7.5 | 2.2 | 1.4 | 3.5 | 30.0 |
| Dwight Howard | 35.9 | 20.9 | 0.576 | 13.9 | 1.4 | 1.0 | 2.9 | 3.0 | 25.7 |
There are some really impressive players on this list. Paul, as John Hollinger noted, is looking like a potential All-Time great point and Wade is looking similarly great. LeBron’s PER is on a level with Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan in their primes (James’ season is fifth of All-Time right now). Wade and Paul are not that far off either. Still, James’ historic season and his team’s success make him a no-brainer. I agree that Kobe is just nowhere near their ballpark this year (Kobe’s peak years were never quite this good either). Bryant is still a great, great player but he’s now behind James, Paul, and Wade, which is not an insult or shame. Howard is also not quite there offensively with the big three mentioned above. Howard, however, is a beast of a defender, something that can’t be accounted for in the offensive numbers. In fact, I think that Howard’s defensive presence plausibly puts him even with Paul and Wade. Even giving Howard that credit, he still can’t reach James’ historic numbers.