14 Responses to “Mini-Mailbag: MVP Winners, Team Winning %, & SRS”

1. P Middy Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 11:45 am

   Whiteness counts (2006)

2. P Middy Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 11:49 am

   2007 for that matter too. How does KG not get it that year?

   Also, my MVP from 2005-2010 with the exception of 2007 is LeBron. Easily.

3. Neil Paine Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 11:50 am

   I thought it was because he was Canadian...?

4. P Middy Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 11:55 am

   Nobody would willingly vote for a flappy headed Molson drinker if their deep, deep racism did not demand it.

5. P Middy Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 11:56 am

   (these are jokes)

6. Nerd Numbers Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 12:35 pm

   Neil,
   Awesome stuff! I looked at this a bit too and found that if you used the requirement of the MVP being on a top 4 seed that the voters did a fair job voting in the right winner with one exception. What are your thoughts on A.I in 2001? (my numbers say winning team + player contribution = should have been Shaq)

7. AYC Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 2:38 pm

   Shaq in 01 was in a similar position to MJ in 93. The Bulls dropped from 67w the previous year to 57w, allowing Charles to sneak in an MVP. For Shaq in 01, the Lakers dropped from 67w to 56w. Expectations and past dominance certainly are considerations for voters.

8. Matt Johnson Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 3:40 pm

   It's not so clear to me that SRS should be given more weight in MVP rating than W-L.

   Don't get me wrong - when I rate a player's ability and career accomplishments, I always use the SRS as a sanity check on W-L. I do understand there is luck involved in winning close games.

   However, I don't necessarily think trying removing luck from the equation is necessarily a valid way to approach value contributed. When a player goes off and scores 50+ points, he's absolutely having a lucky game. He can't possibly keep that up, but what are we supposed to do, pretend he didn't help his team more in that game than he does on average? We factor in that luck when thinking about who the best player is, but the MVP is about what actually did happen, not what could have happened, or what was most likely to have happened.

9. Dwight Howard Says:
   February 11th, 2011 at 10:04 pm

   Nene's name is not "Nene Hilario" as his basketball-reference page suggests; his name is now legally just "Nene" and the nba lists him as such. He was born Maybyner Rodney Hilário.

10. Matt Says:
    February 11th, 2011 at 11:09 pm

    It takes a truly extraordinary effort to get an MVP with your team outside of the top 4 in win %.

    Going strictly by win shares leader per year, it doesn't look like MVP voters do a very good job.

    http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ws_yearly.html

11. Mike Goodman Says:
    February 12th, 2011 at 7:31 am

    How about the possibility that as MVP hype builds over the course of the season, the refs are swept up in the hysteria and call close games in favor of the mvp-hopeful's team?

    Almost every year of late, the media has declared one candidate from the East and one from the West, by midseason. This year's a bit off that trend, as every team has taken a turn at stumbling. But the best player appears to be on the best team, so ...

12. Mike Goodman Says:
    February 12th, 2011 at 7:48 am

    Only tangentially related, but are the Spurs the weakest team to ever sport a .800 record this late in the season? They're on pace to win 68 games. (.830) with a SRS of 6.85 .

    No other team has won even 65 games with such an unexceptional SRS. The '06 Pistons come closest with 63 wins and 6.69 SRS.

    When's the last time an elite W% team had not even a remote MVP candidate?

13. Mike Goodman Says:
    February 12th, 2011 at 7:56 am

    Sorry, the 2006 Pistons won 64 games and had SRS of 6.23
    http://bkref.com/tiny/bzEcR

    Billups did get some MVP buzz that year. He has 15.5 Win Shares (3rd in the league), got to his 1st All-Star game and all-NBA (2nd team).

14. Kelly Says:
    February 13th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

    Here's the thing though. How much of that accounts for vote splitting? Voters aren't looking just at top 3 records either.