The numbers or the narrative?
That seemingly simple question has become a complicated chicken-or-the-egg dance in the NBA when it comes to assessing candidates for the league’s Most Valuable Player award. In an era when more and more players are filling deeper corners of the box score, a raw accounting of the statistics a player compiles has become only part of the equation.
The narrative is a powerful multiplier to a candidate’s case. The story about what a player is doing during a particular season — successfully battling Father Time (LeBron James); leading a team to a runaway first-place finish (Giannis Antetokounmpo, the past two seasons); making easy-to-identify history (Russel Westbrook, triple-double average in ’16-’17); excelling while overcoming adversity (Kevin Durant’s candidacy this season) — can launch an MVP campaign by capturing the imaginations of fans and voters alike. The numbers have to be the foundation, of…
