Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Eh - like I said, I went into the exercise fully expecting to find exactly that. Didn't happen.
James was a metronome, don't get me wrong. Stellar every one of those years. But there were better seasons from players that came and went around him. In my 'perfect world' scenario you get:
'04 -- Garnett
05 -- Dirk, Duncan OR Garnett (but not James)
06 -- Dirk
07 -- Dirk
08 -- Honestly? Probably Chris Paul. He was amazing. Then KG and James
09 -- Easy James. One of the best seasons ever.
10 -- James
11 -- James
12 -- James
13 -- James (his best ever season, IMO)
14 -- Durant
15 -- Curry
16 -- Curry
17 -- Kawhi but he missed a lot of games so maybe Harden
18 -- Harden (gross)
19 -- Giannis
20 -- Giannis
21 through 24 - Jokic
I've italicized his 4 best 'arguable' seasons and bolded the screw job. Again, I wouldn't have given him the MVP in any of them but even if I take the diplomatic 'split em' approach I took to Jordan, he gets 2 of those 'close' decisions to go with the added bold one and gets to 7.
Jordan was more dominant for his era. Argue it we because of lesser competition if you want, but it's the reality of it.
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LeBron had 9 years where he led the league in VORP (2005-2013 and 2017-2018) and 2 other years where he was 2nd (2004-2005 and 2013-2014) and 2 others where he was 3rd (2015-2016 and 2019-2020):
https://www.basketball-reference.com...rp_top_10.html
You've got Dirk and CP3 (amazing players, no doubt) winning MVP in some of those LeBron Cavs years, but LeBron was the best player in basketball in that period. He just was playing with teams that were quite awful around him.
MJ also had 9 years where he led the league in VORP (1986-1993 and then 1995-1997) and 2 other years where he was 2nd (1984-1985 and 1997-1998).
I think you could easily make the case that both of them should have won at least double the amount of MVPs they won.