We don’t know yet whether the 2019-20 NBA season is over. But if this is it, I thought it might be nice to take a minute to acknowledge the best of what we watched. This has been a chaotic and challenging campaign, one that began with an international incident over advocacy for free speech in China, saw the deaths of titans David Stern and Kobe Bryant, and now has been derailed by an unprecedented global health crisis. But some pretty great and entertaining shit happened in there, too, thanks to the talent and showmanship of the world’s greatest basketball players.
I don’t have a ballot for the NBA’s year-end awards. If I did, though—and if we had to vote based on the roughly 80 percent of the season that we actually got to see—here’s how I’d have filled it out. We’ll run through all of the awards, one post at a time this week, because we all must do our part right now, and the least I can do is give all of you the opportunity to roast me for my choices.
So, without further ado, let’s hand out some hypothetical hardware. (For reference, here’s my first-, second-, and third-quarter awards this season.) First up: the big one.
Most Valuable Player
1. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks
2. LeBron James, Lakers
3. James Harden, Rockets
4. Anthony Davis, Lakers
5. Kawhi Leonard, Clippers
What LeBron did this season has no precedent in the annals of NBA history. No one in Year 17 or beyond has ever posted a higher value over replacement player—even though James played only 60 games—or more win shares per 48 minutes. No player age 35 or older has ever turned in a better box plus-minus. Only five players ever have averaged at least 20 points, five rebounds, and five assists per game past 35; James topped them all in scoring (25.7 points per game) and assists (10.6), leading the league in dimes for the first time in his career while propelling the Lakers to the top of the Western Conference.
James has been the best player on the best team in his conference, and renewed his commitment to defense to help spark the Lakers’ transformation into one of the league’s toughest units. And as he showed on more than one occasion—most notably during a four-game stretch just before the shutdown in which he powered signature wins over Zion Williamson’s Pelicans, Antetokounmpo’s Bucks, and Leonard’s Clippers—his best can still be better than anyone else’s. (I’m not sure I’d have picked anybody over a healthy LeBron-AD combo in a seven-game series.) He absolutely deserves to be in the MVP conversation; it’s just that, as I wrote a couple of weeks back, that conversation is going to be pretty short.
Antetokounmpo has been the best player on the best team in the league—best by winning percentage, and best by a mile in net rating. (The gap in point differential between the first-place Bucks and second-place Lakers is the same as the difference between L.A. and the no. 10 Nuggets, according to Cleaning the Glass.) Giannis’s 2019-20 ranks fifth all time in player efficiency rating and ninth in BPM. He followed up last season’s MVP run by cranking his usage up to Hardenian levels while maintaining Hardenian scoring efficiency, which seems pretty good for a guy who allegedly lacks skill and only scores because he’s big. And oh, by the way, he’s also the multipositional defensive menace at the heart of one of the best defenses in NBA history. He began his MVP encore by playing even better than he did last season, and he never stopped; he’s been the most consistent superstar in the NBA all year long.
Only 11 players have won back-to-back MVP awards, and all of them are or will be Hall of Famers; it is a mark of all-time excellence. Giannis earned his place on that list this season. LeBron’s performance was historically good for a player his age and at this stage in his career; Giannis was historically great, period. It’s absolutely crushing to consider that he won’t get the chance to put a cherry on top with his first championship. Alas.
It’s funny: I spent way more time thinking about the back half of this vote than the top of it. I considered a bunch of players for the final three spots on the ballot—about 25 or so; I have a stat-diving sickness and addiction to due diligence—and there were, as ever, a ton of worthy candidates.
Chris Paul served as the cool-as-a-cucumber pulse of a Thunder team that was one of the best stories in the league, turning in a “clutch” campaign for the ages while leading Oklahoma City to fifth place in the crowded West. Jimmy Butler proved to be exactly the two-way star the Heat needed, helping usher in a new era of positionless basketball in Miami and vault Erik Spoelstra’s team back into the thick of contention in the Eastern Conference. Amid all the ups and downs in Utah, Rudy Gobert was the constant, keeping the Jazz in position to open the playoffs at home. Damian Lillard had the season we expected from Stephen Curry: shouldering an outsized offensive load and carrying his injury-ravaged Trail Blazers within striking distance of the playoffs. Khris Middleton had a superstar-level run, understandably obscured by the all-encompassing Antetokounmpo. Kyle Lowry remained the heartbeat of the defending-champion Raptors, who weathered the loss of Leonard and injuries to nearly every key rotation piece to cement themselves as the East’s no. 2 seed. Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum each played like superstars for about 30 games, leading the Celtics back into the championship conversation.
I’d expect all of those players to get votes on at least some media members’ ballots. (Provided, y’know, media members get ballots.) Ultimately, though, I landed on five contenders for the final three spots: Harden, Davis, Leonard, Luka Doncic, and Nikola Jokic.
Harden’s a lock. His individual production dipped a bit from last season, when he authored the seventh-highest-scoring campaign in NBA history on an unprecedented combination of usage and efficiency. Only a bit, though: Harden still averaged 34.4 points, 7.4 assists, and 6.4 rebounds per game, and led the league in VORP for the second straight season, points per game for the third straight, and win shares for the fourth in a row.
Russell Westbrook stole the headlines late in the season, and deservedly so, but Harden remained the engine of Houston’s no. 3 offense, a threat so worrisome that opponents eventually started double-teaming him in the backcourt. The Rockets had the point differential of a 54-win team with Harden on the court, and of a 37-win team with him sitting down. He can run hot and cold, and he may rub some people the wrong way, on and off the court, but Harden’s undeniably one of the most prolific offensive forces the sport’s ever seen—a virtual guarantor of a top-five-caliber offense all by himself. He slots in third.
I’ll admit: I worried some about logical inconsistency when it came to Davis’s candidacy. After all, didn’t I, in this same space last season, drop both Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry off the five-man ballot due to their team’s “abundance of riches”? But these Lakers aren’t those Warriors—with two fewer All-Stars in the starting lineup—and it’s impossible to ignore that both LeBron’s renewed interest in playing defense and L.A.’s rise to third in the league in defensive efficiency came once Davis got to town. (Besides, teammates in the top five of MVP voting isn’t that rare; it’s happened a bunch over the years, from Bill Russell and Bob Cousy in Boston to Westbrook and Durant in Oklahoma City back in 2015-16.)
The 27-year-old was absolutely as advertised in his Hollywood debut, instantly proving to be both the best finisher and the most devastating defender LeBron has ever played with, a talent capable of dominating to a degree that the Lakers looked like his team on some nights. As the primary playmaking forces for their teams’ offensive success, LeBron and Harden get the nod; I do think there’s a reasonable case to be made, though, that AD was the second-best two-way player in the league this season, behind only Antetokounmpo. That gets him fourth.
Kawhi vs. Luka for the final spot was a beast of a call. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone picking Doncic, who vaulted from Rookie of the Year to 30-point-triple-double-stacking superstar leading not only the NBA’s no. 1 offense this season, but statistically the no. 1 NBA offense ever. Dallas won on the strength of that offense, and while Kristaps Porzingis’s eventual recovery combined with strong shooting seasons from a number of role players helped, the whole show revolved around Doncic’s ability to manipulate the chessboard and put everybody in position to succeed. The Mavericks scored an eye-popping 118.5 points per 100 possessions with Doncic on the ball, with the Slovenian ranking sixth in the league in scoring and generating more points per game via assists than any player besides LeBron and Trae Young. That he’s this poised, this assured before his 21st birthday—I remember fondly his recent crunch-time undressing of Jrue Holiday—is downright scary.
I went with Kawhi, though, in recognition of both his own killer offensive season—career highs in points and assists per game, while acting as the primary playmaker for the NBA’s no. 2 offense—and his ability to make an impact on the other end of the floor that Doncic simply can’t match. The Clippers ranked fifth in the league in defensive efficiency, and were a two-way meat grinder whenever Leonard was on the court, outscoring opponents by 10.6 points per 100 in his minutes. Doncic turned in the flashier highlights and more eye-popping stat lines, but, as is his way, Leonard quietly and methodically went about his business, leading the Clips to the West’s second seed—5.5 games ahead of Doncic’s seventh-place Mavericks—with his combination of brute force, pristine footwork, a seemingly unerring line-drive midrange jumper, and a reemerging on-ball mean streak that made him one of the league’s most daunting defenders as the season wore on. He gets the final spot on the ballot, leaving Luka on the outside of the top five looking in; I suspect this might be the last time that will be the case for a long time.
After a sluggish opening month, Jokic was as good as damn near anyone in the league, averaging 21.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, 7.1 assists, and 1.2 steals over his final 50 games while shooting just under 55 percent from the floor. The third-seeded Nuggets outscored opponents by six points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with Jokic on the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass, and, for the fifth straight season, were notably stingier on defense with the Serbian center in the middle. That opening month happened, though, and it dropped him out of the top five.