Is Giannis a lock for the MVP?
That is a pretty hard question to be answered at this moment, given the fact that both James Harden and Paul George are having a tremendous season so far. The debate over this topic will be hot until the regular season ends, for sure, and the opinions of people around the league are divided. While some think that Harden’s run of 32 consecutive games with at least 30 points scored, which marked the second longest in NBA history behind a 65-game streak by Wilt Chamberlain, is a strong reason for which he can win the trophy, others think that Antetokounmpo’s run with the Milwaukee Bucks is more plausible for the cause.
If we take a look into what Giannis did this season, we see that he is currently averaging 27,1 PPG, 12,6 RPG, 6 APG, 1,4 steals-per-game and 1,5 blocks, which is quite impressive, because he is not helping his team only in offense, but he is willing to play hard at the other end, too, being the 1st in the league in Defensive Rating, with 98,6. That is a major factor that comes in his advantage when we make the comparison between those two. Even though Harden has 2,2 steals-per-game, he just don’t play with the same intensity in defense and he seem that he don’t really care to do that sometimes. Paul George is also a guy that fits well in this category of players that are playing very well both offensively and defensively, but he is a little unfortunate because the competition this year is at a very high level, from the performance of players point of view.
Coming back at Giannis, we notice obviously that the Bucks have been on the first seed in the Eastern Conference from the beginning of the season, and their projected wins is somewhere at 60+ until the end of the regular season, as they are not showing signs of slowing it down anytime soon. That is another point that builds for his case. Harden’s Rockets are now on the 5th seed with 38 wins, and they will maybe get somewhere around 50 by the end, but they will definitely not go higher than the 3rd place, even that being a pretty hard thing to do if we take in consideration how good Oklahoma City and Portland are playing lately. Of course, you can say that the West is a tougher conference than the East, but you can’t ignore the fact that Milwaukee improved a lot since last season, and the main reason for that is the Greek Freak, while Rockets had a very slow start of the season. In terms of triple-doubles, James has 6 this season, clinching three of them in a span of six games, all of them with at least 40 points scored, while Giannis recorded 5 of them. Even though Harden has more points and a slight advantage on assists, with 7,6 per-game, at this point you need to take in consideration the wins, also. It will definitely be a very tough choice to make in picking this year’s Most Valuable Player, but for now, Giannis’ efficiency, defense and seed are some factors which are qualifying him as the runner-up in this race. We’ll see…
