Menacingly Vengeful Pasta

Photo via Carlos Porto on Flickr

The MVP race. Yup, that ole bit.

It’s been a while since the MVP debate has been an enjoyable conversational topic for NBA enthusiasts. For the past two years, Lebron James has rendered the entire affair meaningless, what with his 31+ PER here, and his 29-7-8 per game numbers there, and the 60 wins, and the Cleveland, and the what not.

This year, however, Lebron finally gave us enough of a reason to completely discredit his candidacy – be it by playing at only 95% of his previous world-best capacity while adjusting to new a completely new set of teammates (how dare he!), or choosing where he’d like to continue his career (no, seriously, how dare he!). Sadly, the ensuing blabbering has turned into such a wild mess of Derrick Rose hating and Dwight Howard knocking and advanced stats this and watch the games that it has been grating at best, sickening at worst, and generally about as fun as an NCAA title game.

Of course, if this isn’t the first NBA piece you’ve ever read then, you know this. If it is, I’d like to introduce myself: I am Noam Schiller, 15 time NBA MVP winner, and have won 20 titles with the best team to ever play in the NBA, the Noamsville Noams.

For the sake of this piece, though, I will be working under the assumption that you recognize me as no more than a punk who just happens to have a keyboard. Given this assumption, nothing that I might happen to write here can change your opinion on this monstrosity of an award show. Whether you’re pro-Rose, pro-Howard, still think that being the best player in basketball should be rewarded even if Lebron happened to piss some dudes off this summer, are part of a Kobe Bryant campaign that is suddenly gaining momentum which I can’t for the life of me explain, like Kevin Durant’s beautiful face too much to give it to anybody else, or are behind some mysterious candidate X (Pooh Jeter Pooh Jeter Pooh Jeter), you’re staying in your camp after reading this.

Now, unlike most of the internet these days, I’m cool with that. I’m all for pluralism. It has enhanced the way we consume basketball and live our everyday lives in unmeasurable ways. Whenever something remotely interesting happens, we have millions of marvelous minds working towards instantly providing us with analysis and perspective and sometimes just plain humorous snark through a handful of mediums. And while the occasional flash of idiotism may rear its ugly head more often once we provide more voices with the necessary microphones, this is a small price to pay for what can only be described as a blossoming fountain of knowledge.

That knowledge, however, is key. That sharing of mindsets through which we strengthen each other, even when the other side doesn’t agree with us. When that knowledge is absent – or even worse, present yet ignored – pluralism crosses the line from a melting pot of opinions and intellectual tools to a random assortment of statements, each more dogmatic than the other. And unless you’re Kevin Smith’s career, Dogma never gets you anywhere.

And yet, when this dogmatism is contested, those who dare stand up to it are called haters. Those who provide statistical analysis suddenly don’t watch the games – this despite the fact that NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would spend the time glossing over sheets of numbers without actually being interested in whatever it is that the numbers represent. And the saddest thing is, you don’t even have to contest an opinion to be caught in the crossfire. All one has to do is ask “why?”, even if it’s just out of curiosity, before he is buried in a flurry of capitalized letters and exclamation points.

Well, I’ll ask it anyway. Why?

How can we excuse not using data when it’s staring us in the faces? Because we didn’t like math in high school? Because we’re too manly to sit down in front of a sheet, put on the reading glasses that we don’t want people to know we have, and let our minds out for a jog? Because we want to feel closer to the people who did it in the old days? Let me tell you a secret – the old days were awful. We’re much better than them. This isn’t “hating” – it’s evolution.

Take your “advanced stats”. Bill Simmons recently wrotethat Rose is “The guy whose MVP candidacy got crapped on by the entire blogosphere because his plus/minus and true shooting percentage weren’t quite good enough”. Well, aren’t those valid concerns? It’s not like basketballvalue.com draws random numbers and inserts them into their plus/minus tables – this is data that describes things that are happening on the court, in games. Ditto for TS%, or rebound rate, or Synergy numbers, or even pretentious tell-all numbers like PER or Win Shares. I agree that one always must use caveats, always use context, never take these numbers for their face value without checking and double checking, but to ignore them completely? To discredit their value while putting one’s entire weight on ambiguous statements like “value to the team” or “where would they be without him”?

This writing may (will) be seen as a specific indictment towards those on the Rose side of this MVP debate. Though I will not deny that I am opposed to the Rose movement, I promise you, besmirching it is not my intention. All other MVP candidates have major flaws to their campaigns, all of them well documented basically everywhere, and Rose has had a mind-boggling season for a thrilling team.

But it just so happens that Rose’s specific flaws, like Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson before him, are the flaws of a player whose statistical pedigree lacks in respect to the success of his team, his ability to pass the eye test, and his ridiculously passionate fan base. And while the latter two are not bad things – the eye test is ultimately the reason we watch sports, and passionate fan bases are to be encouraged – ignoring statistics when they are right there just because they don’t support my premise is just that: ignorant.

If you do decide that those flaws Rose represents aren’t as condemning as Dwight Howard’s inability to provide a go-to option on offense down the stretch or Lebron James’ failure to lead a team to the amount of wins they were supposed to win on paper because our paper got it wrong – then that’s fine. But you need to back it up. And yes, I expect there to be some statistical data there. And no, “this is what my eyes tell me” doesn’t cut it. Because all I need to do is send you to the nearest M.C. Escher painting to show you how easily eyes can be deceived. And even if your eyes are absolutely, positively, completely perfect in every single way (otherwise known as being Paul George) – could it possibly hurt to use your other senses too? To gain the ability to use another useful tool? To check and double check, if for no other reason, just to set an example for those damn “stat guys”?

This stands not only for those defending their arguments, but for those attacking others. Valid points may be concocted in places other than your own mind, because there are millions of fantastic minds out there. Including yours. Respect those other minds by reading what they say, contemplating their points, carefully building your counter. If I tweet about Derrick Rose’s defense, and you immediately respond by talking about his carrying the offense in crunch time, then you have failed. You arrived at a boxing match with a baseball bat. Sure, that bat may help you in bludgeoning me to death, but that’s not what we’re here for.

A final, hypothetical argument.

Lets say that you support Derrick Rose for MVP. Since it seems like the majority of the NBA community does at this point, you probably do. Now, say that I come up to you and say “you know what? Rose has been great this year, but looking at how great Blake Griffin has been playing, and how he’s been a beacon of hope for a moribund franchise going nowhere I think he’s the most valuable player. Because that’s how I define VALUE.”

You, being the rational and intelligent reader that you are, start laughing. Perhaps you call me a funny name, or toss a beverage at me. But I’m a persistent little bugger. I show you ratings and attendance numbers for the Clippers, providing indisputable proof that Blake has single-handedly made the team relevant again. I hand you a 70 foot billboard covered in a fantastically crafted collage of tweets going insane about the former Oklahoma star. I point out how Baron Davis – BARON DAVIS – bothered to get into shape (albeit two months late) for the guy. I call Clipper Darrell, ask him what he thinks about Blake Griffin, record the ensuing rant, and play it to you in it’s entirety with unicorns frolicking around us and bubble gum raining from the sky. I can’t convince you – not when my premise is so foolish – but you can’t convince me either. MVP is subjective, that’s how I define it, and you have to live with that.

Or, instead, we can live in a society where foolishness is unacceptable and opinions, even if they are just opinions, lead to people being held accountable. I like that better. But hey, what do I know – I think Dwight Howard is the MVP.