REVISED October 28, 2019 to change the scoring system.
My best-laid plans for tracking the football season MVP race went by the wayside (although it's recoverable, if I have the time and there's a demand for it).
I would like to try again with the NBA.
Every game, the winning team's top four players will get "MVP points." The victor's top player of the night would get six points, the 2nd-best gets five points, the 3rd gets four points, and the fourth gets three points. In other words, the "top four" of a (typically 8-man) rotation gets credit as being major contributors to the victory. (The rest of the team won't get MVP points for that victory that day; supporting casts and role players normally aren't MVPs anyway.)
How would I determine the top four players?
A very simple formula: the player's minutes played plus +/-, which is the point differential of the two teams while the player is on the floor.
Nobody on the losing team gets any MVP points, no matter how impressive their personal statistics may have been that night.
Some nights, the game's top player may go the full 48 minutes with a +/- of 2 in a crucial, tight game. Other nights, a teammate might lead the way with 30 minutes and a +/- of 20 in a blowout.
You may ask, what is the purpose of this tabulation?
Well, first of all, it's an experiment. How closely do the acknowledged best players, the ones in the MVP hunt based on traditional stats and eyeball tests (points, rebounds, assists, PER, effective defense, etc.), correlate with this formula?
A second reason is to perhaps get a better understanding of the importance of superstars to their teams.
Let's say Team A has one superstar and wins 45 games, and that superstar was the top performer in all of those victories. 45 wins times 6 MVP points per win is 270 points.
Team B is on a star-studded team that wins 58 games. Its best player has lots of 6-point games, but shares the load through the season and averages 4.5 MVP points per game. His MVP point total is 58 x 3 or 261 points.
This is something I'd like to track daily, an MVP Chase from the very first games. It will start out as a crowded field: the first 15 games will have an MVP leaderboard with 15 players from 15 different teams tied at the top with 6 points each. But as the season goes on, there'd be separation.
At the end of the season, we'll see how the final rankings track with the official MVP vote.
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you find value in his articles, your support through Paypal helps keep him going. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution.
My best-laid plans for tracking the football season MVP race went by the wayside (although it's recoverable, if I have the time and there's a demand for it).
I would like to try again with the NBA.
Every game, the winning team's top four players will get "MVP points." The victor's top player of the night would get six points, the 2nd-best gets five points, the 3rd gets four points, and the fourth gets three points. In other words, the "top four" of a (typically 8-man) rotation gets credit as being major contributors to the victory. (The rest of the team won't get MVP points for that victory that day; supporting casts and role players normally aren't MVPs anyway.)
How would I determine the top four players?
A very simple formula: the player's minutes played plus +/-, which is the point differential of the two teams while the player is on the floor.
Nobody on the losing team gets any MVP points, no matter how impressive their personal statistics may have been that night.
Some nights, the game's top player may go the full 48 minutes with a +/- of 2 in a crucial, tight game. Other nights, a teammate might lead the way with 30 minutes and a +/- of 20 in a blowout.
You may ask, what is the purpose of this tabulation?
Well, first of all, it's an experiment. How closely do the acknowledged best players, the ones in the MVP hunt based on traditional stats and eyeball tests (points, rebounds, assists, PER, effective defense, etc.), correlate with this formula?
A second reason is to perhaps get a better understanding of the importance of superstars to their teams.
Let's say Team A has one superstar and wins 45 games, and that superstar was the top performer in all of those victories. 45 wins times 6 MVP points per win is 270 points.
Team B is on a star-studded team that wins 58 games. Its best player has lots of 6-point games, but shares the load through the season and averages 4.5 MVP points per game. His MVP point total is 58 x 3 or 261 points.
This is something I'd like to track daily, an MVP Chase from the very first games. It will start out as a crowded field: the first 15 games will have an MVP leaderboard with 15 players from 15 different teams tied at the top with 6 points each. But as the season goes on, there'd be separation.
At the end of the season, we'll see how the final rankings track with the official MVP vote.
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you find value in his articles, your support through Paypal helps keep him going. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution.
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