(Blame Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige putting on the concert of my life/me getting tickets last minute to the reason why this didn’t get posted yesterday.)
What do under 21 people and NBA players have in common? They both don’t like MIP’s. Buh-dum-CHING. I’ll be here all week.
Lame joke aside, the NBA’s Most Improved Player award is a semi slap in the face. I know I for sure would not want to win it because it would mean that at one point in time people thought I sucked. People can argue that it is given to the guy who has made the biggest leap, but to tell the truth it is given to the player who people either had low expectations for or had already written off as a basketball player. I even went so far as to believe there was a curse behind the award. Bobby Simmons and Boris Diaw pretty much disappeared after winning it, Zach Randolph completely changed, Gilbert and Jermaine both end up getting hurt. Monta has broken it so I won’t bore you with all the specifics. Just know that winning the MIP isn’t the most flattering of things. I’d liken it to when Kanye West loses at the Grammy’s but sweeps at the BET awards. It’s an award…but you definitely don’t want it.
I would say there are six legit people in the conversation to join the likes of Don MacLean, Gheroghe Muresan and Ike Austin in the prestigious lineage that is the MIP. Reading ESPN and a few other blogs out there, I was stunned to see people putting Deron Williams in the conversation. He was third last year behind Monta and Kevin Martin. And that was when he went from averaging 10 pts and 4 assists to 16 pts and 9 assists. I don’t think there was a soul out there who was thinking Deron Williams was not a capable basketball player so I automatically disqualify him. Ditto for Chris Kaman as I guess everyone forgot his 05-06 season where he pretty much told everyone ‘Yeah I’m a beast’ I’m not sure he got any better he just got his groove back like Stella and not having to watch Elton Brand grab half of your rebounds helped his stats out.
Moving right along to this year’s nominees. The six guys that I would put in the conversation are Hedo Turkoglu, Mike Dunleavy, Travis Outlaw, Rajon Rondo, Rudy Gay and Andrew Bynum. The issues with giving Rondo the award is that his leap wasn’t of the ‘wow he’s really good’ type instead the ‘wow I guess he isn’t that bad after all type’. Let’s analyze.
- Turkoglu: He’s the odds on favorite coming in. He’s having a career year and to be honest with you is the main reason why the Magic have won 50 games. Say what you want but he has completely outshined Rashard Lewis, to the point where people like Simmons can crack jokes about a guy with max-money guy being the third fiddle. Hedo’s averaging career highs in points (19.7), rebounds (5.8) and assists (5.0). He’s improved his PPG by 6 points. The thing is, absolutely no one saw this coming. For some reason everything just clicked this year with him.
- Dunleavy: He has been a player and a half this year. He’s averaging a career high 18.9 points per game along with a career high 3.5 assists per game, shooting 47% and 41.7% from behind the arc. I think what has put him in the category for this award is that for the first time in his career he has consistently brought in every game. You could put him down for 20-5-4 every game. He’s almost always been a starter but one game was just so up and down that people wrote him off. He’s changed that perception and is going to have to keep it up if the Pacers want any sort of turnaround.
- Outlaw: Probably not a lot of national love for Travis as more people are leaning toward LMA, but if it weren’t for his growth as a player there is no way the Blazers would have gone .500 this year. Not one. There are two games off the top of my head (at Atlanta and at Memphis) where he just absolutely carried the show. There were multiple other times when he was the guy making plays late in games. He won’t get it, but he should be in the discussion because the new Travis Outlaw will be a big part of the Blazers’ future.
- Gay: If you’re going to give Kevin Durant the ROY for playing on a crappy team than you have to give the MIP to Rudy Gay. In his second year in the league he went from a guy who scores 10 points a game to a guy who scores 20. Not only that but he snags 6.2 rebounds a game. And you can use the same argument that he has to carry a sorry offense like what KD has to do. Just saying
- Bynum: He went from a boy to a man, satisfying Kobe Bryant and propelling the Lakers in the process. He would have had this award on lock had he played all year. He’s averaging 13 points, 10 rebounds and 2 blocks…way up from the 8 points, 6 rebounds and 1 block of last year. What is working against him? He only played in 35 games. Generally speaking it is tough to win any sort of award that celebrates the work of an entire season when you play in less than half.
And he winner is….Turkoglu. Hands down, he’s a clutch player on a 50-win team that no one ever expected to do it. The only thing that could work against him, as ESPN’s Mark Stein pointed out is that the voters are supposed to vote for an up-and-comer. Hedo, clearly is not an up-and-comer so if they vote on that criteria I would have to then give it to Rudy Gay. How many people make that kind of leap in one year?? Exactly.