NBA: Above the Break: Who is the MVP of the first quarter of the season?

Welcome to Above the Break – the SPOX opinion on the NBA season! Twice a month, SPOX editor Ole Frerks scrutinizes a league issue closely. This time’s theme: the MVP race of the first quarter of the season.

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The NBA season is still young, but now all teams have played at least 20 games and we are able to sort out which trends are real and which aren’t. In the meantime, we are looking forward to the next season.

In the meantime, for example, it has become clear that the clippers’ and grizzlies’ seasons are not on a good track, even though both teams started well. Although both of them are by no means without a chance in the play-off race, they are encouraged everywhere (also by me!) to orient themselves differently and put their silverware on the market.

Of course, there are still many situations that cannot be assessed in the final stages – I am thinking, for example, of Dwight Howard’s (re)birth in Charlotte. But today we want to concentrate on what has already happened and what we can evaluate – such as the current MVP race.

A few words about the “incumbent”first. I surprised or annoyed some people last season when I wrote that Russell Westbrook was not a top 3 CVP candidate for me. I didn’t want to diminish his unbelievable individual performance – rather, I wanted to make sure that statistics should not decide on their own.

Of course, these also play a role, an important one. But the team’s success should also be taken into account, the question of whether the player makes his fellow players better, and whether he is the best player in the NBA or at least one of the three best players. None of these criteria should decide on their own, otherwise LeBron James and Michael Jordan would have ten MVP awards in the cupboard, for example. Both should have more than four and five, respectively, but that is a topic for another day.

Last season, however, one criterion finally decided. Westbrook played a triple double, no one would argue with him. But else? Team success was moderate, okay. He didn’t make his team-mates any better – both Victor Oladipo and Domanti’s and Enes Kanter play significantly better in other teams this season. Westbrook isn’t a top 3 player either. At least not if you see him in the context of a team and not as an individual athlete.

As such, however, he sometimes appears. He provided the very best example of this last week, when OKC clearly won against Golden State and he ended up playing only because he lacked an assistant to the triple double. Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry laughed at each other on the bench as Westbrook yelled at Steven Adams for not throwing but playing after Pass von Russ. And that from someone who insisted again and again last season that he didn’t care about the triple doubles and that only team success was important to him.

I’m not surprised that OKC is currently struggling, even though I didn’t estimate the extent of the problem so strongly. Especially the problems in the crunchtime, when three players want to decide the game on their own, were to be expected.

I continue to assume that OKC will catch. Although the net rating has fallen, it is still stable at +2.4. Ultimately, the Thunders are well enough staffed to show the balance of a (semi)top team at some point. But I don’t think that they will be a real top team, especially with regard to the playoffs.

“Russell plays great basketball, but he’s not a great basketball player. There’s a big difference,”said a coach from the Western Conference anonymously to Mike Wise (The Undefeated),” and I’m jealous of that: there’s no better way to put it in a nutshell. For Westbrook to be brilliant, everyone else must submit to him, even better players than him like a certain KD. Then he’s brilliant too – but that’s not the recipe for winning the NBA title.

And that’s why Russ is not a MVP candidate for me, even if he only plays triple doubles for the rest of the season. There’s just more to it than that. As the following candidates bring it with them.

Stats: 29.2 Points, 10.1 Rebounds, 4.5 Assists, 1.7 Steals, 1.8 Blocks, 55/27/76 Splits

Team balance sheet: 11-9

I have to admit that I had Joel Embiid standing here at first, who influences his team even more positively than Giannis does. If the process is on the court, the sixers have a net rating of +7.4, which would be the fourth best score in the league, without it the score would be -6.3, i. e. at Mavericks level. Also Kristaps Porzingis, DeMar DeRozan and Damian Lillard I had at least considered. But in the end there was no way around Giannis.

Milwaukee was in the meantime quite unstable, but now the Bucks have won seven of their last ten games and are on the right track. Eric Bledsoe is slowly getting better integrated and so the bucks are at least no longer completely without chance if the Greek offensively catches a weaker day like last night against the blazers.

Not that that would happen often. Giannis delivers consistently and is perhaps this season’s Fantasy-MVP due to his boxing scores. As long as he doesn’t stabilize his litter, it’s questionable whether he could dominate the playoffs against intelligent defenses, but in the regular season he’s no match for his unique combination of length, athletics and speed.

Giannis is also becoming more and more of a defensive figure, with his opponents closing up a whole 7 percent worse against him, and even 10.4 percent around the basket. Considering that Antetokounmpo is still only 22 years old and gets better from year to year, you can be scared and scared.

But he is not yet the current MVP – Giannis has to learn how to make his fellow players better and on the other hand, as simple as that sounds, the bucks have to win more games. I have explained above yes (much too) long and broadly that I set quite a high value on it.

However, I have no doubt that the Greek Freak will be MVP one day. Only not just now.

Page 1: The Westbrook case and No. 5

Page 2: No. 4 and No. 3

Page 3: No. 2 and No. 1