M-V-P! M-V-P!

Okay. We're going to switch gears real quick and talk a little bit about basketball. While there's a real-life debate about who the MVP, the question of who the UPL MVP is just as pressing (at least, in our little world).

Now, if you follow the voting criteria that is most commonly use in real-life, you'd go with the best player on the best team, if that player is having an MVP-type season. If no one on the best team stands out, then you go to someone who has had a spectacular season, with some adjustment for team success. This year, the O.N. Thugs (please hold the applause until the end) have been on cruise control for the last 25% of the season, so the traditional vote could go to Steve Nash, Deron Williams, Paul Pierce, or Hedo Turkoglu.

Nash/Deron are 17/11 and 19/10.5, respectively. Both shoot over 50% from the field. Deron's 80% from the line, and Nash is 90%. Nash gets more 3's and a few more rebounds. Deron gets more steals and blocks, and both are over 3.0 A/T. Two very solid seasons.

Interesting, Turkoglu and Pierce have very, very similar stats, and have played similar roles for their teams. It's almost eerie, actually. Pierce/Turkoglu are 20/5/4.5 and 20/6/5, respectively, and are both right around 45% from the field and 83% from the line. Pierce gets a few more steals and blocks, and Turkoglu gets a few more rebounds and assists. Even their A/T's are just a touch under 1.65.

But this year, it would seem odd to have one of those guys as the UPL MVP, since a) they would split the vote, and more importantly, b), none of them are clear-cut top 5 (or even top 10, and perhaps even top 15) players.

This season, the real-life MVP talk has revolved around Kobe, CP3, KG, and LeBron. There have also been some minor rumblings for T-Mac, Amare, Manu, and others, which seems somewhat misguided this year. However, if Amare plays for a full season like he has since Shaq came over in the trade, he'll be right up there in the MVP discussion, since he'll be something like 30 and 10, on 60% shooting, and over 80% from the line. So what about in the UPL? We'll start with the same players, and take a closer look. And just for kicks, we'll put in Marcus Camby, though we won't really discuss him until the end.

For reference, we'll need some baseline stats from the league.

	GP	FG%	FT%	3PM	PTS
2nd Place	81	0.479	0.805	842	14320
Median	81	0.4675	0.7775	723	11922
Kobe	81	0.460	0.838	149	2303
CP3	78	0.485	0.851	89	1642
LeBron	74	0.483	0.715	112	2223
KG	70	0.540	0.801	0	1329
Camby	78	0.451	0.708	6	717

	OREB	REB	AST	STL	BLK	A/T
2nd Place	1331	5271	3117	921	639	1.870
Median	1239.5	4739.5	2570	781.5	549.5	1.695
Kobe	93	514	436	150	40	1.710
CP3	64	314	903	213	3	4.631
LeBron	132	588	534	136	80	2.136
KG	135	651	243	98	86	1.761
Camby	229	1029	258	84	241	2.186

Now, when you get into the discussion, we should look at the individual impacts, so for all cumulative stats, you can divide the team numbers by 10, since we have 10 starting positions. Note that this is not quite the entire season (probably based on an average of 81 games played, not 82), so you really should weight everything by the number of games played, but this is close enough for this discussion. Now, we can get into the difference, compared to an average starter that each player contributes.

	GP	FG%	FT%	3PM	PTS
Median/10	81	0.468	0.778	72.3	1192.2
Kobe	0	-0.00075	0.00605	76.7	1110.8
CP3	-3	0.00175	0.00735	16.7	449.8
LeBron	-7	0.00155	-0.00625	39.7	1030.8
KG	-11	0.00725	0.00235	-72.3	136.8
Camby	-3	-0.00165	-0.00695	-66.3	-475.2

	OREB	REB	AST	STL	BLK	A/T
Median/10	123.95	473.95	257	78.15	54.95	1.695
Kobe	-30.95	40.05	179	71.85	-14.95	0.0015
CP3	-59.95	-159.95	646	134.85	-51.95	0.2936
LeBron	8.05	114.05	277	57.85	25.05	0.0441
KG	11.05	177.05	-14	19.85	31.05	0.0066
Camby	105.05	555.05	1	5.85	186.05	0.0491

Okay. Now we're talking. First of all, this lets you see what each players adds, compared an average starting player on an average team, for each category. I'm not using position-specific numbers, so this is a bit general, and can be refined in a number of ways. Where things get really interesting is with the magnitude of difference in some categories. When you have a deficiency in a category, you have to rely on specialists. Having players that contribute heavily to a category such that you don't have to rely on specialists makes life much easier. These tables show the number of average number of players that each player's "excess" makes up for in each category. The first column is just the sum of all the numbers, and doesn't carry a lot of meaning, at a theoretical level.

	Total	FG%	FT%	3PM	PTS
Median/10	0	0.468	0.778	72.3	1192.2
Kobe	3.171	-	-	1.0609	0.9317
CP3	3.081	-	-	0.2310	0.3773
LeBron	3.993	-	-	0.5491	0.8646
KG	0.342	-	-	-1.0000	0.1147
Camby	4.168	-	-	-0.9170	-0.3986

	OREB	REB	AST	STL	BLK	A/T
Median/10	123.95	473.95	257	78.15	54.95	1.695
Kobe	-0.2497	0.0845	0.6965	0.9194	-0.2721	-
CP3	-0.4837	-0.3375	2.5136	1.7255	-0.9454	-
LeBron	0.0649	0.2406	1.0778	0.7402	0.4559	-
KG	0.0891	0.3736	-0.0545	0.2540	0.5651	-
Camby	0.8475	1.1711	0.0039	0.0749	3.3858	-

Look at scoring. Kobe and LeBron score so well that it's like having an additional player. What's amazing is that Kobe's 3PM are of the same magnitude. What does this mean? If you have Kobe, you can pick up a player that doesn't score at all, and won't lose much ground to the rest of the league, and may even pick up ground in 3PM. With rebounding, you see that KG is worth about 1/11th of a player in OREB, and about 3/8ths of a player in REB. Having KG lets you have weaker rebounders around you. LeBron also helps with rebounding, though he isn't strong as KG (1/15th and 1/4th of a player for OREB and REB, respectively). Moving to AST and STL, you see where CP3 really shines. With CP3, you can have 2.5 players w/ no assists, and still be in reasonable shape, and about 1.7 players w/ no steals. LeBron and Kobe are both good w/ AST and STL, as well.

At this point, I think that we can take KG out of the race, which isn't particularly surprising, espcially given that he's missed a number of games. And LeBron's numbers seem to indicate that he's superior to Kobe and CP3, we really need to look at the rate stats. First, you don't see much change in FG%, save for KG . Also, note that the FT% differences are a bit misleading, since you don't know the number of attempts. Relative to the median, Kobe actually has a greater impact on FT% than CP3, because he gets to the line 9 times a game, compared to 5 times a game for CP3. On the flip side, LeBron's FT penalty is actually greater than this measure indicates, since he's getting to the line 10.3 times per game. LeBron's FT% will penalize a team. The -0.625% that he shoots at, compared to average UPL starters, is probably more like a 1% penalty, given the high number of attempts that he gets. What does 1% less at the charity stripe get you? 1-2 points in league standings.

Using a similar argument, CP3's A/T ratio is actually a bit understated because it's weighted so much more from his high assist numbers. His benefit of .2936 is huge. If you take CP3 off of Westy's team, and replaced him with an average UPL starter, the team's A/T goes from 1.87 (11 points) to about 1.53 (5 points), and if you replaced CP3 with a PG w/ a 2.0 A/T and a relatively high number of assists, then you'd be looking at around 1.59 (6 points). CP3 was worth about 5 points in the league standings.

So at the end of the day, who was the UPL MVP? LeBron is beneficial in every single category, save FT%, which is sort of amazing to think about. And the way that he and Kobe scored realy lets their owners have flexibility in picking up specialists to round out their team. Kobe hurts you in OREB and BLK, not surprising for a SG, and every so slightly in FG%, again not surprising for a volume shooter, and actually helps you with REB, which is somewhat surprising, and his 3-point shooting is a huge factor. CP3 was dominating in both AST and A/T, and his steals (which weren't quite as hard to get as 3PM this year) really set the tone.

I think that LeBron and CP3 are neck and neck, with Kobe trailing ever so slightly, followed by Camby (though you can make a strong case for Camby, whose numbers in hard-to-get categories, i.e., BLK, OREB, STL, more than offset his poor shooting and scoring, though he runs into even more problems w/ his shooting %, since he's bad both from the field and from the line). So who's the MVP? One way to look at it is who would you draft first, if you knew the stats were going to work out this way? Personally, I would draft LeBron first, followed by Kobe, and then CP3 and Camby. Why? It's easier to craft a team with you don't have any particular holes to fill. LeBron and Kobe fit that bill, whereas CP3 requires that you be on the look out for rebounding and blocks pretty early on, and Camby requires that you find scoring and shooting. If you start a team with LeBron or Kobe, you will end up with smaller holes to fill, which is always an easier proposition that filling a big void.

So, this was a simple way to look at a pretty complex problem. The fun part for me is that last year, me and C-Lauff made a pre-draft trade, swapping our positions in the 1st and 2nd rounds. I got Kobe, and C-Lauff got CP3. Kobe was awesome, and CP3 was injured. This year, I was deliberating between CP3 and Steve Nash in the 1st round, and I went with the "safer" choice. I should have remembered that any player that is picked up the year after C-Lauff has them becomes incredible :-)

In any case, the leap that CP3 made this year was phenomenal, and he should be in the mix for NBA Most Improved Player, if you take that term literally. For the UPL, I think that LeBron (and maybe even Kobe, depending on your preference in designing a team) rank ahead of him, but it's close.

But MVP? Screw it. I'm going with Paul Pierce. Best player on the best team, which just happens to be mine :-)

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)