Whether you love him or hate him, and let’s be honest it has to be either one, or the other, there is no doubting that LeBron James is one of the leading players in the game right now. He is a player that has polarized the opinions of many in the game. Even the fans of Miami Heat have divided opinions on their star player. Certainly for the majority of fans outside of South Beach the preference for MVP would be anybody but LeBron, but there is no arguing the fact that he is in the front running for the Most Valuable Player award 2012.
A glance at the statistics and it seems inevitable that the league’s top honor must one again be heading in Bron Bron’s direction. Having missed just four games in the season he has managed to rack up some pretty impressive numbers. Of the four matches he did miss three were in the last four of the season and those were due to the fact that Coach Erik Spoelstra chose to give him a well-earned rest.
James averaged 27.1 points, 7.9 boards, 6.2 dimes and 1.9 steals per game. Which place him ahead of all other players for the top award. It is also worth pointing to his simple rating. This is a measure of a player’s stats against his counterpart player from the other team while he is on court. Calculated out James has earned a simple rating of +18.7. This is 3.8 points above Chris Paul the second place finisher this season.
If stats are the driving force in the decision, which they are, then there is just no doubt that LeBron James will pick up the third MVP trophy of his illustrious career. The award has been so clear cut that even the experts have not gotten involved in the debate and the perceived wisdom is that the trophy is James’ to lose during the final weeks of the season.
It has not been entirely a one horse race however and his closest rival, Kevin Durant, has put up some pretty impressive statistics of his own including 28 points and 8 boards per game, which is better than LeBron’s tally on both counts. The key stat for Durant is his number on assists which is a lowly 3.5 almost three whole points lower than LeBron’s 6.2 in this respect. This stat points to the fact that, throughout the season, Russell Westbrook, and other Thunder players consistently needed to create his own offense.
Durant can take some solace from the fact that in the head to head between their two teams the Thunder ended the season with one more win than Miami Heat. Durant is philosophic about the award and has come out in support of LeBron himself. In a recent interview he stated, “He deserves all the love (for MVP). He’s playing phenomenal basketball. I’m just trying to get better every single game and trying to help my team as much as I can. I’m just blessed to be in that conversation.”
