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MVP and defensive player of the year awards are all about stats.
How else can you explain Camby winning DPOY awards. He sat in the lane waiting for blocks and didn't defend his man.
Wallace over Bowen all those years? Not saying Wallace isn't a great defender, but he got the benefit of the doubt because he had rebound and block stats. Bowen just played great defense.
Nash didn't deserve his 1st MVP. He only got in to the discussion once he went out injured at the same time as Barbosa. Any team without a point guard would struggle.
Lebron can't take the pressure. In each of his previous MVP runs, he did not win the championship. He is not a winner, but a loser. He will get schooled by Paul Pierce when they meet in the Eastern Conf finals like when Hakeem schooled the Admiral in D Rob's MVP year. Book it.
You can see the media power of big market teams is strong when Kobe is fourth and Parker fifth. The other part is that I think the SA (and Texas) media plays it fair as Parker only got four 1st place votes, when Kobe got two.
Durant had a few things going against him: he chucked like mad to get the scoring title, which in the past was revered, but now feels a bit immature, especially as OKC dropped to 2nd place in the West by playing quite badly at the end of the season; and the presence of Westbrook, who some, for some reason, consider a great player.
Popularity contest. It's about who means more to their team. Parker means more to us than Lebrun means to them. They would still be good without him. He wouldn't without tony.