James Harden would have been my MVP, says Sam Mitchell
Thursday 29 August 2019 10:17, UK
NBA TV analyst and former Toronto Raptors coach Sam Mitchell said James Harden, not Giannis Antetokounmpo, would have received his vote for 2018-19 MVP.
Harden won the NBA regular season MVP award in 2018 but was beaten to the 2019 prize by Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, who received 78 of the 101 first-place votes. The award is voted on by members of the media.
The Rockets guard, speaking on a Houston radio station, suggested MVP voters had got it wrong.
"Once the media, they create a narrative about somebody from the beginning of the year, I think they just take that narrative and just run with it the entire year," he said.
"I don't want to get into details. All I can do is control what I can do, and I went out there and did what I was supposed to do at a high level. There are only a few other seasons that anybody has ever done that before."
Antetokounmpo, who is set to lead Greece in the FIBA World Cup in China, led the Bucks to a league-best 60-22 record while producing 27.7 points, 12.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.5 blocks per game.
Harden guided the Rockets to a 53-29 regular-season record and put up a league-best 36.1 points per game, the seventh-best single-season scoring average in NBA history, while also contributing 4.8 three-pointers, 9.7 free throws, 6.6 rebounds and 7.5 assists each time out. His superb scoring also included a 32-game streak of game in which he scored 30 or more points.
Mitchell, who played for 13 seasons in the NBA before embarking on a coaching career that saw him lead the Toronto Raptors from 2004 to 2009, told NBA TV's Gametime there was some truth to Harden's criticism of the MVP voting.
"Giannis had an unbelievable season, but look at what James Harden did [last year]," he said.
"This is how I look at the MVP: if you take Giannis off the Milwaukee Bucks, would the team have still made the playoffs? Absolutely. They wouldn't have been the No 1 seed but they would have been a playoff team in the East.
"You take James Harden off the Houston Rockets last year, not only would they not have made the playoffs but they would have been an awful basketball team.
"To me, James Harden had the biggest impact on his team. People get caught up in the numbers, how he plays and all these things, but he is right to a certain degree. The media did kind of set the narrative early, they got on the Giannis bandwagon early and rode that wave on through.
"In my estimation, I'm OK with Giannis winning the MVP but if I had a vote, James Harden would have been my MVP. These are Michael Jordan-type numbers that [Harden] put up."
