By: Garrett Kilcer

In this post, I will examine one of recent memory’s most contentious NBA MVP decisions. The race was between James Harden of the Houston Rockets and Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder and it took place during the 2016-17 NBA regular season.

Why?

I know what you may be thinking after reading the title, ‘Garrett has lost it. He’s talking about the NBA MVP race from 8 years ago. Does he have nothing better to do? Does he just like to live in an era where the Wizards are relevant in the playoffs?’ First of all, no I don’t have better things to do and secondly… we don’t have to bring up the Wizards here.

I am talking about this historic MVP race because I came across a video on YouTube recently about how James Harden should have won the award that year (https://youtu.be/-xDVFfXtJMY). The video was made by ‘Secret Base’ which is a channel that I am subscribed to and have been known to frequent. I highly recommend their videos as the production value is superb (much better than anything you’ll find on this site) and it is refreshing to have a sports media outlet that is not all about making hot takes (ESPN) or whatever is going on at FS1.

I don’t even have any problem with the points made in the video. I think all four main points have merit. Those points are:

1. Russell Westbrook having a 10.7 in the rebound per game column is not that much more impressive than James Harden’s 8.1
2. James Harden’s scoring was much more efficient than Russell Westbrook’s
3. Russell Westbrook did average a triple-double during the season which is historic since it hadn’t been done in years, however, James Harden’s season was just as historic even if his rebound per game totals didn’t reach the double digits
4. James Harden’s Rockets team had more wins

As I said, these are all points on which we can find common ground, but in my opinion, there is more to the story than these.

I would also just like to get this out of the way up top. This is not a takedown of this video and I am not going to go through this point for point and ‘dismantle’ any arguments made there. Even though that video is the genesis of this post, this is the last of it I’ll mention. Instead, let us look back at the 2016-17 NBA MVP and give a man his flowers.

Context

As easy as it might be to look back at the past and criticize (like my mother giving me bowl cuts for a large portion of my adolescence), we must get inside the minds of the NBA MVP voters in the year 2017. What were they seeing, how did they expect the season to turn out, and why did they make the decision that they did?

This story starts all the way back in the 2013-14 NBA season when Russell Westbrook’s then-teammate Kevin Durant (KD) won the MVP award. The Oklahoma City Thunder are seen as a two-man wrecking crew with KD and Russ leading the helm. This Thunder team is seen as one of the best young teams in the league and it stays that way for years. 

This all comes to a head in the 2016 NBA Playoffs when the Thunder are up 3 games to 1 on the 73-9, defending champion Golden State Warriors. The Thunder are 1 win away from beating them and going back to the NBA Finals for the first time in 4 years. Most of you know how the story goes from here, however. The Thunder would proceed to lose 3 straight games and be eliminated from the playoffs.

This is where our story begins because, during that offseason, KD decided to join the Warriors, leaving Russell Westbrook by himself in Oklahoma City. Scandalous I know. I remember waking up that morning to a text from my friend that said ‘KD to the Warriors’. I texted him back ‘Ya that would be cool but there’s no way that happens’. He replied, ‘No like it happened. Turn on SportsCenter.’ But that’s enough ‘back in my day’.

So that’s how it went down. KD went to join one of the best teams we’ve ever seen to make probably the best team ever up to that point? I put that with a question mark because sweeping statements aren’t really my thing but that just goes to show how dominant they were.

That leaves our main character, Russell Westbrook, alone, scared, and making shirtless Instagram videos of himself in the car singing ‘Now I do what I want’. What would this new team look like? With no clear second star and Westbrook doing what he wanted, were the Thunder still going to be competitive in the Western Conference? A conference that had been known as the tougher of the two. 

Well doing what he wanted turned out to be exactly what the Thunder needed. Russell Westbrook was the first player to average a triple-double since Oscar Robinson in 1961-1962 over 50 years ago. He averaged 31.6 points per game which led the league with 10.7 and 10.4 rebounds and assists per game respectively. The Thunder would turn in a season in which they won 47 games and clinched the 6th seed in the West.

It was an amazing season for those watching. Russell Westbrook set a new record for triple-doubles in a season with 42 and had some truly awe-inspiring stat lines and highlights along the way. He won 4 Player of the Week awards as well as 2 Player of the Month awards to James Harden’s 4 and 1 respectively.

Meat & Potatoes

Ok, so now what? All I’ve said is that he lost his friend and then he put up some good stats. So what? Why does that make him the ‘Most Valuable’? Well, what does ‘valuable’ mean? Well as an adjective it means ‘extremely useful or important’. So, how important is Russell Westbrook? How much does he contribute to his team’s success?

First, we’ll get some of the advanced stats out of the way real quick:

1. Russell Westbrook led the league in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) which measures per-minute production
2. Russell Westbrook led the league in Box Plus/Minus as well as Offensive Plus/Minus and was in top 5 in Defensive Plus/Minus, these are all stats that compare how important a player’s contribution is to their team against the league average
3. He led the league in Usage Percentage which is how many of the team’s plays involved them while they were on the floor
4. He also led the league in Assist Percentage which is the percentage of teammate field goals that a player assisted while they were on the court

Sounds pretty valuable to me.

But if you wanted to just read a bunch of stats, you could have just gone to the site that I used (https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2017.html). You don’t come here for that, you come here for witty commentary and statistics about things no one cares about anymore, and by gum I’ll deliver.

So, Russell leads Harden in some things and Harden leads Russ in others. Well, let’s look at team records, whoever could help their team win more games is more valuable, right? Well, that would mean James Harden is the most valuable, case closed. Alright, well slow down there partner, basketball is a team game. We have to look at who their teammates are. 

Before we do that, I must give some more context to what is happening in the NBA at this moment. I know we’ve already done the context portion but it probably fits better here so deal with it. Somewhere around 2015ish, teams started to realize that 3 points were more than 2. This wild phenomenon is known as the three-point revolution or ‘pace and space era’. The general thinking of this is that, instead of taking a 20-foot 2-point jump shot which goes in at about, let’s say 43% it would be better to step back a little to behind the 3-point line and shoot that instead. In this scenario, that player would only need to have a 3-point percentage of 29% to match the production of a long 2.

Having players step back behind the three-point line gave more space to operate closer to the basket since defenders would now have to move further away to guard their man. While this is a discussion for another day, this is something to keep in mind as we continue this journey.

Back to the teams in which these guys played, let’s start with the Rockets. Now just taking a glance at the 2016-17 Rockets roster no names jump off the page. A casual fan would probably recognize the likes of Clint Capela, Lou Williams, Trevor Ariza, Eric Gordon, and Ryan Anderson but those aren’t exactly household names. However, coached by Mike D’Antoni, this team was pretty good at shooting threes. Not including James Harden, this team had 5 players that shot above 4 threes a game. Most prolific among them was Ryan Anderson who was shooting on average 7 a game and making 40% of them. The Rockets as a team made 35.7% which was just good enough for the top half in the league. (James Harden hit 34.7% of his threes this year which means he technically brought his team’s shooting percentage down. I know he probably shot more contested shots but just thought I’d mention it.)

It would be ignorant and misleading if I did not mention that many of the three-pointers made by this team were assisted by James Harden and that his good passes as well as his offensive presence opened them up more often. However, it is one thing to find open teammates but it is another thing entirely for them to hit the shots. Case and point, the 2016-17 Thunder team.

The Oklahoma City Thunder during the 2016-17 season were bottom of the barrel in terms of three-point shooting at 32.7%. No team was worse. So not only could they not hit the three but that would mean that defenders could comfortably leave their men on the perimeter and come inside to contest shots at the rim, making offense harder for the Thunder. Only 2 players on the Thunder outside of Russell Westbrook shot more than 4 threes a game. They couldn’t hit them so they didn’t shoot them.

Outside of the star players, the Rockets had five players who averaged double digits in points whereas the Thunder only had three. Two of those three were (at the time) Enes Kanter and Steven Adams, two bigs who did a bulk of their scoring off of assists from Westbrook. Steven Adams was assisted by Russell Westbrook 189 times during his 80 games played that season which is about 2.36 assists a game (https://www.pbpstats.com/assist-combo-summary/nba?Season=2016-17&SeasonType=Regular%2BSeason). Steven Adams only averaged 4.7 field goals made a game. That means, one of Russell’s highest-scoring teammates was relying on Russ for half of his made baskets.

Case Study

To further emphasize the point that James Harden’s teammates were of higher quality than Russell’s, we can look directly at the games that they played against each other that year. We got lucky in this department because not only did they play each other twice during the season but they also played against each other in the playoffs. 

In these 9 games against each other, the Rockets went 7-2. James Harden, in these games, averaged 27.6 points, 9.3 assists, and 6.8 rebounds per game. Russell Westbrook averaged 36.9 points, 10.1 assists, and 10.4 rebounds per game. As you can see, just off of raw output, Russell Westbrook outperformed James Harden and still lost a majority of those games.

So then what were their teammates doing in these games since it seems so backwards, right? The player with the better numbers lost 7 of 9 games? Well, in 9 games Russell Westbrook had a teammate of his score 20 or more 4 times. James Harden had teammates surpass that mark 10 times. Harden wasn’t even the highest scorer on his team in 3 of these games, something in which Russell Westbrook did not have the luxury.

This would explain why the Rockets won more games than the Thunder. This would also explain why James Harden’s efficiency was better as well. Less of the scoring load was on him so he was able to facilitate more often and could be more selective with the shots he was taking. 

The nail in the coffin here is the box score for the final playoff game between them this year. Even though the MVP is a regular season award, this is a microcosm of the 9 games that these teams played against each other this year. https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201704250HOU.html

Russell Westbrook outperforms James Harden in every conceivable way. By raw counting numbers and efficiency, Russ played his heart out but if you look at the plus/minus for the game, when the bench players were out there, the Rockets outperformed the Thunder and that’s what lost them the game. So sure, winning matters but so does context.

Thank you for reading my post. I obtained all the stats from PBPstats.com, basketball-reference.com, NBA.com, and ESPN.com (I know I called out their media personalities but they have an excellent backlog of data).

Also if you would still like to watch that video, I highly recommend it as well as checking out some of their other videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ