Picking an MVP (aka, Stan's first post!)

I haven't gotten to the point where I have original thoughts of my own, since law school has taken most of them away, so I'll start with this:

http://www.atthehive.com/2009/3/15/798478/why-the-mvp-award-is-idiot

What's so interesting about this article is that after the author makes (fairly accurate) critiques of each proposed criteria of the MVP award, he then goes on to Plaxico himself with this seemingly offhand remark:

"The best player is the player that inherently has the most ability. The most valuable player is the player that translated his ability into the most production and therefore, wins."

There you go. After a lengthy diatribe, he captures the essence of what the MVP is about - celebrating the individual that, by using his talent, brings about the most wins to his team. That's a criterion that we can all live with. It incorporates bits and pieces of the other arguments for the MVP without tying itself to any one of them and their fatal flaws. Maybe it's a little vague. But trust me, it's no vaguer than many hundreds of actual laws on the books right now that actually make a difference in our lives.

So freak out over how there's no real, scientific way to figure out who brings the most production to the table. Or freak out because you can't figure out a formula to combine PER, +/-, and the Leroy Jenkins eye test (watch a guy play and see how many times you say "Leroy ...") with any degree of accuracy. But when all's said and done, everyone's going to the same goal - and isn't that just a great thing?

Or you can just follow this route.

Give LeBron the MVP. And hopefully when he's done, he'll fail to bring a championship to Cleveland and decide to leave for the sunnier pastures of the Jay-Z Jersey Nets.