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It’s the mid-season, which means that I don’t have to come up with a column idea! Here are Lakers and NBA award picks for the midseason:

MVP, Lakers: Um, duh.

MVP, NBA: As much as I’d like to pick LeBron for putting the Cavs on his back on the strength of what may be his best statistical season to date, KG’s old team is getting great production out of the jewel of the package they netted for him, that would be Al Jefferson, and they’re still the worst team in the league. Meanwhile, KG’s new team has jumped from the lottery to the league’s elite squad.  That’s as convincing of an argument as I can think of. LeBron can get the award back by doing one of the following: 1) Getting the Cavs to 55 wins.  2) Taking his numbers from “best in the league” to “holy living, breathing Jesus!” like they were the first few weeks of the year.  3) actually showing improvement on his jumpshot (his FG% is up, but that’s because he’s driving more) and thus getting his shooting percentages to greater than 50/35/80.  LeBron’s improved defense merits mention, but seeing as how the Cavs have regressed defensively this year, it’s hard to make that a huge sticking point in MVP talks.

Kobe’s task is even tougher.  The Lakers seem to play better when he doesn’t dominate the ball and allows his teammates to take over, so when he puts up gaudy numbers, the team often doesn’t do well enough for him to merit MVP consideration (see his 35 ppg ‘05-’06 season).  However, when he doesn’t go out and score 35 every night and the team does well enough to get atop the Western Conference, he doesn’t always put up big “ancillary” numbers (rebounds, assists), doesn’t have a big-man like impact on defense or shoot an eye-popping percentage.  The result?  No MVP love when he defers, either.   

Because of this Catch-22, it’s entirely possible that the player many refer to as the league’s best may well finish his career without an MVP on his mantle.  Not necessarily fair, but that’s the pickle he’s currently in. 

Defensive Player Of the Year (DPOY), Lakers: Andrew Bynum

The +/- numbers aren’t there, probably due to the fact fact that his backup, Kwame Brown, is a quality defensive center, but he’s protected the rim admirably and was one of the best rebounders in the NBA before he got hurt. 

DPOY, NBA: Kevin Garnett

Again, going back to Boston/Minnesota: Boston is easily the league’s best defensive team. Minnesota is the worst.  The DPOY award is usually much, much, much harder to figure out.  This year, it’s the biggest no-brainer there is on the board this year.

Rookie of the Year (ROY), Lakers: I’d have to give this to Javaris Crittendon, who hasn’t done anything, but my only other option is Coby Karl, who has done less.  So I’m changing it to “newcomer of the year” and giving it to Derek Fisher.  He’s hit jumpers in the triangle, occasionally taken the scoring load off of Kobe, and generally done all the things good veteran-leaders do.  That is especially important stuff when 24 anchors a squad.  Call him the anti-Smush.

ROY, NBA: Kevin Durant, by default.

I’m still not a believer. He’s shooting under 40%, and under 30% from behind the arc, while putting up a paltry four rebounds and two assists a night. However, he’s outscoring all other rookies by a good 10 points, and no other newbies are shooting over 50% or playing a significant role on a top team. My preseason pick, Jo Noah, has in fact stolen some of Ben Wallace’s minutes, but his team has gone into the crapper and he’s made more headlines for being a pain in the ass than kicking it.  Thus, nobody has stepped up to take the award away from Durant.

(But now it’s time for a Durant/LeBron rant. Yes, he’s averaging 20 points on 40% shooting this year (although that might actually be coming down.) This is where everyone says, “Hey, LeBron averaged 20 ppg on 40% shooting for a crappy team his rookie year, too! Durant is totally on his way to greatness!” Those people make me turn my crappy nicotine gum into powder. First of all, the jump LeBron made from his rookie year to his sophomore year was ridiculous. Seven more points, two more assists and boards a night.  He bumped his 3pt% and FG% by a full 5% each. Those kinds of leaps in production are the rarest of exceptions to typical improvement over one season without a significant increase in minutes, especially when it comes to shooting percentages.

Second, outside of points (20.9 for LeBron to 19.1 for Durant), and shooting percentages (41.7/29%/75.4% to 39.8%/28.1%/86.5%), LeBron was significantly better as a rookie than Durant in every conceivable area. First, the obvious: LeBron averaged 1.5 more rebounds and a full four more assists than Durant. While as a rook, Durant’s impact has really only come as a scorer, LeBron had already emerged as an all-around force, specifically with his passing. And while Cleveland wasn’t great in LeBron’s rookie year, they did double their win total over the previous year, taking 35 games with a dysfunctional supporting cast that featured Carlos Boozer’s breakout year, Ricky Davis and Darius Miles’ implosion, and little else. Durant’s supporting cast isn’t an All-Star team, but they do have a few solid pieces, and they’re on pace for 18 wins. Most significantly of all, on/off court numbers show that Durant is the WORST PLAYER ON THE TEAM.

On/Off court numbers should always be taken with a grain of salt, but most of the league’s best players have very high +/- numbers, with MVP candidates clearing ratings of +15. A few all-stars have fluke ratings of minus one or two, but generally good players have good +/-. And none of the league’s stars have a -14.2 like the next George Gervin does. LeBron’s posted a +1 his rookie year, with the offense playing significantly better with him on the floor but the defense playing worse. Kevin Durant has played two thirds of the minutes for the Sonics. When Durant is off the floor, the league’s worst team is 1.1 points better than their opponents per 100 possessions. When he’s on it, they’re, ya know, the league’s worst team. The offense is actually worse by three points, small potatoes compared to a defense that is a horrifying 11.4 points per 100 possessions less effective. Since one of the main reasons for switching him to shooting guard was to hide him on defense, playing out of position doesn’t seem to be the culprit, but if I was P.J. Carlesimo, I’d change something fast, because unless Durant’s considerable talents are applied in some other way, the man who Bill Simmons calls “The Next George Gervin, but crossed with Bob MacAdoo, Nowitzki’s range and MJ’s sense of the moment” is going to be the next Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

Here’s a quick synopsis for all of you sociopaths Durant apologists who showed up on my website last September: I realize that many great players had unremarkable rookie years. But unremarkable rookies generally turn into unremarkable veterans.  The only things Durant has going for him that would lead one to believe that he’s going to be great are his college numbers and his body type, not anything he’s done so far on the court. Yeah, Durant is still extremely talented, and he still could become an All Star or better, but he is not on that track right now.  Right now, he’s projecting to become, at best, a one-dimensional 25 ppg scorer who doesn’t shoot at a high percentage and can’t get a team into the playoffs.  Disagree?  Pease, then, show me a great player who was an albatross for a 19-win team when he was its featured scorer. Or, better yet, just stay quiet until Durant actually shoots a decent percentage or takes a team to the playoffs, because if you didn’t gather it from before, I just quit smoking, and I am mighty crabby.)

MIP, Lakers: If you don’t know this one, you’re not a fan. But if you really can’t get it, read on.

MIP, NBA tier 1: “relative nobody to important contributor”:

Yep, Andrew Bynum. Went from a punchline and 15-mpg project to the second-best player on a suddenly championship-quality Lakers team before he got hurt. It remains to be seen just how bad the injury will damage the team-the Lakers have been on a cold streak since Bynum went down, but their losses have been against Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, and a red-hot Cavaliers team.  So it’s not quite time to say the sky is falling.

MIP, NBA tier 2: “good player to all-star”:

Brandon Roy. The rap on him coming out of the draft was that he wouldn’t improve much after his rookie year, so of course he made a huge leap and is now the best player on a surprisingly playoff-quality Blazers team.

MIP, NBA tier 3: “All-star to straight-up superstar”:

With apologies to Dwight Howard, who is genuinely amazing to watch and actually provides LeBron some competition for the Athlete Who Looks Like Some Kind of Government Engineered Super Soldier Award, this has to go to Chris Paul, whose penetration, passing, and scoring skills have, as of this writing, made the Hornets-the Hornets!- the Western Conference’s best team. Steve Nash has been playing the point guard position to perfection over the last three and a half seasons, so we know what it looks like.  And Chris Paul is playing it to perfection. He’s the first of the new-rules inspired uber-quick guards (Harris, Parker, Barbosa, Ellis, Rondo), who’s also a good enough passer, driver, and shooter to revolutionize the position, because when he feels like getting into the paint, he gets there.

Californication award for “player I like far more than can be rationally justified”:

Lakers: Jordan Farmar.As much as I like Derek Fisher, I’m much happier when Farmar’s in the game. He’s a pure point in the best sense of the word, flying up and down the court, pushing the pace, tossing out dimes, and generally turning the Lakers from a boring “run the triangle, watch Kobe shoot” team into a fast-breaking, athletic, nightmare to defend team. Props to Phil Jackson for knowing how to accommodate Farmar into the scheme and not trying to just make him a jump shooter (although Farmar can shoot, too).  The Lakers play at the same pace as the Suns this season, and the results have been positive. Even though he’s a UCLA boy, I love Jordan Farmar.  That means something.

NBA: Baron Davis. (I know, two UCLA kids.  I’m gonna get my face stepped on by Tommy Trojan, today.)

I’m from the Bay Area, so this is a homer pick, but it’s hard to describe just how important Baron Davis is. Numbers would show him as a shoot-first point, one who guns at a low percentage to boot, and you can’t make a logical argument for taking him over Kobe, LeBron, Wade, or about 20 other superstars. But Baron has more magic than Doug Henning. In crunch-time, there’s no telling what he’s going to do. He could post up. He could launch a triple with 20 seconds in the shot clock. He could fadeaway, or fire a pass over his shoulder. He could make Andrei Kirilenko his bitch. But whatever he does seems to work. There’s no way to describe it, but especially when Golden State is at home with the game on the line, the ball in Baron’s hands, and the place gets so loud?  Everyone just trusts Baron to do something absolutely impossible and take the game.  We trust he operates on some kind of plane we can’t understand, and thus never question him. He is the heart and soul of the league’s most unpredictable and dangerous team.  And he reviews movies and gives out awards he calls the “Boomscars.” Make no mistake, that earns points. 

LeBron is the league’s best crunch-time player, but Baron has a kind of carefree magic about him in the crunch that makes him different and special.  He is utterly unburdened by the pressure that LeBron, Kobe, or even Jordan feel/felt.  To him, the game is not a struggle to attain a preordained destiny of greatness, but rather an exercise in controlling a destiny he feels free to bend as he wishes in order to carve his legacy.

I freaking love Baron Davis.

Honorable Mention for Stephen Jackson.

The Heroes Award for “Most Disappointing Follow-up to a Breakout”:

Lakers: Big Ronny Turiaf. I still love Ronny, but the magic has gone a little bit.  We expected a big step up when he started the year in the starting lineup, but his numbers have stayed about the same while his FG% has gone down.  Not even moving him back to the bench brought That Ronny Magic back.

Still, every team would love to have a guy just like him.

NBA: Andrea Bargnani, Andre Iguodala.Not a lot of explanation needed, although Bargnani is a bummer because I like Brian Coangelo and Toront0 and like it when a ballsy pick pays off.

The Cloverfield award for “Secretly Terrible Thing”:

Lakers: Don’t really have one, unless you count Lamar Odom.  He hasn’t really stepped up on the stat sheet, and the Lakers play better with him off the floor. Meanwhile, Caron Butler is putting up 20+ ppg over in Washington, improbably becoming the best player on either side of the Shaq trade. Funny how things work out sometimes. Unless you think about it when you watch Kwame Brown drop an entry pass. Then it’s infuriating.

NBA: Al Jefferson. Much like Durant, he’s putting up pretty good numbers. Much like Durant, his team is vying for the top pick. And like Durant, he has an abysmal +/- of -13.7, with defense being most of the problem at -15.3. When a supposedly good player is dominating the ball for a horrible team, why is it such a stretch for the media to figure out that the “superstar” might actually be the problem? Unless their name is Dwayne, great players don’t usually find themselves on teams struggling to get double-digit wins at the midway point.

The “Meet The Spartans” award for Obviously Terrible Thing:

Lakers: Kwame Brown.He’s a good defensive center, but his offense could be glibly described as “not so good.” Oh, and the Lakers are 17.4 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the floor. When the nicest thing you can say about a former #1 draft pick is that you don’t hate him, you just feel bad for him, it’s pretty clear his career hasn’t worked out.  And I did mention Caron Butler, right?

NBA: The Knicks. Again, little more needs to be said.

Well, I’m sitting on 2,200 words and the Lakers are still a contender to get home-court advantage, so this is where I’ll call it a day. Have a good one, everyone.

John Krolik is the author/host of Truth in a Bullet Fedora. His work can also be found on Free Darko, and the Most Valuable Network.

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