I will never lie. Before the season started, I had 3 other players that I had over Giannis Antetokounmpo this year. I had Nikola Jokic, Steph Curry, and Kyrie Irving. Nikola Jokic could finish top 3 again, but with Denver being a small market team and Jokic just looks out of shape, I don’t know. Steph Curry looked like a good pick just because no Klay Thompson, lost half of their bench, Steph Curry was going to have to put up crazy numbers for the Warriors to succeed, but he got injured. Kyrie Irving could still be in the running for MVP, we’ll see about that.
“Chick, uh, what about Lebron, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, or even Russell Westbrook?” Kids, kids, kids. The V in MVP stands for VALUABLE. I take that seriously. All the players that were named there are all top 10 players, 4 of them on 2 different teams each. That almost automatically disqualifies you from my MVP running. You’re not as valuable if you have another top 10 players on your team. Kawhi Leonard has Paul George who’s pretty high on top players in the NBA just maybe not top 10. So don’t even question me about those players, they’re not as valuable to their team as the players in the first paragraph or Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Ah speaking of Giannis, let’s get to the man of the hour. I thought the Bucks would have regressed a little bit since they lost a great player in Malcolm Brogdan, but they’re doing great without him so far. The Bucks haven’t skipped a beat, and there’s only one reason for that: Giannis Antetokounmpo. He is so good, he’s literally already having better stats than he did last year.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is posting 30 PPG on 58% shooting, FOURTEEN RPG, and 6.5 APG all in only 32 minutes per game. That is literally insane. That is almost 3 points, 2 rebounds, and 1 assist more than his MVP season last year. The Bucks will continue to be good this year, and Giannis should unequivocally win MVP again. If he doesn’t win MVP then we have truly lost the meaning of VALUABLE in the award. If Giannis doesn’t win, change the name of the award to just “Best Season Award.” This award is a mixture of stats and then opinion on who is valuable to their team. This is a lot of the reason why I thought Russell Westbrook should have won MVP in 2016 as he did. If Giannis doesn’t win this year I will riot.
