By a weird twist of fate, Kevin Garnett is not going to receive the MVP, despite being the best player on the best team in the league. Partially because he has 2 other All Stars next to him, partially because “yeah, but they’re in the East”. That despite the Celtics mopping the hardwood with the teams in the West, including a sweep of the Texas Triangle.

But even if he doesn’t win the MVP, he still should have some hardware to show for the impressive season he lead the Celtics to. Since he’s no longer a rookie, did not improve (from a personal stats point of view) and he’s not a coach yet, the only “consolation award” he can be given is the DPOY. Not that he doesn’t deserve it anyway, but he should win it by a landslide if the voters take all these into account.

This season’s second place is Dwight Howard, who’s still one season away from win it himself, and perhaps only 2-3 seasons away from winning the MVP. Other players receiving consideration should be Camby and Duncan, but nothing more than consideration for them. On second thought, a case can be made for Dwight winning the DPOY award THIS season. Duncan and Garnett have a defensive stopper in Bowen and Pierce  (who took up this role this season). They take the opposing team’s best scorers (most scorers are perimeter players), making the job easier for the big men behind them. Howard, on the other hand, has to cover an average defensive backcourt as well as a couple of SF not known for their defense, out of which one is playing out of position at PF.

UPDATE: Kevin Garnett was just named DPOY. As I was saying above, he won it in a landslide, as a sign that voters considered it a consolation award:

Garnett won the league award for the first time by a wide margin one day before Boston takes a 1-0 lead into Game 2 of the first-round series against Atlanta.


He had 90 of the 124 first-place votes and a total of 493 points. Marcus Camby of Denver, last year’s winner, was second with 12 first and 178 points, just edging Shane Battier of Houston, who received 11 first-place votes and 175 points.

What does this mean ?? Well, it means that Kobe got the MVP. So congratulations to Kobe for that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 4:34 am and is filed under Awards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.