With the 2022 NBA Finals tied 2-2 returning to San Francisco for the fifth game on Monday, it’s a good time to check out the always-fun Finals MVP career. If the Golden State Warriors win, Stephen Curry is a lock. As we will discuss, so far he has a strong case to win the award even if the Warriors lose the series. On the Boston Celtics side, right now it’s a tight call between Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
After that, I won’t bother with consideration for anyone else. One of these three boys will win the MVP of the final. Through four games, I see how I see the standings break.
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1. Stephen Curry
Curry is the favorite because Golden State, at least on paper, is in a better position to win the championship as it is today, having regained the lead at home in what has become a series of three parties.
If the Warriors fall short, there are precedents for a losing team player to win the Final MVP. Jerry West was honored in 1969 when his Lakers lost in seven games to the Celtics. In more recent times, if ever a losing team player were to win the Finals MVP, he should, and probably should have been LeBron James in 2015, when he averaged 35.8 points, 13 , 3 rebounds and 8.8 assists in the defeat of Cleveland. in Golden State.
We know who really won the MVP of the Finals in that 2015 series: Andre Iguodala. There is still much debate, with Iguodala himself saying recently that he deserved the award over Stephen Curry, who, despite having some difficult games by his standards, averaged 26-6-5 and created much of the ‘space in which Iguodala, and others, prospered. .
This year, Curry, the lack of a MVP of the finals on a curriculum worthy of Mt. Rushmore has been killed, leaving no doubt. Again, if the Warriors win this series, they have the hardware in their bag. No one else has a chance. The question is, should Curry win the award even if the Warriors lose the series?
You see, there is still a long way to go. If Curry lays an egg two during the final stretch of this series, he will not win. He will have to keep up his current pace until the end. That’s the way it should be. For a losing player to win an MVP, the difference must be so great that it is overwhelming.
So far, so good. No one in this series has been as big as Curry, who currently has an average of 34.3 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists and two steals in 50 percent shooting. Dude is shooting 49 percent of 3 in a tick over 12 attempts per game. If continued, these numbers would take him to the most select historical company.
With 25 triples so far, Curry is the first player in history to make at least five 3s in four straight games in the Final. After his 43-point masterpiece in Game 4, he is also one of three bases to reach a 40-point / 10-bounce finish line, joining Magic Johnson and the aforementioned West.
Given the all-time defense he faces and the lack of help he’s getting from his own team, what Curry is doing right now is superhuman. The Celtics are a better team than the Warriors. They are bigger, stronger, faster. They have a better defense. They have two elite goal scorers compared to Golden State. None of his lineups should compromise the attack for the defense, or vice versa, while Golden State is, in one way or another, repairing at least one glaring hole during every second of this series.
Draymond Green can’t be played to the limit right now. Klay Thompson saw most attack opportunities on the wings. If you are still seeing this Warriors team through the lens of what it was before, take a look at your eyes. These are not the old warriors. However, it is Curry himself, who is literally the only card Golden State has to play. And so far, almost alone, he holds them in his hand.
That’s exactly what James did in 2015 without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. LeBron had the Cavaliers team led by Mathew Dellavedova, Timofey Mozgov, Iman Shumpert and Tristan Thompson 2-1 in a Warriors team with 67 wins. He was not as efficient as Curry in this series. Not even close. But he was the best player in that series for a mile, and he didn’t win the award. Some people would argue that if LeBron didn’t get it then, Curry can’t get it now.
I’m not sure if I’m one of these people. My instinct is that I feel a little weird that a losing team player wins MVP of the Final, although I usually underestimate the arguments that rest on the old, stingy leg of traditionalism. I don’t know why. It just feels weird. But if LeBron won in 2015, I think I would feel good about it. West’s precedent was set a decade before I was born. I cannot intervene in this discussion with any level of intelligence.
To me, LeBron should have set the precedent for modern in 2015. But my colleague Sam Quinn challenged me in our chat room to answer a simple question: why should I report another bad? As Sam stated, it’s similar to the argument that a baseball player can’t be voted unanimously in the Hall of Fame because Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle weren’t.
So they were wrong. Obviously. Why should we keep doing these things wrong? Baseball voters finally broke their idiot code when Mariano Rivera got 100 percent of the vote in 2019.
People said the same thing that Curry won the 2015-16 regular season MVP by unanimous vote. How can this happen when Michael Freaking Jordan never won unanimously? Again, two mistakes do not make one right. There was no justifiable option to win the 2015-16 MVP other than Curry. They got it right.
So again, if he continues at this current pace and the Warriors lose the series, Curry will certainly have a chance to win his first MVP of the Finals. Will he do it? I do not know. Tradition is hard to break. And again, these would mean that you have to spend for these processes. No matter how I feel, of course. It only matters how voters feel. I know this: if all the Boston players are up there with their championship hats and shirts on and announcing Curry as the MVP, it will cause a hellish firestorm on Twitter.
2. Jayson Tatum
Again, if Boston wins the series and Curry doesn’t break modern precedents, right now there’s a thin margin between Tatum and Brown. Almost impossible, both have an exact average of 22.3 points and 7.0 assists so far in the series. Brown’s score has been much more efficient than Tatum’s, but I’m still inclined to Tatum because of the game. His 7.8 assists per game is double Brown’s output.
Overall, entering the game 4 Tatum was responsible for 45 percent of Boston’s attack by scoring or assisting. Tatum is defending herself as the superstar, and Brown, if we’re splitting our hair, benefits from the secondary creation opportunities offered by Tatum’s gravity. Tatum’s near-edge finishing issues are re-emerging, but it’s reaching 45 percent of its 3 in this series.
3. Jaylen Brown
For me, Brown has felt like the best player in Boston so far, somehow the same as Iguodala felt like the best player in Golden State in 2015. You have to really consider the load of the superstar , with Tatum being the Curry of 2015: to let slip the inefficiency and really appreciate the overall impact of the guy driving the bus, as Charles Barkley likes to say.
But Brown has been great. No questions asked. His game, while not Tatum-level, has been important, and it’s not like he’s not creating his own offense. He beat Draymond Green remarkably on several occasions for a one-on-one in Game 4. Both Brown and Tatum are …