Kevin Durant won his first NBA title and also snagged Finals MVP honors when the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday night. The win also meant that LeBron James would not take his fourth MVP trophy home.
But there’s plenty of evidence that James could have earned the award despite the Cavaliers not repeating as NBA champions.
A Finals MVP has only come from the losing team once: in 1969 when Jerry West averaged 37.9 points per game in the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics. The Celtics won in seven games, but West won MVP honors for the Los Angeles Lakers. It took shooting 49 percent from the field and a 51-point Game 1 performance to manage that, though.
LeBron, meanwhile, put up one of the most impressive 5-game performances in NBA Finals history.
LeBron James became the first player to average a triple-double in #NBAFinals 33.6p-12.0r-10.0a but well hear how he's 3-5 in Finals instead
— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) June 13, 2017
That’s not to say that Kevin Durant didn’t deserve to win the MVP. Rather, that James playing for the losing team shouldn’t necessarily exclude him from the conversation. Much like Russell Westbrook clearly being the most important player for the Thunder in the regular season, it was obvious that James needed to play nearly every minute of the Finals just for Cleveland to have a chance.
His Game 5 performance, for example, was pretty outrageous. James doesn’t think there was more he could do in this series, and the numbers tend to agree.
https://twitter.com/Sam_Vecenie/status/874473849068310528
LeBron’s brilliance, however, was enough to win more than one game against Golden State’s “super team.” There are many things at play here, including the debate over whether Durant was playing his best basketball with Golden State or playing the same with a much better supporting cast. If that’s the case, one could argue that LeBron’s NBA Finals numbers are actually more impressive because he played with inferior teammates.
Durant, for the record, had 39 points and 7 rebounds in Game 5 to clinch the title. He was also the unanimous MVP pick. So, in the minds of the voters that matter, there wasn’t much debate after all.
