Back with the second half of our midseason report specifically focusing on changes with a farther reaching affect than just this season. A midseason report adjusted for inflation, if you will. If you missed the first half, you can find it here.
Shifting hardware
If Shai Gilgeous-Alexander takes home the MVP trophy this season (as predicted in this newsletter back in mid-October), we’re in for a shift. While merit for the award comes down to performance, it also hinges on a slew of other factors, and some of those skew intangible.
The pool of MVP candidates, season-to-season, stays largely the same because athletes who are that good tend to stay good for stable stretches of time and because once someone has gained our attention, we don’t tend to shift it. We’re creatures of habit, and the people tasked with MVP voting are, too.
Thunder fans have been banging the SGA drum for seasons now, but it’s just this year that he’s finally managed to break through into the broader collective consciousness. We give a lot of weight to the concept of “readiness”, as in, when young athletes break through an invisible barrier and are able to handle some combination of the spotlight, leadership responsibilities, consistent high-level competition, and yes, award consideration.
The reality of readiness is that it’s mostly reached through repetition. Occasionally that’s accelerated through a trade — Henry Abbott at TrueHoop wrote a compelling case on how this could be true for Houston’s Jabari Smith Jr.
Household names get that way because we’ve said them so many times, not because some invisible cue or professional marker was met.
What Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP award candidacy will effectively do is bump an entirely new batch of names into the award pool, but also into national familiarity. Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo aren’t going anywhere — at least for a few seasons — but Gilgeous-Alexander will kick down the door for an accelerated and serious interest in younger talent.
Paolo Banchero, Alperen Şengün, Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama (whose name, along with Şengün, is already on the NBA’s mock MVP ladder) — these will be the names we’re saying for seasons to come.
Small market relevancy
I abhor the categorization of “small markets”. I understand the metrics that determine them and the optics that enforce them, but the term still irks me. I had to get that out of the way.
The last three out of six NBA champs have hailed from small markets. That’s half. The way things are going, we may get another this season. This way things are going, even if the favoured Celtics manage to hold off the Cavs in the East, the Thunder, the Rockets, the Grizzlies, they’re all potentially barrelling out of the West. If not this season, then in the next few to come.
League parity has thrust the small market into the limelight, and partially because teams in these markets are afforded the patience that marquee market teams don’t get. They’ve had the shrewd and doubtful eye of collective and national attention not focused on them for seasons.
In those seasons they experimented, they tinkered, they developed and they got better. The finished product in the small markets we’re watching surge this season will be tested and tempered in the postseason, but they’re the real deal.
