Did Russell Westbrook’s Attitude Play a Part in MVP Balloting?

On Monday morning, the announcement came that Steph Curry was the winner of the NBA Kia Most Valuable Player award. That wasn’t much of a surprise considering that Curry was the best player on the best team this past season; that’s usually enough for most voters to swing the award in a players’ direction. But what was unexpected was how Russell Westbrook fared in the voting process.

Westbrook finished fourth, falling behind to James Harden and LeBron James in overall points. More telling, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard failed to record even a single first-place vote. Out of 130 total ballots, Curry accounted for 100 votes as the top player, Harden scored 25 and James finished with five.

Despite a monumental individual season from Westbrook where he set career-high averages in points (28.1), rebounds (7.3) and assists (8.6), no one considered him the best in the game. Not after leading the league in scoring. Nor after finishing the season with 11 triple-doubles, including a stretch of four-straight that was drawing historical comparisons to Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan.

Not a single vote.

The selection process is tricky and numbers can be skewed to fit any number of narratives. Curry’s strongest statistic was how his team outscored opponents by 900+ points while he was on the floor, showing an impact on both offense and defense.

In Harden’s case, he carried a team that lost its second-best player (Dwight Howard) for most of the season to a second-place finish in the Western Conference standings. 

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LeBron had a strong season for his new/old team but wasn’t really considered a realistic option at MVP; more likely he’s simply been the “best player in the game” for so long, it would be almost blasphemous that he wouldn’t at least be included in the discussion.

But those first-place votes…

James received four from media members across the country and, predictably, a top vote from Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal, his hometown paper.

Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman didn’t even include Westbrook in his top-five, giving votes to Chris Paul and Anthony Davis along with Curry, Harden and James.

Chris Paul. Another – and in Mayberry’s eyes, better – point guard.

The disconnect between the Thunder (both players and management) and the media has been a recurring theme for years, magnified greatly this past season. It famously boiled over during the January confrontation between Westbrook and Berry Tramel, a senior reporter at The Oklahoman that has been (perhaps justifiably) critical of Kevin Durant and former head coach Scott Brooks.

Mayberry’s ballot would seem to indicate that the relationship between the athletes and the media members that cover them most frequently has been strained, perhaps irreparably.

If you hear the buzz surrounding Curry’s selection, you hear a lot of the same words being tossed up. Approachable. Relatable. Humble. Those words are never used to describe Westbrook, other than when listing the many qualities that he does not embody.

It’s an unfair judgement of a player that has simply concentrated on doing his job – being a basketball player – rather than cultivate a relationship with reporters that can (and often will) turn on you. We saw similar shades of that from Westbrook’s teammate, Durant, when he announced (perhaps justifiably) to media at this year’s All-Star game, “You guys really don’t know shit.”

Westbrook has never publicly stated that the MVP award was a goal. In fact, he often stated the contrary, that it had little meaning to him and that making the playoffs was a more important goal. He and the Thunder fell just short of reaching it during this injury-plagued season and that, too, might have cost him during the voting process.

You wonder if the latest slight from media will be a wake-up call that the approach Westbrook has taken to dealing with reporters (or, rather, not dealing with them) might not be working. But one gets the feeling it’ll have the opposite effect that Westbrook will be more driven and intense than ever before and that he’ll find a way to attack opponents even more mercilessly than he did this past season.

He’ll have no recourse if he wants to show that he’s truly worthy of MVP consideration, something of which there’s no doubt. The NBA’s popularity contest might have left him out in the cold this time around but perhaps sheer dominance next season can prove who’s really most valuable.

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