Daryl Morey wonders if MVP voters will again ‘rob’ James Harden

Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey said he’s wondering “what new criteria/narrative” could be used by the NBA’s MVP voters to deny James Harden.

Rockets guard James Harden appears well on his way to another historic NBA season, with an astonishing nightly scoring average of 38.2 points over Houston’s first 11 games of the 2019-20 season.

The league-leading numbers from the 30-year-old superstar are even more incredible over the last five games, in which he has posted 41.6 points, 8.8 assists, and 6.8 rebounds per game. Harden’s Rockets (8-3) have won all five of those games, which currently places them second in the Western Conference standings.

Normally, one might expect the combination of historic numbers and team success to lead to a Most Valuable Player (MVP) coronation.

But Rockets GM Daryl Morey doesn’t seem convinced that Harden’s historic production, should it continue over the remainder of the season, will necessarily translate into appreciation from MVP voters.

While Harden did win the media-voted MVP award in 2018, he has finished in second place after three different votes (2015, 2017, 2019) within the last five seasons. Given that context, Morey responded on Twitter to a post speculating about another second-place finish.

I always try to dream up what new criteria/narrative they will dream up to rob him of the award each year.

The “new criteria” line would appear to be in reference to the discrepancy in voting patterns between the 2017 and 2019 races.

In 2017, when the league’s MVP finalists were clearly Harden and Russell Westbrook (then with Oklahoma City), one of the advantages to Harden’s case on paper was that his contributions came on a superior team — with the Rockets winning eight more games in the 2016-17 regular season than the Thunder.

However, Westbrook was the first NBA player to average a triple-double since Oscar Robertson in the 1961-62 season, and the historic nature of that argument appeared to be most persuasive with voters. Westbrook finished with 69 first-place votes to Harden’s 22.

By contrast, in the 2019 race between Harden and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, Harden was the one with history on his side. With an average of 36.1 points, Harden became just the fourth player in league history — and the first in the last 30 years — to average at least 36 points per game for an entire NBA season. He also had a stretch of scoring at least 30 points in 32 consecutive games, which was the second-longest such streak in NBA history.

On the other hand, one of the main arguments for Antetokounmpo, relative to Harden, was that his team won seven more games. Unlike the 2017 vote, team success did seem to be valued at a high level by voters in 2019, and Antetokounmpo won by a comfortable margin.

As for the present, Harden has repeatedly made clear that his “only goal” this season is an NBA title. There have been very little, if any, references to the upcoming MVP race by Houston players.

However, there is understandably some lingering bitterness from many around the Rockets about how prior votes went down.

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