Based on a newly released ESPN Forecast panel, superstar Houston Rockets guard and former league MVP James Harden appears likely to finish a distant third in MVP voting for the 2019-20 regular season.
Harden trails Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks and LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, who placed first and second in the voting, respectively. Antetokounmpo also won the award last season.
The 30-year-old Harden ranks just ahead of Dallas’ Luka Doncic (fourth) and former teammate Chris Paul (fifth), now with the Oklahoma City Thunder, in the latest voting by ESPN’s media panel.
While the league’s current plans to restart the suspended 2019-20 season do appear to involve up to eight regular-season games, that probably isn’t enough of a sample to significantly change the results.
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Harden currently leads the league with a 34.3 points per game scoring average, which represents just the third time in over 30 years that an NBA player has averaged at least 34 points in a season. (The other two were Harden’s 36.1 last season and Kobe Bryant’s 35.4 in 2005-06.)
However, the team results for this season’s Rockets (40-24) aren’t as strong as the Bucks (53-12) or Lakers (49-14), which largely explains Harden’s current placement behind Antetokounmpo and James.
Harden has finished first or second in MVP voting in four of the last five seasons, as determined by the league’s panel of media voters.
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