The GOAT NBA Index (2017/2018 MVP Rankings)
The NBA announced the MVP for the 2017/2018 season this past Monday: James Harden. Harden is an offensive powerhouse, and his ability drive down the lane and his proficiency with step back threes even with defenders in his face is simply unreal. And his stats are definitely MVP worthy: averaging 30.4 points per game, 5.4 rebounds and 8.8 assists over the season.
The people voted for James Harden. And after what I saw, he deserves that popular vote.
But what story do the numbers actually tell?
What other metrics should we focus on besides the standard points, rebounds and assists that many cite as success benchmarks? For example, what good is it to score the most points, but also have the most turnovers? Or fouls? Or make the least free throws? This is why I disagree with the current voting approach the NBA takes to determining the MVP, as MVP considerations can differ across voting panel members, leading to bias. The GOAT Index and GOAT Scores are designed to address the limitations of the voting approach by objectively determining and ranking holistic player performance.
I’m not going to go into the methodology or formulas for generating GOAT Scores in this article. I’ve written a few lengthy articles in the past describing the process in detail which I had available for free for a few years, but putting all this together takes ALOT of work and time, and a man’s gotta eat (smile), so for a detailed analysis of how the GOAT Index and GOAT scores work, I recommend you visit the GOAT Index page on my main website, and download some of the cool case studies I have there in which I go into tremendous detail!
These are the MVP candidates we will rank in our GOAT Index based on the 2017/2018 season:
We’ll be using GOAT scores to determine the best performers for the regular and post seasons out of the players mentioned above, and generate a final GOAT score (Total GTS) to determine the overall top performers (MVPs) for veterans and rookies. Let’s get to work.
Regular Season GOAT Scores (Veterans)
Below are the indexed player performance scores for the 2017/2018 regular season:
Anthony Davis, not James Harden comes out as the best performer over the regular season. The race between him, Harden and LeBron was almost dead even. But the key metric that hurt the rankings for LeBron and Harden were turnovers:
Playoff GOAT Scores (Veterans)
Below are the indexed player performance scores for the 2017/2018 playoffs:
LeBron made the most headlines during the playoffs, and he put together some really spectacular playoff performances. I personally thought without question that he would log the highest Playoff GT Score. But no, that honor went to Clint Capela. When I created the GOAT Index for last years playoffs (2016/2017), LeBron was the top performer and Clint Capela came in at #2. This year, Capela moved up to #1 on the playoff performer list. How so? The race between Capela and LeBron was almost dead even, but two factors dropped LeBron behind Capela: LeBron’s turnovers during playoffs, and Capela’s ability to protect the rim. I personally felt the Cavs ran too many plays through LeBron last playoffs, and were at their best when they moved the ball around on offense. Also, while LeBron had more dramatic chase down blocks, overall Capela was the man when it came to protecting the rim. We can’t forget that Capela is largely responsible for giving Houston that defensive edge they so desperately needed, and his overall performance provided way more benefit to Houston than Harden’s during the playoffs. Below is a detailed view of playoff performance and rankings by category on a paced per 36/48 basis:
Total GOAT Scores (2017/2018 MVP Rankings)
Below are the overall rankings for the 2017/2018 season (Total GTS):
Based on overall paced performance, Anthony Davis had the highest Total GOAT Score and was the MVP for the 2017/2018 season.
Regular Season GOAT Scores (Rookies)
Below are the regular season performance scores for the top rookies:
Among rookies last season, for the regular season, Ben Simmons was the man, dominating a good number of metrics. Below is an indexed ranking table for our paced metric view, and as you can see, outside of turnovers and free throws, Ben Simmons was in the top 3 for all the other stats (remember for turnovers, less is best, so have the #1 rank in that category equates to having the least turnovers, same applies to personal fouls):
Playoff GOAT Scores (Rookies)
Again, similar to LeBron, I actually thought Jayson Tatum would have the highest Playoff GOAT Score and take the #1 spot. He was definitely one of my favorite players to watch for the Celtics. But I almost fell into the trap most people fall into, and that is looking solely at his offensive ability. With offense, he was the second best scorer, next to Donovan Mitchell. But across all other metrics, again, Ben Simmons logged the highest indexed scores:
Check out the below view that shows how the rookies we’re comparing ranked by metric and indexed/ranked against each other:
Total GOAT Scores (2017/2018 MVR Rankings)
The MVR in the title above is not a typo, it stands for “Most Valuable Rookie.” This is how the top rookies we selected rank when looking at Total GTS:
Summary
2017/2018 regular season MVP — Anthony Davis
2017/2018 playoffs MVP — Clint Capela
2017/2018 MVP — Anthony Davis
2017/2018 regular season MVR — Ben Simmons
2017/2018 playoffs MVR — Ben Simmons
2017/2018 MVR — Ben Simmons
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