Sorting through some old MVP voting results on basketball-reference.com, I came up with some interesting tidbits:
1) Not all MVP balloting is the same. For example, many years only First Place ballots were requested. So, someone like LeBron James in 2017-18 got a higher "share" of potential "points" than did George Gervin in 1977-78, even though Gervin got more first place votes.
2) Voters have always been weird. In 1956-57, 12 guys received first place votes. Now, I realize that a league might be fairly even in talent level, but it seems hard to believe that 12 guys were deserving of 1st place MVP votes. Were people really uncertain as to whether Mel Hutchins was a better player than Cousy or Pettit? Cuz, ya know, Pettit lost by 2 votes, so maybe he could have used Hutchins' vote and/or Ray Felix's vote?
Similarly, in 1979-80, a voter split his vote between Julius Erving and Gus Williams, thus leaving Doc with 31.5 first-place votes. There appeared to be absolutely no good reason for doing this, but it was done. Similarly, were there really 2 people in 1979-80 who believed Dan Roundfield was the best player in the entire league?
Kelvin Ransey in 1980-81 received a first-place vote. He received no other votes. He had 2.8 Win Shares. Someone apparently believed he was more valuable than either MVP Julius Erving or runner up Larry Bird. Ransey's season was roughly half as good as the season of Caldwell Jones, who received one 11th place vote that same year
.
3) The stretch of MVP balloting from 1968 to 1979 is awfully rough to look at. Winners include Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, and Bill Walton. None of these players had particularly great years (McAdoo in 1975 and 1976 when he finished 1-2 at least had historically great years).
A fairly good argument could be made that Kareem (won in 1971-72-74-76-77) should have won 3 or 4 MORE MVPs than he did! (Kareem's 1972-73 season he went 30-16-5 and had 22 Win Shares, He finished second to Dave Cowens' 20-16-4 with 12 Win Shares).
4) Wilt had ridiculous seasons where he failed to win MVP. Wilt went 50-25 in 1961-62, finished 2nd. Wilt followed that up with a 44-24 and finished.......7th (0 first-place votes). But 1963-64 is the true crime. Wilt posted arguably the best season of all-time - 37 points, 22 rebounds, 5 assists, 25 Win Shares, .325 Win Shares per 48. Won their division, reached the Finals, second best player was Tom Meschery.
Wilt posted the only season to that point (he later had another) where a player had over 10 offensive WS and over 10 defensive WS. Wilt finished second to Oscar.
It was seemingly the case that when Wilt had huge numbers the voters felt huge numbers did not matter, but when other posted huge numbers, suddenly huge numbers mattered.
5) There is a belief on Twitter that somehow "Steve Nash screwed Kobe out of the MVP" in two straight years. This is simply false. In 2004-05, Nash probably should have lost to Miami Shaq, that is true, but Kobe received 0 votes. Not 0 first-place votes.....0 votes. Not top 15 in balloting. In 2005-06, look, it was a terrible season overall (Heat beat Mavs in Finals). But Kobe did not lead the league in WS or WS/48 (he was 4th in both) and he finished 4th in balloting. His team was 45-37 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Sorry, he was not "screwed". Now, should Nash (8th in WS, 8th in WS/48) have won? Probably not, but.......
6) It is a common thread running through MVP results that point guards are generally overrated and get more MVP votes/awards than they deserve based upon their production. Evidence?
Cousy in 1956-57 was a far worse player than Bob Pettit - Cousy won
Oscar should have lost to Wilt 1963-64
Magic probably should have lost to Jordan in 1989 and 1990 (or Barkley 1990)
Iverson was 8th in WS and 9th in WS/48 when he defeated Duncan and Shaq in 2000-01
Jason Kidd finished 2nd to Tim Duncan in 2001-02 when Kidd was 13th in the league in WS and 14th in WS/48
Nash probably did not deserve to win either 2005 or 2006 and Nash finished SECOND AGAIN in 2007! In none of those years was Nash top 4 in Win Shares.
Derrick Rose in 2011 was 4th in the league in WS and 6th in WS/48. Not only did he defeat LeBron,
Dwight Howard and Kobe, but he absolutely DESTROYED them in MVP balloting - 113-4-3-1 in first place votes. So, in other words, while Rose was probably a top 5 player, voters treated his season as if it were Jordan 1996. It wasn't.
Curry and Harden had roughly the same season in 2014-15. Curry smoked Harden 100-25 in MVP balloting
Harden was the better player in 2016-17, but Russ' triple double gained him the nod over Harden.
7) The decision of voters to register a single vote for Carmelo in 2013 (over LeBron) and for Iverson over Shaq (2000) can only be seen as incredibly vindictive and designed just to hurt the legacies of those two winners. These were two of the greatest seasons of all-time, yet one voter felt the need to somehow poke his finger in the eye of the winner.
Even odder in the case of these two votes? The decision to vote for Melo/Iverson could have been better handled by voting for some more deserving player. For example, a Garnett/Durant set of votes in 2000/2013 would have looked far less like a "screw you" to LeBron/Shaq.
Similarly, the decision of voters to give 2 votes to Jermaine O'Neal and 1 vote to Peja in 2004 denied Garnett what should have been a unanimous MVP (Duncan only played 69 games, he finished 2nd overall in the race).
8) My list of the 36 best players of all-time generally contains the 1st and 2nd place winners of every year, except for the following:
Winners not in my top 36 -- Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Iverson, Rose, Westbrook.
2nd place guys not mentioned above and not in my top 36 -- Dolph Schayes, Nate Thurmond, Lenny Wilkens, George Gervin, Bernard King, Nique, Clyde Drexler, Alonzo Mourning, Jason Kidd, Dwight Howard, Kawhi Leonard.
Winners and Runners Up Since 1956-57 (controversial results in my opinion are listed in ALL CAPS)
1955-56 Petit over Arizin
56-57 -- COUSY over PETTIT
57-58 Russell over Schayes
58-59 Pettit over Russell
59-60 Wilt over Russell
60-61 Russell over Pettit
61-62Russell over Wilt
63-64 Russell over Baylor
1963-64 OSCAR OVER WILT
64-65 Russell over Oscar
65-66 Wilt over West
66-67 Wilt over Nate Thurmond
67-68 Wilt over Lenny Wilkins
1968-69 UNSELD OVER REED (Unseld not top 5 in WS)
69-70 Reed over West
70-71 Kareem over West
1972-73 COWENS OVER KAREEM
73-74 Kareem over McAdoo
74-75 McAdoo over Cowens
75-76 Kareem over McAdoo
76-77 Kareem over Walton
1977-78 WALTON OVER GERVIN (Walton played 58 games and had 8 WS, David Thompson or Gervin should have won MVP....or Kareem)
78-79 Moses over Gervin
79-80 Kareem over Doc
80-81 Doc over Bird
81-82 Moses over Bird
82-83 Moses over Bird
83-84 Bird over Bernard King
84-85 Bird over Magic
85-86 Bird over Dominique Wilkins
86-87 Magic over Jordan
87-88 Jordan over Bird
88-89 Magic over Jordan (this vote also involved 1/2 votes for MVP - a voter split his vote between
Johnson and Jordan)
1989-90 MAGIC OVER BARKLEY - Magic actually had fewer first-place votes than Barkley!!
(27-38) but the presence of Jordan (21 firsts) gave Barkley enough bad ballots that he lost, becoming the only MVP loser to get the most first-place votes - something that in many years was not possible, because only first-place votes were cast.
1990-91 Jordan over Magic
91-92 Jordan over Clyde Drexler
92-93 Barkley over Olajuwon
1993-94 HAKEEM over DAVID ROBINSON - while the urban legend is that David stole Hakeem's MVP in 1995, the fact is that David had 20 WS to Hakeem's 14 here. In fact, Shaq had a better year than Hakeem and also would have been a better regular season MVP.
1994-95 David over Shaq (again, note, this is where lore states that Hakeem was screwed and got revenge in the playoffs; Hakeem's 1995 wasn't a great year, 9th in WS, received one 1st place vote.
1995-96 Jordan over David
1996-97 KARL MALONE OVER MICHAEL JORDAN
This certainly is not a hugely controversial result (Malone had a HUGE year) but Jordan was still the better player and he had the slightly better year. Certainly when you consider that Jordan would fall one MVP short of Kareem, this one and 1989-90 have to sting.
97-98 Jordan over Karl Malone
98-99 Karl over Zo (50 game year - was a weird year, Karl deserved the award)
1999-2000 Shaq over KG
2000-01 IVERSON OVER DUNCAN -- Shaq, Duncan and Garnett were the league's 3 best players
2001-02 Duncan over Kidd (very weird that this was a close vote, Duncan the far superior player)
2002-03 Duncan over KG (note - this was the MONSTER year for Tracy McGrady, didn't do much for him - he finished 4th)
2003-04 KG over Duncan (worthy of note how great of a year Peja Stoyakovic had - roughly 30% better than any year he ever had. This is the only year he ever had where he was top 10 in either VORP or WS....still didn't deserve his one first-place vote)! Jermaine O'Neal received one of his 2 first-place votes because a writer felt "I don't like how KG treats us in the locker room"
2004-05 NASH OVER MIAMI SHAQ (note the number of times Shaq gets under-voted)
2005-06 NASH OVER LeBRON (probably should have been Dirk or LeBron)
06-07 Dirk over Nash (as stated above this was actually Nash's best year)
07-08 Kobe over CP3
08-09 LeBron over Kobe
2009-10 LeBron over Durant
2010-11 DERRICK ROSE OVER DWIGHT HOWARD (three best players were James, Howard, CP3) The denial of LeBron here prevented him from winning 5 straight, no one has ever won even 4 straight.
11-12 James over Durant
12-13 James over Durant (this is the bizarre Melo first-place vote year)
13-14 Durant over James ("the real MVP" speech)
14-15 Curry over Harden (two guys had almost the same stats, HUGE blowout win for Curry)
15-16 Curry unanimous over Kawhi -- now, Curry had a top 15 all-time season, but that does not answer the question of why he was suddenly unanimous MVP when others had had similar seasons before:
http://bkref.com/tiny/rzugk and not only NOT been unanimous winners, but had even lost!! with similar stats.
2016-17 WESTBROOK OVER HARDEN -- simply put, Harden had a better year than Westbrook, and Harden's team was better than Westbrook's. This is the triumph of Usage Rate over careful consideration. To make matters worse, the vote was not particularly close (69-22 in first-place votes)
finally
2017-18 Harden over LeBron
The end....for now.