Draymond Green makes great point in Jayson Tatum NBA MVP debate

Draymond Green makes great point in Jayson Tatum NBA MVP debate originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Jayson Tatum is the best player on the NBA’s best team and playing at a very high level with great stats. In a lot of seasons, that would be enough to warrant significant league MVP consideration. Not a guarantee to win the award, but at least be top three.

And yet, Tatum finds himself outside the top three in most MVP rankings, including the highly respected MVP straw poll of likely voters conducted multiple times per season by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps.

Bontemps’ most recent poll was revealed Feb. 13. Tatum was sixth. The players ahead of him were, in order of No. 1 to No. 5, Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic and Kawhi Leonard.

Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green has an issue with where Tatum falls in these MVP rankings. In fact, he argued on the latest episode of his podcast, The Draymond Green Show, that the same standard applied to recent winners isn’t being applied to Tatum.

“The Celtics are 7.5 games ahead of the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference,” Green said. “Do people think the Celtics are that great to where Jayson Tatum is only in fifth (in the race)? Sometimes it’s like that team is winning and that guy is the best player and playing well. In this situation, clearly that’s not the goalpost.

“Clearly the goalposts have shifted dramatically, because in this guy’s case he’s fifth? And (his team) has a 7.5-game lead in the conference? The goalposts have moved on Jayson Tatum. I know what JT has to do. JT will not be taken seriously for MVP until he wins a championship, and it just hasn’t been that way for everybody else, I must say. It wasn’t that way for Nikola Jokic. It wasn’t that way for Giannis Antetokounmpo. It wasn’t that way for Joel Embiid. It just really hasn’t been that way for everybody else, so I don’t know how it ended up that way for JT.

“Maybe it’s because he got to the NBA Finals and lost, and everybody is like, ‘Oh, you had your chance,’ but golly, that’s brutal, that’s tough. I’m not sure how JT always lags behind in this voting….

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/draymond-green-makes-great-point-210524294.html

Author : NBC Sports Boston

Publish date : 2024-02-26 21:05:24

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.