Anthony Davis has a problem.
The New Orleans Pelicans big man is currently having a historic season. After two weeks of ball, he's averaging 21.7 points and 11.6 rebounds per game along with 3.9 blocks and 2.3 steals. Think of Paul George blended with Roy Hibbert. And unlike most board-and-block monsters (ahem, Dwight Howard), Davis is shooting 86.8 percent from the free throw line on 7.3 trips per game, which gives him an above-average true shooting percentage.
Throw this all together and you've got a player efficiency rating of 29.5. No one's is better. And then you realize that he's just 20 years old. We've never seen a PER that high from someone who can't legally drink. LeBron James never did it (25.7 PER in 2004-05) and neither did Shaq (22.9 PER in 1992-93) or Chris Webber (21.7 PER in 1993-94). By any metric, he's one of the best players in the league, if not the best. If you want more evidence, heading into Monday's games Davis was tied for the league lead in WARP, the advanced metric developed by Per Diem partner Kevin Pelton.
By all indications, Davis is doing everything in his power to be an MVP candidate and fully deserves to be in the early running for the award.
But Davis indeed has a problem. It's just not necessarily his fault: His teammates might not be good enough to keep him in the discussion. Which makes no sense at all.
I realize we're getting ahead of ourselves by talking in November about an award handed out in May, but we should nip this one in the bud. There's a fair chance that the Pelicans might not be any good this season, but why should team ineptitude disqualify Davis for an individual award?
The youthful Pelicans are 3-4 with all three victories coming against teams below .500 and three of their four losses coming against teams expected to be in "tank" mode (Phoenix and Orlando). The mediocrity could continue. Ahead of the season, SCHOENE projections gave the Pelicans a lukewarm 41-41 record, which would place them 10th in the Western Conference.
But Davis can't do everything. And when I said earlier he's doing "everything in his power," I mean it. The Pelicans have been an outright disaster when Davis hasn't been on the floor -- they're minus-13.4 points per 100 possessions with Davis riding pine, according to NBA.com data. That's worse than the Utah Jazz's overall differential. But when Davis plays, the Pelicans turn into a winning team, outscoring the opposition by 3.6 points per 100 possessions, a 17-point turnaround. If you want to talk value, it doesn't get much more valuable than that.
But history says Davis can kiss those MVP aspirations goodbye if this holds. After studying MVP voting over the past 25 years, some interesting trends come to light that reveal voter criteria. Guess how many players finished top-five in the MVP vote coming from a team with a losing record? Of the 125 candidates, maybe a couple here and there?
Try none. It's never happened.
On average, the guy who finishes in fifth place in the MVP vote hails from a team that won 52 games in the regular season. And that's just fifth place. The more you dig into the data you find that team record has an enormous effect on voter behavior. In fact, 83.2 percent of the players who have been voted into the top five have come from 50-win teams. Lower the bar down to 45 wins and that percentage bubbles up to 93.6 percent. Want more evidence? Check out the chart and the clear trend of team record and finish in the MVP vote over the past 25 years. There's an obvious team-record bias.
It's true: Great players tend to play for great teams. When just five players are allowed to play at any one time, having an elite player can tilt the odds in your favor. But it only goes so far. After all, more than a quarter of the Miami Heat's minutes last season were played without LeBron James on the floor.
Consider the case of Kevin Love. Two seasons ago, Love was a monster for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He averaged a preposterous 26-and-13 while shooting 37 percent from downtown on 5.1 attempts per game. He finished fourth in Estimated Wins Added and fourth in win shares. Whether you looked at traditional stats or advanced ones, the consensus was that Love delivered as much value to his team as just about anyone. And yet, he didn't even sniff the top five in MVP voting. He finished with 58 points in the vote, trailing a whopping 273 points behind Tony Parker, who finished in fifth place with 331 points.
Why? Well, because the Timberwolves finished 26-40. But tell me: Was it Love's fault that his front office brought in Michael Beasley and Darko Milicic to start next to him? Was it Love's fault that Ricky Rubio wrecked his knee in March and played only half a season? Of course not.
But the MVP vote certainly didn't reflect that logic. The media pretty much shut him out when, in reality, the difference between Love's MVP candidacy now and then is that he has a legitimate supporting cast these days. But voters still held it against him anyway.
As the season rolls on, let's not fall into the same trap with Davis if the Pelicans don't turn it around. We're smarter than that. Yes, one would think that the MVP rubric has become more nuanced now with the wealth of information available to us these days. But let's not forget that Derrick Rose ran away with the MVP award less than three years ago mostly because his team finished with the best record.
This is not to say that team record should not matter. It's part of the equation. Because of the ambiguous language on the ballot, there's no strict guideline to voting criteria. But the MVP voting patterns over the past few decades show us that it's often treated as an organizational nod rather than an individual award.
If Davis keeps up this historic season, don't penalize him for his underachieving supporting cast. Ryan Anderson is hurt, Tyreke Evans forgot how to score and Jrue Holiday has twice as many turnovers as free throw attempts. And who knows how long Eric Gordon can stay healthy. Davis deserves to be in the middle of the MVP conversation. He deserves better.