Who's your MVP?

I guess I'm going to take this opportunity to expound upon a thought I had involving last year's MVP voting. I'm watching the mighty Dallas Mavericks, in their last throes, so to speak, about to be defeated by the eighth seeded Golden State Warriors. My problem with the MVP voting last year was that it was pretty clear to me that no player was more valuable to his team in than Lebron James was. But for as long as I can remember, the NBA MVP has really been given to the best player on a superlative team. Go ahead and look. It's not just that MVP voters want the winner to come from a winning team, or a playoff team, or even a fifty win team. Almost without exception, the MVP has gone to a player on a team with one of the two or three best records in the league. Now that we have so many more wonderful statistics to evaluate how valuable a player really is, this seems even more ridiculous. Even so, I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with the voting until I watched the likely MVP and his team go down in flames tonight.

By overrating a team's performance in voting for the MVP, we are making an assumption about the teams with the best records that might not really hold true -- namely that they are indeed the best teams, the elite ones. Now this might hold true in baseball, where after 162 games it's pretty clear who the best teams are. But in the NBA, the playoffs truly are the "second season." Even a casual observer of the NBA can see that the playoffs are a completely different animal than the regular season. The teams have more time to rest and gameplan, and the intensity and physicality of the games is off the charts. Most good teams are actually built for the playoffs, often losing a few games during the season for the "greater good."

Why should we give a player on an excellent team the MVP, if a player on another lesser contender had a better season, a greater impact on his team's success, and perhaps eventually leads a deeper run into the playoffs? Sure, the success of the team during the season may have been slighty better, but only in the playoffs will a team's true worth be determined anyway, so why overvalue the winning percentage? So, as long as the team has a winning record and makes the playoffs, the team's winning percentage should play little or no part in the MVP voting. Comments?