PHILADELPHIA — The dirty little secret about MVP voting is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it right. That’s why they usually make the writers do it. Everybody already hates us, anyway.
Like everything in life, the arrangement has its plusses and minuses. On the one hand, you spend four hours hunched over a glorified airplane tray table writing 800 words of majestic prose about a one-possession game for a 10 p.m. deadline only to be known as one of those ding-dongs that didn’t circle Aaron Donald’s name. On the other hand, you get to put MVP voter on your dating profile.
Me? I’m not an MVP voter, and I’ve never been more glad not to be one than I am right now. A couple of weeks ago, my editor suggested that I help fill the All-Star Break content void by laying out Joel Embiid’s case to be this year’s NBA MVP. The assignment sounded easy enough. As you may or may not be aware, Embiid is a local basketball star who is in the midst of a season that could easily end up as the top line on his inevitable Hall of Fame resume. He leads the NBA in scoring at 29.6 points per game, ranks in the top 15 in rebounds and blocks, and is coming off an All-Star Game in which he scored a team-high 36 points. In short, his is the kind of season that seems tailor-made for a columnist to climb atop a flagpole and call it a day.
