Cleveland Cavaliers: LeBron James Is The MVP But Kawhi Leonard Is The Heir To His Throne

Cleveland Cavaliers megastar LeBron James is the MVP but Kawhi Leonard is heir to the throne.

Kawhi Leonard has been sensational this season but the Cleveland Cavaliers in-house megastar, LeBron James, is literally the most valuable player in the league.

He has the biggest contract in NBA history, he’s a business mogul off of it and extremely marketable. When he leaves franchises they fall flat on their face no matter who is left on the roster. When he’s off the court, his teams go from championship contenders to playoff pretenders. He orchestrates the offense masterfully, picking and choosing his spots and when to attack, utilizing his physical strengths to bull past defenders and his Magic Johnson-like ability to distribute the ball to not just set up his teammates for an assist but to make it easier for his teammates to have an impact on the game.

Off-the-court, there are plenty of team building experiences headed by James and the camaraderie off-the-court lends itself to helping the team get through adversity, builds chemistry. We haven’t even mentioned the fact that he’s been expected to be the best player in the world since he was a teenager and in a world where first round picks are busts quite frequently and highly-touted rookies barely make an impact in their first season, James has been dominant since his inception into the league.

A long and winding road made him the best player in the world, in my opinion, in the 2008-2009 season.

The only questionable performance James has had came against Dallas Mavericks, who had reached the NBA Finals once before and were led by future Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki. In that series, like his first Finals series, James wasn’t bested in terms of there being a more talented player on the court than himself.

Like Michael Jordan, it took a set of rules designed specifically to limit his effectiveness on offense.

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Like Jordan, James didn’t win a Finals series until 27. Jordan was put out of the playoffs by the Detroit Pistons for three straight years because of those rules. James was put out of the playoffs twice, he just made it further than Jordan did before teams tried to use those rules against him.

James, who made the chasedown block infamous and has the versatility to play all five positions on both ends, routinely has his motivation throughout the regular season questioned nowadays. Detractors say he doesn’t effect the game enough on both ends although he has more defensive win shares and a higher defensive box plus/minus than Jordan did in their first fourteen seasons.

The points about the perception that James coasts through the regular season and isn’t as impactful a defender as others is also a basis of arguments of why Leonard should be the MVP instead of James.

The same Leonard who is coached by the greatest coach of all-time in Gregg Popovich and plays beside four players who have been All-Stars in their career. Leonard’s meteoric rise is amazing, make no doubt about it. He’s ultra-efficient, like James. Unlike James he can score from anywhere on the court with consistency. He’s not James in the post but he’s developing his post game. Where James plays with a mix of intense on-ball defense and calculated off-ball defense (so that he can communicate what he sees the rest of the team and jump passing lanes), Leonard simply suffocates his man.

Nonetheless, Leonard isn’t the most valuable player in the league. In fact, the San Antonio Spurs are 4-1 without Leonard this season. Compare that to the Cleveland Cavaliers 0-5 record without James this season. Leonard doesn’t have as expansive a skillset that James has, a coach in his first full season running the show, young players to teach how to be winners.

When talking about their defensive numbers, if you take into account that the San Antonio Spurs are a better defensive team and have more wins, the only reasonable defensive stat to use as a means of comparison is their defensive box plus/minus (DBPM).

According to www.basketball-reference.com, DBPM is “a box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions that a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team”. Leonard has a DBPM of 1.4, James has a DBPM of 1.7.

Where Leonard is significantly better than James is as a free-throw shooter. Leonard has a free throw of 89.6 percent while James’ free-throw percentage is a putrid 68.3. If James was to hit his next 100 free-throws, his free-throw percentage would skyrocket to 74.6 percent but still pale in comparison to James’ free-throw percentages. James’ inconsistency at the line seems to be a mix of rushing the free-throw attempt at times and simply missing on others due to an inconsistent routine and mechanics.

What we have here is an upcoming superstar in Leonard who can do it all and a perennial superstar in James who can do everything better than Leonard except for shoot free-throws. Where James has had two All-Stars (a combined 8 All-Star appearances) on his team and a (basically) rookie head coach with 62 career wins, Leonard has had four former All-Stars (combined 19 All-Star appearances) on his team with a coach who is widely considered to be the greatest coach of all-time with 1,138 career wins.

Leonard is extremely valuable and the new face of the San Antonio Spurs franchise. However, he’s still a notch or two below James’ impact.

That’s not to say he can’t be the MVP in the future. In fact, while Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant have had their chances to take the mantle of greatest player in the world from James, it’s actually Leonard who could do that whenever James ceases to be. Leonard, at 25-years-old, has the best chance to dominate league for a substantial time frame after James.

The closest comparison I can think of is the time it took for James to actually be better than Kobe Bryant. In terms of career averages, Leonard’s scoring output will never match James’ like James matched Bryant’s. However, as Father Time crept up on Bryant, the torch and the mantle of best player in the world was eventually passed to James. That happened in the years following Bryant’s 32nd birthday.

Do you think that LeBron James is the MVP or Kawhi Leonard? Do you think that Leonard can be the best player in the NBA? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or Twitter @KJG_NBA.

*All stats referenced from www.basketball-reference.com