With the NBA season drawing to a close and the playoffs largely set, conversation logically turns to individual awards ? particularly the one for Most Valuable Player.

MVP draws the most attention for a few reasons.  First, it?s the most prestigious individual award to be distributed.  It signifies ?best player on the planet? for that season.  Second, despite all the prestige and glory that comes with the award, there are no set criteria for voters to use when casting their vote.

To some, it?s the best player, period.  To others, it?s the best player on the best team. Others think  it?s the player who would do most to improve an average team.  For some, it?s the player who improves his team the most.  For still others it?s the player who gives his team the best chance of winning a championship.  The wonderful thing about this award is that they?re all right, and they?re all wrong, which makes for great conversation.

What I offer today is yet another look at the MVP debate.  One that looks strictly at what advanced stats can tell us about which player actually has the most value to his team.  Emphasis on ?his team.?

We get started with the on/off data reported at 82games.com.  These numbers tell us in points per 100 possessions how the team performs with each individual player on the floor and how the team performs when the player is out of the lineup.  For example, this season Kevin Garnett?s Boston Celtics score 114.8 points per 100 possessions when he?s on the floor and allow 98.1.  When he sits, they score 106.7 and allow 102.4.

The Pythagorean formula (learn more about it
here), which can be used to estimate winning percentage using scoring or efficiency differential, says that Boston play like a 74-win team with Garnett in the lineup and a 52-win team when he sits.  By my spreadsheet?s reckoning, the Celtics are about 21 wins per 82 games better off when Garnett is on the floor.

The top five in this on/off Pythagorean Wins Differential stat (say that five times fast) are:

1. Steve Nash, PHX ? 35.4
2. Antawn Jamison, WAS ? 33.9
3. Dirk Nowitzki, DAL ? 31.4
4. LeBron James, CLE ? 29.6
5. Allen Iverson, DEN ? 27.7

Does this mean Nash is the real MVP?  Umm, no.  While this is an interesting first cut, there are a few more steps.  Next we?ll consider playing time ? to be valuable, a player must be on the floor.  Multiplying that on/off wins differential by the percentage of minutes played gives us another look at on/off differential.  Here are the top 5:

1. Jamison ? 26.4
2. Nash ? 24.8
3. Iverson ? 23.8
4. LeBron ? 22.8
5. Dirk ? 22.0

Same group, but in a new order.  What we have now is a list of players whose teams collapse when they?re not on the floor.  And no one collapses quite like the Wizards without Jamison.  But, while the Wizards fan in me wants to stop here and crown Jamison, there?s still more.

Next, we consider overall team winning percentage.  So, for those of you doing these calculations at home, multiply that second list by the team?s overall winning percentage.  That gives us another reshuffling of the top 5:

1. Nash ? 16.5
2. Iverson ? 14.4
3. Jamison ? 14.0
4. Dirk ? 13.6
5. Lebron ? 12.7

Nash moves back to the top spot.  We could just stop there, but (you knew there?d be a ?but?, didn?t you?) we haven?t yet incorporated individual stats.  It?s theoretically possible for two teammates to play together a lot, have a similar on/off differential, but have one guy do most of the work while the other guy just kind of freeloads, sorta like Danny Ferry when he played with Tim Duncan a few years ago.

So, we?ll add individual PER scores (learn more about PER here) to the adjusted on/off differential scores.  And get this top 5:

1. LeBron ? 35.1
2. Chris Paul ? 32.6
3. Iverson ? 32.3
4. Nash ? 31.3
5. Dirk ? 31.0

Add in individual performance and Lebron leaps to the top.  Chris Paul from the Hornets moves into the top 5 while the Wizards? Jamison drops to sixth.

The last step is to rescale the scores for handy reference.  I reset the top score to 100 and scale everyone else beneath.  This shows how close the MVP race is this season.

And finally, an MVP list more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a?err?more bulletproof than Andray Blatche?  ).  Here?s the final order (with the top score set to 100 and others scaled below):

1. LeBron James, CLE ? 100
2. Chris Paul, NOH ? 93
3. Allen Iverson, DEN ? 92
4. Steve Nash, PHX ? 89
5. Dirk Nowitzki, DAL ? 88
6. Antawn Jamison, WAS ? 85
7. Dwight Howard, ORL ? 82
8. Kobe Bryant, LAL ? 81
9. Paul Pierce, BOS ? 77
10. Baron Davis, GSW ? 77

Remember, this is a measure of a player?s value to his particular team.  Even so, the formula makes some interesting claims.  It says, for example, that Iverson ? who nobody talks about as an MVP candidate ? had an outstanding season.  It says that Nowitzki, sometimes knocked for having a bad year, was still pretty terrific.  It says that Paul Pierce ? likely because of minutes played ? was just as valuable to Boston as the much ballyhooed Garnett.

Coming soon ? a look at the MVP scores for each individual team.  This is always an interesting analysis because it reveals which stars got the least amount of support.

Kevin Broom is a columnist who has written for a variety of websites, including RealGM.com.  He doesn?t actually believe this formula is bulletproof.

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