http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/WINS

Unless you believe Robert Covington is the 5th best player in the league (AND HE IS), RPM isn't perfect, but it generally passes the face validity eye test better than other advanced stats, which are also a lot more mixed than the emerging narrative would have you believe.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2018_leaders.html

i bring up these flawed stats because they let me talk about narrative, because the same narrative that kept bron from winning last year's mvp is going to stop this year's mvp.

writers basically decide who they will pick as mvp with a month left in the season, because they need to start writing their mvp column. if you looked at rpm, box +/- etc. with 4-6 weeks left this year, you saw a big gap between harden and bron in all of them.

the problem is, nobody closes seasons as well as lebron. we know this. we talk about how he treats the last twenty games all the time. the advanced stats show it's reality, and it has completely erased any measurable difference in the observed production.

and that's just the observed production. does anyone doubt that bron does the little things better than harden? that bron makes his teammates better in ways even the advanced stats don't pick up?

this is the exact same thing that happened with westbrook, btw. bron closed strong and pulled even, and no one cared then either.