The "I" in Team

The expression itself is timeless. "There's no I in team." It's been used for generations to admonish those who felt that they were above the collective. It's a phrase that has been embraced by fans who want to see the athletes on their favorite teams put the group above the individual.

Last year, Derrick Rose won the NBA Most Valuable Player award; and he was a worthy candidate, holding averages of 25 points and almost 8 assists, all while leading an NBA-best Bulls squad to a 62-20 record. All very impressive. Now, I'm not here to try to degrade Rose's season last year, as he was one of about four candidates (LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Dwight Howard) who had a deserved claim to the award. Of course, there is no problem with him winning it. However, there is a problem with the method that some pundits used to determine the best candidate.

The argument? "Well, if you take player X off of team Y, then team Y would be a lottery team."

While the MVP award has no official criteria, this one that was devised may be the worst. Of course, some see the word "valuable" in the name of the award, and try to figure out the best way to equate value. This then turns into, "who is the most important to his team's success?" Finally, the fantastic idea of trying to predict how well a team would do without a player comes into fruition.

Her are the problems that I see with the argument: first, you can't predict how well a team will do without a player; basketball isn't played in a vacuum. You can't magically subtract/add/switch players and come up with a amethod to figure out what that team's record would be after the changes were made. I mean, people already have enough problems predicting a team's record, how would tinkering with the team's roster make it any easier? This is where Bill Simmons' now famous "Ewing Theory" comes in. Sometimes, teams play better without their best player because, well, that's just how unpredictable sports are. Who would have expected the Knicks to beat the Pacers in the '99 Eastern Conference Finals without Patrick Ewing? Or for a more recent example, who would have expected the Hawks to continue to play well without Al Horford? (Of course, you really never can trust the Hawks to day anything right)

If we were to apply that argument to what has happened this season, both Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade would be considered as just average players, as their teams have been as good or even better when either was out of the lineup. Also using this magic formula, both Ricky Rubio and Steve Nash would be in contention for the award, as the Wolves have been absolutely awful since Ricky went down, and the Suns would have to replace Nash with either Shannon Brown or Sebastian Telfair; there is no way in hell that ends well.

The second point that I want to make about this is how it is absolutely team depreciative; basketball is a team sport. So, is your argument that to win the MVP, the rest of your teammates have to be a bunch of guys that are absolutely awful? If Kobe led a team of high-schoolers to 25 wins, should he win the MVP because he is obviously the most valuable player on his team? I mean, that team probably wouldn't win any games without him, so would that make his worth "25 wins"?

The best example of this is last year's award. Many people used the, "without Derrick Rose, the Bulls would be a lottery team" argument to validate his winning of the award. (which is really unfortunate, because this takes away from his own play, but whatever) Is that really fair to the rest of his teammates? Have we become so enamored with the individual player that we forget that Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, and Carlos Boozer are really good players? Of course, those three have helped disprove that themselves by posting wins with Rose being out of the lineup for a third of the season.

This segues into this year's MVP race, where LeBron is facing the criticism of "his teammates being too good." Is that a real criticism? Why should an individual award depend on a player's teammates? It makes even less sense when the argument is that Durant or Kobe should get the award over LeBron for that very reason. Did Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum (who are 13th, 28th, 31st, and 9th in PER, respectively) just morph into bad players because they may not be as good as the duo of Wade and Chris Bosh?

Of course, all this does is lead to the magical "RINGZZZ" argument, where a player is better than another based on how many championships that player's team has won. (So any player that ever won a ring is better than LeBron, Barkley, Malone, and Stockton combined, right? Thank God for Adam Morrison) Just to put this argument to rest, if even Jordan could not win a ring "by himself", why should we expect players of lesser skill to be able to accomplish the feat?

At least of the MVP award, this can be fixed. All the award needs is a defined criteria, preferably one that is "best player in the league for a certain year." At least then, it will be properly quantified as it should: as an individual award that has no regard for a team's play. Then we can all have the truly fun arguments about the award, like "Is LeBron better than Durant?" or "Is Kobe still that good?"

Maybe some day...