LeBron James didn’t win the NBA MVP this year. There are all kinds of reasons that the award — in the first unanimous vote ever — went to Steph Curry of the Warriors, not least that he was the most important player on a team that won a record 73 regular season games. But there is a contingent that believes firmly that LeBron James is the most dominant basketball player on the planet, however the MVP votes are calculated. As his Cavaliers teammate J.R. Smith said last year, “if you want to be realistic about it, you could give [the MVP] to [James] every time.”
Fresh off his sixth straight Finals appearance and third NBA Finals MVP, there’s a fun calculation that speaks to James’s dominance — despite the fact that he hasn’t won a regular season MVP Award in a couple of years. The calculation says that in a way, LeBron James has won five straight NBA Finals MVPs. Here’s how: James won the Finals MVP this year. Last year the Warriors Andre Iguodala won it — mostly for holding James to just 36 points, 13.3 rebounds and 8.8 assists in the Finals (first time any player has led all three categories in history). The year before that the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard won the Finals MVP, credited with “slowing” LeBron James down. And of course James won the Finals MVP Awards the two years before that straight up.
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