NBA Award Winners Who Didn’t Deserve Their Awards

Not every NBA accomplishment is held in the same esteem as the equivalent from another season. Just ask Kevin Durant. Narrative and the results of previous years play laughably large roles in determining stuff like Most Valuable Player. Which is why LeBron James doesn’t have an MVP trophy for each finger. Because voters just get sick of picking the same guy every year.

Here are the most questionable NBA awards ever, in chronological order because I don’t need to give any of the exceedingly large men featured, like Charles Barkley, any more reason to want to crush me.

(On second thought, Barkley could never catch me. Bring it on, Chuck. I dare you.)

Bill Russell, 1962 MVP

Not one but two players should have beaten Bill Russell — pictured here defending Wilt Chamberlain — out for this award. Chamberlain averaged a record 50.4 points per game that year and managed to outrebound Russell, who pulled down 23.

6 boards per game. Oh, and Oscar Robertson averaged a triple-double. But this was the height of the “best player on the best team” philosophy of MVP voting, and Russell was that.

Wes Unseld, 1969 MVP

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Unseld became the second player ever to win MVP as a rookie, leading the Bullets to a 57-25 record a year they went 36-46. But Willis Reed was just better, scoring way more (21.1 to 13.

8 points per game) on much greater efficiency and approaching Unseld’s gaudy rebounding numbers (14.5 to 18.2 per game).

Jerry West, 1969 Finals MVP

I’m all for giving the NBA Finals MVP to a player on the losing side, but only if there’s no clear choice among the winners, and there was: John Havlicek averaged 28.3 points, 11 rebounds, and 4.

4 assists per game and played every single minute of his Celtics’ seven-game series victory.

Dave Cowens, 1973 MVP

The Celtics big man was one of the most head-scratchingest MVP choices ever. Not because Cowens wasn’t great in 1972-73, but there were two clearly better choices — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain — and four guys who had as much a case as Cowens did: Tiny Archibald, John Havlicek, Jerry West, and Walt Frazier.