Thinking Basketball Podcast, my name is Ben.

Today, we are going to discuss.

Thinking Basketball Podcast, my name is Ben.

Welcome back.

Today, we are going to discuss the most valuable players, really the best players, I think

is a better way to describe it.

The best players in the NBA finals,

going back to 2001, as you all know,

finals MVPs have been given out for decades, back to I think 69 was the first one. Jerry West got it in a losing effort in game seven and that's it. There's no playoff MVP. There's no formal MVPs for winning the

conference championship or anything like that. And as someone who is a an advocate of the playoff MVP,

you know, we see it in hockey historically,

soccer is, like you go to the World Cup,

you don't have to just talk about the guy who was the

MVP of the final game or the final two games or something you can look at a

larger totality of the because I've always been someone who doesn't really care too much about the finals and VP.

It's never done too much for me.

But as the economics of the sport have exploded in the 80s, through the 90 90s and now it's global.

There's a cottage industry analyzing all these series, all these games,

just like this very podcast, this platform if you will will and I think what's happened over the

years is that best story that finals MVP type story the hero of the hour has been

heavily heavily conflated with Best Player.

And that's where people get a little uncomfortable with it.

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