Early January, that means it is time for our awards through December.

Always a fun podcast, especially because I end up thinking it's not going to take that long to prepare for,

and then it takes hours and hours to just agonize over this stuff.

It's a little easier this month than it was last month when we were really dealing with everything.

Totally a fresh year, but first I'll tell you that we're sponsored by Draft.

Use that Cat Space Code to get started on Draft.

So while we start with our MVP's, Danny, who did you have here through December 31st?

We'll just click on make it a disclaimer because there are people who listen to this podcast

that not as many of our other ones, which is most of our awards will specify when it's different,

are for the year to this point. So it is not the MVP of December.

It is the MVP of the league from the start of the season through December.

Yes, it's.

So my, my number one for MVP is LeBron James.

It was really close between LeBron and Harden, and it's interesting that their cases are actually

more similar than you would think because LeBron has not been dominant defensively,

but both of them have been central to their team's offensive success.

Chris Paul has been played that much so far this year.

And while Houston's offense is a little bit better, I think that LeBron has been so central

without Isaiah Thomas. And so I went there and also if you're going to have a tie breaker for

defense, even if LeBron is in show mode, he's still way better than Harden is on that end.

I went with Harden, and that's obviously going to change with this hamstring injury where he

could just going to miss at least two weeks. And my prediction would be a fair amount more than that.

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