A hot topic on every sports blog and media outlet ever since LeBron James announced his “Decision” to take his talents to South Beach and form the “Three Kings” on the Miami Heat has been whether or not this move will hurt his chances to claim his third-consecutive NBA Regular Season MVP Award.
Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski claims it will, saying he believes LeBron having other superstars around him will hurt his chances. His basic claim is that in Cleveland, LeBron was considered the only superstar there, and that this aided him in MVP voting. He goes on to state he believes Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma Thunder is going to win the award this coming year, denying James.
He’s not alone in this prediction. In fact, outside of Miami you’d be hard-pressed to find many who would disagree with him. Hell, even half the writers on Miami papers like the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel seem to parrot this line of thinking.
I say hogwash to all of this idiocy. They can believe players like Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, or even Derrick Rose are going to be right there competing to take away LeBron’s MVP, but I’m of the opinion the only player who’ll be truly competing with him is his teammate, Dwyane Wade.
As I’ve said many a time before in numerous articles, I see Miami dominating the NBA like no other team has in its history. Furthermore, I see LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, as well as Chris Bosh, seeing their stats actually go up a tick from last year, contrary to the lame-ass conventional “wisdom” of all the so-called “experts” out there who believe they’re all going to see their production drop.
While Durant, Bryant, Howard, and Rose will all probably put up great numbers (although I don’t think Rose’s will even be close to be considered MVP-worthy), I believe both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade will be posting numbers that put all of theirs to shame, and considering they’ll almost assuredly also be on the best team in the NBA, it’ll take a conspiracy of epic proportions to keep them from being considered the top two MVP candidates throughout the season.
In the end, I believe the writers will give it to LeBron over Wade in order to repair his tarnished image to a degree, and I’ll be glad to see it happen (although I wouldn’t mind my favorite player, D-Wade getting it either).
Now, people can claim I’m crazy all they want, but I’ll tell you this much, I called the formation of the “Three Kings” before anyone else, including Stephen A. Smith, and there were thousands who called me crazy then, too. They’re nowhere to be found now.
My prediction is King James tears up the NBA this coming season, with D-Wade following close behind him on every statline, and the voters give him his MVP “Three-Peat” right before he and the Heat go win the NBA title and prevent Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson, and the Lakers from “Three-Peating” as champions.
Game On!