The announcement of the NBA MVP award was unsurprising in the sense that we all more or less knew that Russell Westbrook would be its winner.
But what came as a shock was the size of his victory. The triple double king garnered 69 first place votes while runner-up James Harden drew 22 and third place vote-getter Kawhi Leonard earned only nine.
What was marked all season as a historically tight race turned into a landslide decision. The difference between the top three finishers should not, according to statistics, efficiency, and the eye test, have been so wide, as each candidate posed legitimate and compelling cases for the league’s top individual award.