Doug Gottlieb: “What if I told you that I think the NBA's MVP is not Jokic, is not Embiid, is not Giannis, it’s not LeBron. I think Kevin Durant when healthy is actually the best player in the league, but the MVP is not Kevin Durant. Jalen Brunson is. Last year at this time the New York Knicks were a smoldering dumpster fire. Julius Randle was incredibly unhappy. Tom Thibodeau, too rigid not gonna work. They finished the season 37-45. This year as of right now they're 47-33. The addition is Jalen Brunson. He's not their leading scorer but he's right there. Leads them in assists and steals, but there's a leadership quotient that you cannot calculate. There's a cultural calculation that is impossible to make. Simply adding Jalen Brunson on a deal where at the time people said you overpaid for him, they massively underpaid considering what he's given them. He has changed the trajectory of the Knicks franchise, of Tom Tom Thibodeau's probable coaching tenure in New York, and of other players on the team. I fully understand that Giannis can completely dominate a game at both ends, and in games in which he hits jump shots he becomes incredibly unguardable. The sheer force of Joel Embiid, along with an incredible amount of skill can dominate a game at both ends, I get it. You just look and how they jump off the screen and how big they are, and you're looking at tangibles. I'm calculating tangibles with intangibles, and it's not giving him a pass because he's small, I'm not giving him a pass because he doesn't blow by people and doesn't dunk on people like Ja Morant does. I'm just telling you, he's effective whether he goes by people or doesn't. He shoots a high percentage from field, from three, from the free throw line, and low turnover, super high assist-to-turnover ratio, doesn't turn the basketball over, and he's a tremendous defensive player. The team wins and everybody else around him is better because of it. That's real value. And yeah, I am going to calculate a little bit the fact that he won two national championships but it's because of the culture that he absorbs, and then helps spread to the rest of the locker room. I understand he's not the most athletic, I understand he's not the biggest, I understand you can't see his dominance because you don't have the basketball IQ that I believe that I possess. I'm just telling you that dude can dominate a game without blowing by anybody, without dunking on anybody, he just makes plays and makes people better at both ends of the floor, and spreads a culture that makes his team more competitive and allows others to be more successful. In many ways it's the stuff that LeBron did for years, only now he's 40 years old, he can't do it on the defensive end, he can't do it every night, and Jaylen Brunson can, just in a smaller package. It's hard for you to calculate the intangibles along with the tangibles.” (Full Segment Above)
Watch Doug Gottlieb of Fox Sports Radio explain why he thinks New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson is actually the NBA’s Most Valuable Player despite Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, and Giannis Antetokounmpo obviously being the three leading candidates to win the award.
Check out the segment above as Gottlieb details why there are intangibles to Brunson’s game that someone without a high basketball IQ could pick up on.
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