Maybe Kyrie Irving was right. Maybe he didn't need LeBron James.
The point guard is, as the kids like to say, ballin' out for the Boston Celtics, racking up numbers that put him firmly in the Most Valuable Player conversation.
Rank ‘em!@daldridgetnt has @KyrieIrving at #4 among his MVP candidates, but #1 in who he’d want with the ball in the 4th quarter. #10BeforeTip pic.twitter.com/Z5GEcP4VmJ
— NBA TV (@NBATV) December 4, 2017
But is the chatter merited? Here are some of Irving's countable stats, along with where said stats rank him both in the entire league and among point guards.
| Points | Assists | FG% | FT% | Steals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyrie Irving: 2017-18 | 23.5 | 5.0 | 48.7% | 86.6% | 1.5 |
| NBA Rank | 12st | 24th | 42nd | 25th | 21st |
| PG Rank | 4th | 19th | 3rd | 8th | 8th |
Solid, if unspectacular. Let's see how that shakes out with such telling advanced stats as true shooting percentage (TS%), assist ratio (ASSR), usage (USG), estimated wins added (EWA), value added (VA), and player efficiency rating (PER), along with our in-house efficiency metric, nERD.
| TS% | ASSR | USG | EWA | VA | PER | nERD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyrie Irving - 2017-18 | 59.3% | 21.7 | 30.50 | 5.40 | 161.70 | 25.22% | 4.7 |
| NBA Rank | 87th | 24th | 8th | T-6 | 7th | 10th | 7th |
| PG Rank | 7th | 107th | 4th | T-3 | 4th | 3rd | 2nd |
Listen, these are terrific numbers across the board. Are they James Harden numbers? Not so much.
That said, the most important numbers are 20 and 4, those being the Celtics' respective number of wins and losses. They have the top record in the league, and it's been said that the MVP should go to the best player on the best team, so don't leave Irving out of the mix.