Houston Rockets: 3 reasons why James Harden should’ve won MVP

Rockets guard James Harden recently opened up on losing the 2019 MVP Award and he thinks the media’s narrative ultimately swayed the votes.

With all due respect to Paul George, it became clear that the winner of the MVP Award was going to come down to a battle between James Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo as the 2018-19 season came to an end.

Ultimately, The Greek Freak took home the MVP trophy, finishing with 78 first place votes to Harden’s 23. That difference in first place votes makes Antetokounmpo look like the clear winner of last year’s MVP race, but in reality it was a lot closer.

As he reflected back on his historic season, James Harden told 97.9 The Box that the media’s narrative hindered his chances at taking home a second MVP Award, via NBA.com.

“Once the media, they create a narrative about somebody from the beginning of the year, I think they just take that narrative and just run with it the entire year. I don’t want to get into details. All I can do is control what I can do, and I went out there and did what I was supposed to do at a high level. There’s only a few other seasons that anybody has ever done that before.”

The media is not kind to the Rockets or to James Harden, and many media analysts were quick to point out how Harden’s style can’t win when it counts or is unpleasant to watch. Not to mention, Giannis is the new kid on the block and it’s fun for the media to speculate on just how good he could be one day. In the meantime, Harden was lighting up the league as opposing teams tried out every defensive scheme imaginable in order to defend him.

As a Rockets site, we may be a bit biased, but Harden deserved to win MVP last season, and there are three reasons why. Let’s get started.

Next: No. 3