FanPost

Can one of our guys win MIP?

Jazz players haven't won many NBA awards in their history. The entire list is as follows:

Award Player year
MVP Karl Malone 1997, 1999
DPoY Mark Eaton 1985, 1989
RoY Darrell Griffith 1981
MIP n/a n/a
6th Man n/a n/a
Citizenship Thurl Bailey 1989
CotY Frank Layden 1984
EotY Frank Layden 1984

That's it. It's been almost 15 years since a Jazz player last won an award.

This season, however, Trey Burke is still considered an early candidate for Rookie of the Year. (Despite his poor Summer League play and preseason injury.) We also have several players who could be in the conversation for Most Improved Player, and award that's never been given to a Jazzman.

I decided to take a look into what it takes to win the MIP award. I looked back at the last ten years for not only the winner of the award, but all the players who received at least 125 voting points, which was generally a top three candidate. (The winner usually gets about 360 points.) After I had my list of players (25 total) I compared their season winning stats to the prior season to see how much they actually improved. At first I only looked at the advanced stats I thought would be influential (PER, WS/48, and USG%), but it quickly became apparent that voters don't really care about those, so I included the basic raw stats (PPG, RPG, APG). Those seemed to have a low more sway in the voting. (I'm not including the entire table because it was pretty large, but If enough of you want to see it, I'll put it up.)

Once I had all the numbers I looked at our guys. Based on what they produced last season, the table below shows what each player should need to produce to be considered for the MIP award.

PPG

RPG

APG

MPG

USG%

PER

WS/48

Prior Averages

10.6

4.7

2.1

25.6

20.0

15.1

0.102

Favors

2013

9.4

7.1

1.0

23.2

20.6

17.5

0.117

Hayward

2013

14.1

3.1

3.0

29.2

22.1

16.8

0.123

Kanter

2013

7.2

4.3

0.4

15.4

22.4

17.6

0.101

Burks

2013

7.0

2.3

1.4

17.8

20.7

11.5

0.044

Improved Averages

17.6

6.9

3.3

34.7

23.3

19.1

0.143

Percentage Increase

76.4%

48.0%

73.1%

40.6%

17.0%

29.5%

41.4%

Projected stats

Favors

2014

16.6

10.5

1.7

32.6

24.1

22.7

0.165

Hayward

2014

24.9

4.6

5.2

41.1

25.9

21.8

0.174

Kanter

2014

12.7

6.4

0.7

21.7

26.2

22.8

0.143

Burks

2014

12.3

3.4

2.4

25.0

24.2

14.9

0.062

A couple of things to note:

  • The WS/48 percentage increase had to be adjusted for outliers (Thanks, Boris Diaw!). If those had been included, the average increase would have been 198.4%
  • If Hayward hits these increases it puts him in the class of Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and James Harden. (The only three players players to hit the 24/4/5 mark last season) So... that probably won't happen.

My thought is that Favors and Kanter are most likely to hit these projections, and therefore be considered for the award. Burks will likely match or exceed the raw stat projections, but I'm not convinced he'll get up to an average PER.

Thoughts?

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.