Danny Parkins

NBA writer at Yahoo Sports.

He's been voting in these things for the last decade or so since 2016.

KOC, thank you so much for joining me on The Herd.

We can pick it up there.

How did you decide to parse Cade Cunningham and Jalen Brown now that Cade and Luka Doncic got the exemption and are eligible for the awards?

Yeah, it's good that they'll both get the recognition on all NBA teams.

So my guess is Shea is going to win this and you will be in a minority.

We'll see how big of a minority.

As someone who voted for Victor Wembanyama, he got a first place MVP vote from you.

What was your rationale?

The only pushback I would give, because I think that there is no wrong first-place vote here, Wemby's minutes have been managed all year.

And by design, right?

You want this 7'5 unicorn who started the year with an injury.

You want him healthy for the playoffs.

We saw now the rib thing.

We're hoping that he is going to be 100% healthy for the postseason.

When you look at the minutes, and SGA played nearly 400 minutes more than Wemby, I think it was 393 minutes.

You divide that by the 29 minutes per game that Wemby played, it's the equivalent of 13 and a half more games played for SGA than Wemby.

I have a hard time, like, everything you said is true about the defense, and I'll even concede the impact on the offensive end, even if SGA is six more points per game, three more assists per game, more, like, easily identifiable offensive contributions.

Just the sheer volume of minutes on the court is something that would tilt me, if I had to vote, to SGA.