Just like the Bucks-Rockets game a few nights ago that was a battle of MVP candidates, this Raptors-Nets game was a battle of would-be award winners: Pascal Siakam and D’Angelo Russell, fighting for the MIP Improved Player trophy. I would hope that the award voters wouldn’t be swayed by head-to-head matchups, because this is a full season award, not a “single game at the end of the season” award, but there’s no doubt that some people were given some new things to consider in this game.
Siakam came out ever so slightly ahead, outscoring Russell by one point (although he got out-assisted by one assist). And his team won the game. That’s the most important thing. If you could add something like “led team to a surprise first seed in the East” to his resume, that would bolster his case, and this is the first step towards that goal.
If I had to give the award out right now, if I was contacted by Adam Silver and he was like “yo DTB I know you know a lot about the NBA so why don’t you choose the award winners so I don’t have to waste my time counting up all those god-damn ballots, thanks a lot bro”, I would pick Siakam for MIP. The reasoning is simple: I didn’t expect him to be this good. I didn’t expect him to be anywhere close to this good. With Russell, he was supposed to be good. That’s why he was picked so high. The fact that he is now living up to those expectations is great (I didn’t really expect that either), but not utterly surprising. Siakam, everything about him is utter.
And, just between you and me, and it’s really close, but I prefer Siakam’s devastating spin moves over Russell’s cloud-scraping floaters.