If you don’t know Chris Paul yet, you’ve been living under a rock so let me get you up to date. First off, he was drafted in 2005 with the 4th pick by the Hornets when the Hawks opted for Marvin Williams “potential” over team needs, actual potential, and intangibles. According to “Draft City” Paul was expected to be at best a mix between TJ Ford and Bobby Jackson and at worst Troy Bell. Seriously, I did not make that up.

In Paul’s first season, the Hornets promptly blew up their roster by trading away Baron Davis for a bag of potato chips and some funfetti cake. The Hornets were betting everything on their young PG, but how many times have we seen this strategy fail? Additionally, the infallible “Draft City” said “Paul’s midrange jumper needs polish”, that “his size will always be an issue”, and most importantly “unless he bulks up [players could] simply muscle him in the post, or perhaps even shoot over him; and this could also lead to injury problems in his career.”

Well a few years have passed and it’s pretty safe to say that the good people at “Draft City” are as reliable as Dirk in last year’s playoffs. I’m sure the people who wrote Paul’s player profile have gone into hiding with Charlie Villanueva’s eyebrows. If you want a good laugh, here’s his draft profile from “Draft City”: http://unlimited.nba.free.fr/chrispaul.htm.

The MVP award is handed out to the player regarded as the premier NBA performer of their respective year. Obviously from the title, my vote goes to Chris Paul. Not only is he the most deserving of the award this year, he had a better season than any PG who won the award in the past 10 seasons. Steve Nash had Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, Amare Stoudemire, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, and Leandro Barbosa in his two years as MVP and Allen Iverson simply did not even rival Paul statistically. Chris Paul is having a season to be remembered, and his main competitor Kobe Bryant should not stand a chance against him.

The MVP is based on success in the year it is given, with disregard to past returns. This throws out all the Lakers homers debates of “but Kobe scored 81 points…and this is long overdue anyway” out the window. Why does Paul deserve the MVP? How is he better than Kobe? Why does the Knicks frontcourt weigh 578 pounds? While the third question is unanswerable, I offer you a 3 part blog series pleading my case for CP3. Each blog will be released daily and present a new point. So without further adieu, part 1.

1) Chris Paul statistically out-produced Kobe Bryant across the board.

A quick look at their stats:

Chris Paul: 48.8% FG 1.2 3pg 37% 3pt 85% FT 4 rpg 11.6 apg 2.5 TO 2.7 spg .1 bpg 21.1 ppg
Kobe Bryant: 45.9% FG 1.8 3pg 36% 3pt 84% FT 6.3 rpg 5.4 apg 3.1 TO 1.8 spg .5 bpg 28.3 ppg

Kobe has an advantage in 4 categories, 2 which are sizeable. Chris Paul has an advantage in 6 categories, 4 which are sizeable. If you rank a sizeable advantage as 2 points and a regular advantage as 1, Chris Paul leads Kobe 10-6. On a sidenote, it’s pretty amazing that a player who handles the ball as much as Paul only turns it over 2.5 times a game. He’s averaging more steals a game than turnovers a game and averaged 4.64 assists to each turnover. Talk about efficiency with Nash-esque shooting % numbers.

However simple statistics do not tell the whole story, so more complicated statistics are needed to calculate real life success. For instance, per game average measures how far away (standard deviation for all the math people out there) from the average NBA player any player is based on their performance. Chris Paul’s per game ranking is .94 while Kobe trails far behind with a value of .68. To further show Paul’s dominance, the player in second place (Amare Stoudemire) amassed just .77 in his per game ranking.

Additionally, Paul’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER) was 28.39, placing him second behind only LeBron. Kobe? Trailing far behind at 24.31. In other words, it’s pretty safe to say Chris Paul is superior statistically.

Still not convinced? Check out part 2 tomorrow.