You know, as I listen to the talking heads say that Harden is the front-runner to win his second consecutive MVP award, it makes me realize that something really weird has happened in the last couple of years, whereby "counting stats" have begun to factor into the voting in a way that they hadn't previously. For, like, fifty years, there has been a precedent that MVP was more or less awarded to the best player on the team with the best record: that was the justification for why David Robinson won it over Hakeem and Shaq in '95, it was the justification for why Nash won it over Shaq in '05, it was the justification for why Rose won it over LeBron in '11, and why Curry won it over LeBron in '15.
And, even when MVP was awarded to a player whose team didn't have the very best record, there was basically no precedent for MVP being awarded to a player whose team didn't finish with one of the four best records... until two years ago. Russell Westbrook got so much attention for his triple-double season that he was named MVP on a team that was only the tenth-best team in the league, by record. That created a precedent which it looks like is going to result in Giannis Antetokuonmpo, the best player on the team with the best record being snubbed for a guy whose team is currently the seventh-best team in the league, by record.
I feel like I don't have enough data to decide whether I think this is a good thing or not, but I can't help but wonder: is this sort of new paradigm an "unintended consequence" of the Analytics Era, or was this a desired outcome?