​Making the Case for NBA MVP: Overcoming the Dependable Greatness of LeBron James

The 2016-17 season is the closest MVP race in modern NBA history. It's March, and there are four contenders with legitimate claims to the award. This week, VICE Sports is going to make the case for each one. You can find more here.

There's a tendency for NBA award voters to respect as many different variations of greatness they can tell a story about. Plots are constructed so Karl Malone can win a pair of MVPs during Michael Jordan's reign, and Derrick Rose becomes the youngest MVP ever in his hometown, bookended by LeBron James's remarkable run of hardware. A truculent MJ fan might think it's just because the socialists are trying to spread the wealth while robbing the G.O.A.T. Robber Baron of his due; the same seems to have happened to James, the current generation's greatest player, who has been so persistently amazing that it stifles the media's urge to reward him.

Barring a clear-cut favorite, sportswriters, as storytellers, are going to cast a vote for the player who makes the best protagonist. And who wants to give Goliath—both literally and figuratively in LeBron's case—the award, even after he conquers the regular season's most imposing giant in the Finals?

On the surface, at least, James isn't doing anything all that different this year compared to the rest of his career. He's got a ho-hum player efficiency rating of 26.6 that isn't even among his top eight seasons. The Cavs are only a couple games ahead of the Celtics in the East, and James isn't shouldering as much of the scoring load with Kyrie Irving in the backcourt. But dig deeper and you realize James is positively affecting his team in ways a box score fails to capture.

But let's hold off on digging deep for a second, because even those box scores are pretty freakin' remarkable. He's eighth in the league in points per game and fourth in assists, dishing 8.5 per contest. He's gobbling up more than eight rebounds every game, too, and it's the first season of his illustrious career he's over 8.0 in both of those categories. He's also approaching the ridiculous shooting efficiency he had in his Miami years: his 53.8 overallfield-goal percentage is the best of any perimeter player in the league—yes, even Kevin Durant.

Most readers will counter with the more dominating statistical outputs of Russell Westbrook and James Harden (the latter of whom is equally as efficient), but now we are going to dig deep.The Cavs have lost all five games James didn't appear in, and they're outscored by more than seven points per 100 possessions when he's on the bench, per NBA.com. Conversely, when he is on the court—averaging more minutes per game than anyone but Kyle Lowry—the Cavs have outscored opponents by almost eight points per 100 possessions. Only Russ comes close to affecting his team's performance like LeBron.

People have been asking, so here are the four leaders' offense and defense ratings, net, and the difference on and off court: pic.twitter.com/Eblc7PZH7q
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) March 7, 2017

Part of that is how acutely he makes his teammates better. His all-court defense has allowed Irving to focus on what he does best: scoring and sending Twitter agog. Kyle Korver is shooting way fewer contested three-pointers since coming over from the Hawks, and knocking them down at a much higher rate: 48.7 percent in Cleveland (on more attempts per game) versus 40.9 percent in Atlanta.

Korver isn't the only Cavs newcomer James has helped out. His presence plucked Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, and now Deron Williams up from the NBA scrap heap and turned them into decent rotation players again. Previously, he turned J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert into viable playoff performers, and Timofey Mozgov and Matthew Dellavedova should defer some of their Lakers and Bucks money to James for what he did to their earning potential.

James is the most valuable player in the NBA, and he has been for a while. Who else can you rightfully say makes almost every team in the NBA a contender simply by adding him to the roster? It might be boring and superfluous because he's bigger than the game after what he did last June, but if voters are being honest with themselves, LeBron James is the 2017 MVP.

All stats are as of Thursday and courtesy Basketball-Reference, unless otherwise noted.