Every NBA regular season ends the same way—with a debate about who is the league's Most Valuable Player. For some, the MVP is synonymous with the best player in the league. This is why we still complain about Karl Malone winning the award in 1997, or Charles Barkley in 1993, given that in both cases Michael Jordan was still at the height of his powers. For others, the award signals the most iconic season in the NBA. Allen Iverson's 2001 MVP comes to mind. No player was more iconic during that era of basketball, and Iverson that year was at his peak.But the award isn't named for best or most iconic; it's named for the most valuable player, and that word—value—creates ambiguity. For me, this year's winner should be Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, but it's not an easy decision, because value isn't an easy concept.Human beings are awful at assigning value to things. There is a fairly low limit to the amount of information our brains are capable of processing, and we're even worse at extrapolating beyond that point. There's a famous example that Malcolm Gladwell uses in his book The Tipping Point. He asks readers how thick a piece of paper would be if it were folded in half 50 times. The human mind is incapable of correctly calculating anywhere close to the actual height, so it gives up and relies on a sort of gut instinct. Typical, seemingly intuitive estimates fall between a few feet and a few hundred feet, and they are nowhere near the correct answer—a paper folded 50 times would reach as high as the distance from the Earth to the Sun.Continue reading on VICE Sports.
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