The trickiest part of settling this year’s NBA MVP debate may simply be choosing how one wishes to define “valuable”.
There are three leading contenders for basketball’s top individual honour this season, and each case seems to rely around some individually nuanced interpretation of value.
Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warriors point guard, is the best player on the best team, not infrequently a standard used to settle “most valuable”. He’s also a fan favourite, an emerging face for the league’s marketing arm and a wonderfully balletic performer who could credibly be labelled uniquely skilled in today’s game.
For these reasons, Curry is most likely to win. But should he really?
There are, of course, the other competing interpretations of “most valuable”. There is an argument in the cold, hard math of the game’s rising statistician class, which, as it happens, this year favours the Houston Rockets’ James Harden.
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There is also an argument that the award should be given to the “best player”, that is, the one who exhibits night-to-night dominance, provides the most singularly transcendent performances and could in short be defined as the most individually talented player, which this season has been Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
LeBron James, a kind of nebulous combination of all three interpretations, seems to lack any widespread support this season, but he definitely shouldn’t be dismissed as easily as it seems he has been.
In any case, those are the lines of thought swirling around the MVP debate this year, a debate that, while maybe not necessarily more contentious than in the past, does seem more lively thanks to the power of social media and the subsequent proliferation of voices in the debate. That, at least, is a good and fun thing for basketball.
But, again, how to settle it?
“Valuable” as a concept should be measureable, and having the “most” of it should outweight stylistic preference or isolated excellence.
The resistance to Harden’s case has largely arisen from those impulses. That the beauty (and certainly undeniable quality) of Curry’s game or the ferociousness and passion of Westbrook’s should be the tiebreaker in a close statistical contest.
But it’s a contest that, while incredibly close, should be clearly cut.
By many, if not nearly all, of the measurements that attempt to discern all-around “value”, from ESPN’s WAR to BasketballReference’s win shares, Harden is the best in the game this year.
But maybe you don’t trust advanced metrics so much yet. Fine, Harden has the most points in basketball this year, with over 250 more than second-placed Curry. He trails Curry in assists, on a team much less-equipped to convert them, by only 62.
Moreover Harden has played the second-most minutes, over 300 more than Curry. Surely, if one accepts Harden has been at least nearly as excellent as Curry this season, contributing his excellence for the equivalent of six-plus more full games counts for something?
Harden has finally played half-decent defence for the first time in his career to lead a team that, without him, might not even be in the Western Conference play-offs at all, let alone fighting for the second seed.
Subtract any other player from the Rockets, and Houston still outscore their opponents by points per 100 possessions. Subtract Harden, and they get outscored by 3.6 points per 100, a rate that would line up just ahead of the Denver Nuggets for eighth-worst in the league.
Curry’s numbers might be hampered in being surrounded by enough talent that he doesn’t have to carry as much weight by himself as Harden.
Westbrook’s numbers are definitely hampered by having played over 10 less games than Curry and Harden. But to what extent regarding both is virtually unknowable.
What is known is that Harden is a volume producer, and this season the volume simply adds up to a slight bit more than Curry’s elegance or Westbrook’s relentlessness. With due fairness to Curry, it’s very, very close.
But Harden, with his game cold and calculating, has the edge in the cold, calculating figures that reflect his effectiveness.
By the hard, measureable definition of “value”, James Harden simply has the most of it this year.
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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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