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Indiana Pacers: Will Victor Oladipo run away with Most Improved Player award?

By Jonathan Macri

Photo by Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images
Photo by Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images /
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It’s been a foregone conclusion for months that Victor Oladipo would win the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the Year award for 2017-18, but are we ignoring any serious competition?

There are few awards in sports that are more of a misnomer than the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the Year, which should probably just be renamed the Kia “My Stupid Team Realized I Was Good And Finally Gave Me Some Playing Time” award.

Go back through the history. Nine out of 10 times, the winner also happened to have been the beneficiary of a significant bump in minutes. We usually have no earthly clue if the player himself got any better over the previous calendar year, or if they just got the opportunity to shine.

The same could also be said of this year’s clear frontrunner, although for a drastically different reason…

A dream season

Of all the postseason awards, none seems as much of a foregone conclusion as Victor Oladipo taking home MIP. The stats certainly check out at 23.1 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.4 steals per game: not only has he bumped his scoring by nearly 50 percent over last season, but he’s averaging nearly two more dimes per game and is leading the league in steals.

None of that is the reason why he seems like a shoo-in to take this prize though. No, Oladipo’s case rests squarely on the fact that he’s the engine behind a 48-win, well-oiled machine that was supposed to be squarely in the think of the draft lottery.

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On a night-in, night-out basis, he has been as important to the Indiana Pacers as nearly any other player has been to their team. Not only are they 0-7 without him, but according to CleaningtheGlass.com, the Pacers are a 58-win team with Oladipo on the court and a 23-win team when he’s off. Indiana’s on/off numbers back up the legitimacy of that seemingly absurd stat.

All of this has come, of course, not as the result of increased playing time (he’s averaging less than a minute more in Indiana than he was last season), but rather increased playing time not standing around and watching a one-man band attempt single-handedly dominate every minute of a basketball game, often to the detriment of his teammates.

Has Victor Oladipo really improved as a player since his lone season with the Oklahoma City Thunder? Or was it just a matter of getting out of Russell Westbrook’s shadow and being given the keys to a sweet ride of his own?

There’s no way to know for sure. What we do know is that this year’s race is noticeably lacking the typical “more time/more stats” candidate. As a result, Oladipo has emerged as the clear favorite. The question is whether anyone can even make it interesting.

Other Contenders?

The typical winner of this award is a young player who has an eye-popping increase in nightly scoring. By that metric, the best candidates might be two lottery picks from last year, Brandon Ingram and Jamal Murray, each of whom went from scoring in the single digits to over 16 points a night. Neither player has really shown the type of overall improvement in their games to warrant mention for this award though, and they’re status as second-year players hurts them anyway.

The only name that might rival Oladipo’s if we’re talking about the most surprising NBA player might be Spencer Dinwiddie, who went from a bit piece on last year’s Nets squad to Brooklyn’s MVP this year (not that that’s saying much). Still, the kindest compliment you can give Dinwiddie is that his ascension has been the poor man’s version of what Vic has done with the Pacers. That still might be enough to get him second place on many ballots.

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Clint Capela has been a name that discerning observers have thrown around. His stats don’t look all that different from last season, but there’s a reason that the Rockets are 42-3 (not a misprint) when they have their starting center alongside both their star guards. Still, voters like numbers, and there aren’t enough here for him to give Dipo a real run.

Gary Harris and Josh Richardson are both guys who have upped the roles they play for their teams on offense while taking on the most difficult defensive assignment on the other end. Similar to Capela though, neither has seen enough of an uptick in scoring to warrant serious consideration.

Perhaps the player who would be getting the most love for this award in any other season but isn’t getting any because he just happens to be the other dude who accompanied Oladipo in the trade to Indiana is Domantas Sabonis.

He’s nearly doubled his scoring average from last year and more than doubled his rebounds and assists per night, all while playing roughly the same minutes. His true shooting has gone up 10 points, from 46 to 56 percent, and his usage rate has increased from 15.4 to a very respectable 22.1. If he wasn’t playing with the presumptive frontrunner (and if he weren’t another second-year player), he’d be getting far more love.

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Alas, as it has for some time now, this award has Victor Oladipo’s name etched in stone. He might not end up on an All-NBA team due to an unfair glut of outstanding guards, but this isn’t the worst consolation prize. He’s more than deserving of the honor.

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