Mark Cuban is back to belittling Russell Westbrook. Maybe.
The Dallas Mavericks owner said the point guard wasn’t a superstar last May, and now, apparently, he doesn’t believe Westbrook is in the mix for league MVP, per ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon:
Mark Cuban says MVP is a toss-up between James Harden and LeBron James. Where is Russell Westbrook in that mix? "He's not."
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) March 6, 2017
If Cuban’s sentiment is that Westbrook isn’t as valuable as James Harden and LeBron James, that’s cool. I get it. I agree with him, even. And if he was simply trying to emphasize that Westbrook wasn’t on the same plane as Kevin Durant when he criticized his standing within the Association last spring, I get that.
But, like, dude.
This is kind of a crazy thing to say when Westbrook’s one-man show is about to carry the Oklahoma City Thunder back to the playoffs mere months after they lost a top-three player in Durant. To say he’s not in the MVP mix implies he’s not even in the top five. And even if you weigh winning and efficiency more than anything else, you still have to put Westbrook and his triple-double average in the top five.
That counts as being in the mix.
