NAS Awards: MVP – Brook Lopez
This is going to be a long, and hopefully eventful off-season for the Nets, so before NAS start getting into our analysis regarding the overall direction of this franchise in terms of coaches, draft picks and free agents, I thought we’d take a look back at the performance of our roster to dissect what went wrong (unfortunately a lot) and what went right (more than you might think in my opinion).
Let’s kick our off-season awards with what should be an easy and obvious choice. As the MVP of the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets, I’m going with Brook Lopez.
Expectations were fairly high for Brook Lopez headed into this season. As one of the Nets two “cornerstones” (the other being Devin Harris at PG), and with Vince Carter traded to Orlando, it was clear from the onset of the season that Lopez was going to have to evolve into a “go-to guy” for this team, which meant his game was going to have to evolve. The fact that you can make a very good argument that Lopez exceeded those expectations with his performance, is a testament to how talented of a player Lopez is, and how his ceiling is much higher than many pundits (ahem John Hollinger) initially thought.
In terms of where he improved, let’s start with the advanced metric that measures it all, Player Efficiency Rating (PER). Lopez finished with a 20.11 PER this season, up from 17.94 in his rookie campaign, and higher than Hollinger’s projected PER of 18.82. This was good for 7th best among NBA centers (6th if you discount Greg Oden, who only played in 21 games). Only Dwight Howard, David Lee (who could be playing PF for the Nets next season), and Andrew Bogut ranked ahead of Lopez in the Eastern Conference, meaning he truly is evolving into one of the conference’s best centers not named Dwight Howard – as NAS, and others, predicted before the season started.