A CASE FOR DESHAUN
Here's how the NFL could finally give Watson his props for carrying a bad team
Jan 4, 2021, 4:03 pm
Imagine what Houston's record would be without Watson.Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images
Throwback Thursday: Texans history so so in Thursday games
When votes are counted for NFL's Most Valuable Player for 2020, it will come down to Aaron Rodgers of the 13-3 Green Bay Packers, Patrick Mahomes of the 14-2 Kansas City Chiefs and maybe Josh Allen of the 13-3 Buffalo Bills.
But except for the NFL history books, where does it say that the MVP has to play for a winning team? Because nobody was more indispensable to his team in 2020 than Deshaun Watson of our disappointing and frustrating, though strangely AFC South defending champs, Houston Texans, who finished their season Sunday with a disastrous 4-12 mark.
MVP from a 4-12 team? Hey, things can always get worse. Without Watson, it's possibly, probably likely, the Texans would have been 0-2020. While the team stumbled and bumbled, firing its coach and general manager and popular media director, promoted a shifty butt smoocher to executive vice-president, lost games on last-minute goal line fumbles, had its all-time star player publicly accuse his teammates of quitting, had a game delayed by lightning (surely a sign from above), losing its best receiver in a trade that made the Great Train Robbery look like an ATM withdrawal, and barely a running game or offensive line … Watson was nothing short of breathtaking.
Watson passed for 4,823 yards and 33 touchdowns with only seven interceptions. He completed 70 percent of his throws to butterfinger receivers. His quarterback rating is the stuff of Canton. He was the undisputed, durable team leader, playing all 16 games, often hobbling to the final gun. It's not easy to be spectacular and steady at the same time, but that was Watson in 2020, even when teammates, though by black magic, pulled defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
He wasn't just the face of the Houston Texans this year, he was their entire body of work.
Would the Texans have been more successful with Rodgers or Mahomes at quarterback? Hard to say. But just once wouldn't you love to watch Watson armed with the Packers and Chiefs' array of speed burner All-Pro receivers?
Forget the Texans' dismal record, the player who meant most to his team in 2020 was Deshaun Watson. "Meant most" … isn't that the same as most valuable? By every earthly standard, except those pesky ol' wins and losses, Watson was the NFL's most outstanding player in 2020, a thrill-a-minute, one-man, 3-ring circus.
But like Bruce Hornsby said, it's just the way it is - no NFL MVP has ever come from a team with a losing record. So count Watson out. However …
Two times, the league's Defensive Player of Year came from losing teams: Dick Butkus from the 1-13 Chicago Bears in1969, and Cortez Kennedy from the 2-14 Seattle Seahawks in 1992. How great was Butkus? He was named to the NFL's All-Decade Team for both the 1960s and 1970.
Here's one that would never happen today. In 1961, Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy despite his Notre Dame Fightin' Irish finishing 2-8. Of course, Hornung led the Irish in passing, rushing, scoring, kickoff returns, punt returns and punting that year. Presumably there were 10 other players on the field that year for Notre Dame. Hornung was named NFL league MVP a few years later for the Packers.
Only twice in NBA history has the MVP played for a losing team. They were Bob Pettit for the 33-39 St. Louis Hawks in 1955-56, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the 40-42 L.A. Lakers in 1975-76.
Baseball has been more open to recognizing greatness in the agony of defeat. Four players have won the MVP while toiling for losing teams: Ernie Banks with the Cubs, Cal Ripken for the Orioles, Mike Trout for the Angels and Andre Dawson with the Cubs. Trout did it most recently in 2016 and 2019. Banks did it twice, back-to-back in 1958-59. Dawson was the only one in history to be named MVP while playing for a cellar-dweller, the 1987 Cubs.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”