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It's Still A'ja For Me

 I love Linda Cohn. She's one of the reasons that ESPN isn't total garbage, even though they have been firing the people who made it great for about 20 years. Anyway, she says Caitlin Clark should be the MVP in the WNBA this year. She in general points out that it's not a stats award; it's about who is the most valuable to her team. In principle, I absolutely agree.

But Wilson is like Tim Duncan. The whole Aces program turns on the axis of her leadership. Coach Hammon knows this, because she was there. Gregg Popovich isn't some strategic genius; he had the players good enough to win, but he inspired those players to work together, and in the latter days, to follow Timmy's lead. I look at the Aces roster, and I think, "This team is legit loaded." (Ditto the Fever and the Minnesota Lynx, especially.) But seriously: would the Aces roster be so deep if A'ja wasn't there? Not just her stats, which are distinctly better than Caitlin's. But every player on the Aces is better because A'ja is there. Like how the Bulls were better with MJ, even if he wasn't particularly effective in one game. Caitlin is absolutely a game-breaker, a world-altering point guard. But I feel worse about Indiana's chance to win a game if Kelsey Mitchell has to sit than if CC does. I'm not just saying that; Mitchell has put up 20+ points in 19 straight games. It was Kelsey Mitchell who taught 2023 Rookie of The Year Aliyah Boston that pro basketball isn't easy, even though she barely lost in college at South Carolina under the great Dawn Staley, who--if I believed in reincarnation--could be a rebooted Pat Summitt. Please bubble-wrap Kelsey Mitchell in between games, Coach.

I can absolutely believe that the writers are sick of giving Wilson the MVP. Feel free to ask Nikola Jokic's teammates about this. I have never seen a situation more analogous to Stan Musial in my life. We're gonna get to the end of his career, if he's done winning MVPs, and go, "Just 3 of them? That doesn't feel right." Let's not do it to A'ja Wilson, whose prime we're still very much in the middle of. I do not have enough white pride, latent Republicanism, or residual anger at bitter lesbians, to need Caitlin to win this MVP. She's already my favorite player on my favorite team. Meanwhile, A'ja hung 32 on the Lynx in a loss the other day, and she wasn't shooting all the shots. She was 10-15. 67 percent. That Western Conference Finals is gonna be lit, as they say in the vernacular. 

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