Anything’s possible.

Huge game. I’d like to point out, that despite seemingly everyone picking the Lakers to win this series, I had the Celtics winning the championship (not that this was a particularly bold pick):

At the end of the series, this is how each player’s cumulative perfomance looks:

Player	PTS	MEV	PVC	PtC	Credit	GoB
Ray Allen	122	116.58	0.194	125.90	1.313	3.00
Kobe Bryant	154	109.97	0.195	122.87	1.291	1.90
Kevin Garnett	109	111.13	0.185	119.34	1.206	2.22
Paul Pierce	131	108.78	0.181	119.60	1.184	2.17
Pau Gasol	88	95.94	0.170	105.69	1.069	2.61
Lamar Odom	81	80.58	0.143	90.23	0.912	2.27
Rajon Rondo	56	77.40	0.129	79.18	0.788	2.39
Derek Fisher	65	60.57	0.108	67.49	0.690	2.33
James Posey	52	57.54	0.096	60.86	0.621	3.30
Jordan Farmar	42	37.59	0.067	43.97	0.453	2.47
Vladimir Radmanovic	44	41.23	0.073	44.66	0.449	2.14
Sasha Vujacic	50	29.68	0.053	36.41	0.399	1.75
Leon Powe	37	31.97	0.053	31.97	0.306	2.74
Kendrick Perkins	20	24.68	0.041	26.69	0.299	2.20
Eddie House	32	27.21	0.045	29.00	0.295	2.20
P.J. Brown	24	26.02	0.043	26.34	0.250	2.16
Trevor Ariza	13	14.86	0.026	16.69	0.185	2.86
Luke Walton	15	10.49	0.019	14.48	0.137	1.55
Sam Cassell	19	10.35	0.017	12.57	0.130	1.54
Ronny Turiaf	11	4.85	0.009	5.75	0.054	1.44
sum	1165	1077.41	1.846	1179.68	12.030	2.26

So, I have Ray Allen as MVP. I’m willing to concede that due to the lack of defensive box score statistics, I may underestimate defensive contributions to some extent, and as such, Pierce’s relative lockdown on Bryant in several games might push him to the top, at least statistically. Subjectively, though, I like Pierce as MVP anyway. It’s also worth mentioning that Kobe Bryant, for the series, scored 154 points and missed 78 field goals. This means he scored 27.3% of his team’s points, and missed 31.2% of his team’s misses. Bryant is a very good, sometimes dominant player, but he takes an aweful lot of shots, and missed shots hurt your team.

I have to say, though, I am impressed with the degree to which the Celtics dominated the Lakers throughout the series, and especially in the clinching game. Everyone stepped up–according to MEV (model-estimated value) Garnett had the best individual game of the series, with 35. Here is a spreadsheet listing each individual game performance, sorted by Credit–that is, players’ contributions to their teams’ relative success:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pjtolzxemBV74inofaEcgQQ&hl=en

I hope you’ve found the Arbitrarian’s Finals coverage interesting and valid… can’t wait ’til next season.

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