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Help Wanted! Celtics Fans Please Apply

This blogger needs input from people who've watched the 2007-2008 NBA regular season more diligently than himself.

Over in another corner of the Internet a week or so back, there was a raging debate going on over who should be this year's NBA MVP. It went on for pages of posts between the adherents of Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, and LeBron James. Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, I meekly suggested that Kevin Garnett's name deserved a mention, in that joining a team whose win total promptly goes from 24 to over 60 seems a fair working definition of the term "value."

Scorn came from all sides. One guy, a Bryant partisan who never mentioned Pau Gasol, told me that Garnett could not be considered, because after all, Ray Allen came to the Celts, too, and bore a degree of responsibility for the team's historic turnaround.

Oh, really? You mean people starting playoff party plans around here when Allen came to Boston before the draft? I don't think so, but frankly I need more data.

I put it to you, Celtics faithful. What is you best estimate of the number of regular season wins Boston would have had Allen come to the team, but Garnett either remained a Timberwolf or played elsewhere. My guess is that Boston would be in a ferocious struggle to reach the 35-37 win mark and edge out the Hawks for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, but that is truly just a guess. I'd like to hear guesses from others to either refute or confirm my thesis.

My main point, that Garnett has just as good a case for MVP as Paul or Bryant (we can dismiss the James gang as the wayward children of ESPN), I stand behind no matter what. But support for my argument would be helpful.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:15 AM