CLEVELAND -- Shortly after the Cleveland Cavaliers' 109-97 win over the Detroit Pistons on Monday, J.R. Smith was interviewed by the Quicken Loans Arena's in-house emcee. He was asked for his thoughts on LeBron James' second triple-double of the season and 39th of his career.
"Who? The real MVP?" Smith said, his message echoing to the sellout crowd of 20,562 who were making their way to the exits. "There's a lot of speculation about who should get the award, but we all know who the real MVP is."
It wasn't James' 21 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds on the night that suddenly convinced Smith, either.
"In actuality, if you really wanted to, you could give it to him every year," Smith said of James, who won the award four times in his first 11 seasons in the league. "I mean, the numbers, what he does for teams. You see one year removed from a team like Miami -- and they probably won't even make the playoffs -- to a team that hasn't made the playoffs since he left and then, all of the sudden, we're a 52-win team. So I don't think you can do that with anybody else that's in our league right now.
"Not to knock anything from the other two guys [Stephen Curry and James Harden]. They're having great years, career years for both of them, but if you want to be realistic about it, you could give it to him every time."
ESPN.com analyzed the consensus top six candidates' cases for MVP on Monday, looking at the merits of James, Harden, Curry, Chris Paul, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook, who happens to be the MVP pick of another one of James' teammates, Kevin Love.