More on why Derrick Rose is not the MVP

A few weeks ago my brother and I had a disagreement over the league's mid-season MVP. He said the award should go to Derrick Rose and I said LeBron was more deserving.

The Bulls have played well since that time, but my opinion has not changed. Why? Because, as Justin Kubato states in a recent post on the New York Times Off the Dribble Blog, "while the Bulls have improved on both ends of the floor, it is mainly their improvement on the defensive end that has them in the hunt for the top seed in the Eastern Conference... [The Bulls] are on pace to become just the fourth team in the last 25 years to lead the N.B.A. in defensive rating one season after finishing outside the top ten in the same category." Meanwhile, a little bit of digging shows that Derrick Rose has the 6th worst unadjusted defensive +/- rating in the entire NBA this season. What do these numbers tell us? That it's too bad the MVP can't be awarded to Tim Thibodeau.