The NBA followed in MLB’s footsteps and recently unveiled Confernce Finals MVPs, named after Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson and Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird. Stephen Curry became the first player to win a Conference Finals MVP on Thursday and it raised the question: how many Conference Finals MVPs would Lakers greats like Kobe Bryant, Johnson, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have?
We were going to go through all of the Finals appearances for each of these players to answer that question but thankfully, our friends over at FiveThirtyEight did all the hefty lifting for us. FiveThirtyEight went back using their game score system and named every Conference Finals MVP in league history.
So, how many Conference Finals MVPs would Kobe Bryant have won with the Los Angeles Lakers?
Kobe Bryant would have won four Conference Finals MVPs
The third-most among any Laker, accoring to FiveThrityEight the Black Mamba would have finished his career with four Conference Finals MVPs in the seven years that he and the Los Angeles Lakers made it to the NBA Finals.
The years that Kobe Bryant would have theoretically won the award are as followed:
2001 – In a four-game sweep of the San Antonio Spurs, the still baby-faced Kobe Bryant averaged 33.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 7.0 assists all while playing elite on the defensive side of the basketball. Bryant made 51.4% of his shots.
2008 – Kobe’s next Conference Finals MVP would have been the first of a three-peat from 2008 to 2010. In 2008, again against the Spurs, Kobe averaged 29.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game.
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2009 – Kobe and the Lakers won two games in a row after starting the series 2-2 against Carmelo Anthony and the Denver Nuggets. Kobe averaged 34 points, 5.8 assists and 5.8 rebounds per game all while attempting 12 free-throws a game. He missed just five of the 72 free-throws that he attempted.
2010 – Kobe’s last theoretical Conference Finals MVP came in what should be considered his best Western Conference Finals. In six games against the Phoenix Suns, Kobe averaged 33.7 points, 8.3 assists and 7.2 rebounds per game while shooting 52.1% from the field and 43.2% from three.
Should Kobe Bryant have won any other Western Conference Finals:
Shaquille O’Neal theoretically won the Confernce Finals MVP in the years that Kobe Bryant didn’t; years one and three of the threepeat as well as 2004. But should Kobe Bryant have gotten the award in any of those years over Shaq?
2000 was undoubtedly Shaq’s year as he was better against Portland. 2002 was closer against the Sacramento Kings but Shaq was ever-so-slightly better statistically, although maybe Robert Horry would have actually won for having the biggest shot of that series.
Kobe Bryant probably would have won in 2004, though. While his game score was lower, he averaged more points per game and was the best player in that series. It was clear by then that Kobe was better than Shaq, who at the time was in his 30s.
So wth just game score as a metric, the answer is four. However, realistically, Kobe Bryant probably would have won five Conference Finals MVPs in his career.