LeBron James on winning the MVP after losing the Finals: ‘I wouldn’t feel good about it at all’

On Tuesday, in the hours leading up to what could be the final game of the NBA’s 2014-15 season, LeBron James confirmed what we all could have guessed back in October, much less after five Finals games.

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He doesn’t want an MVP award if he loses. Take the votes and stuff them elsewhere, because if his team’s run ends after Game 6 of the NBA Finals, James doesn’t want personal consideration for his individual run.

From Jason Lloyd at the Akron Beacon-Journal:

“I wouldn’t feel good about it at all,” James said. “At the end of the day I’m here to win a team prize, and that’s to win a championship, not an individual prize.”

Players have been offering up this sort of (appropriate!) pablum for decades, and most of the time they’re genuinely telling the truth. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing in the world, however, for a seasonal NBA MVP candidate to find some solace in an MVP award even though his upstart team’s 53-win season fell short in the second round. You know it’s happened before, and that’s just fine.

James’ setup, as is usually the case even if he’s playing alongside healthy All-Stars, is different.

LeBron’s Cavaliers actually won 53 regular season games this year, but this club’s season has offered an astounding mix of caveats, excuses, straight-up demerits, and deserved plaudits. It was built, with James joining two other 2014 NBA All-Stars last July, to win a championship. Anything short of that should act as a disappointment.

Those All-Stars – Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love – are sidelined, and James has had to go at it with both recent additions (midseason acquisitions Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert have been asked to play as James’ second-best teammate at times) and reserves that some Cavs fans were worried about even in his role as a ninth man back in March (the dead-tired Matthew Dellavedova).

James has cobbled together some outrageous statistics. He’s shooting just below 40 percent from the field, but he’s also managing 36.6 points, 12.4 rebounds, and 8.8 assists in this five-game span so far. The Warriors have two deserved MVP candidates in a series that could end in six games in regular season MVP Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala, but James has probably been better considering tangible production and context.

We wrote about this extensively on Monday, and there is no reason to go long again in rehashing it. There is not an easy, either/or argument to be had about LeBron’s merits as MVP, nor should there be hard and fast rules about whether or not Finals losers should have their best player credited for his actions.

What is worth discussing again is the potential for ignominy.

The NBA handed out the Finals MVP, in its first year of existence, to Los Angeles Lakers star Jerry West. West’s team lost that year’s Finals, and in the decades since he has referred to that acknowledgment as an embarrassment to end all embarrassments. The lauded “Mr. Clutch” lost seven of his eight Finals trips (something to think about when basic cable discusses James likely losing four of six Finals appearances), and he wanted absolutely no recognition for his brilliant individual performance in a series gone wrong.

LeBron James’ mantle is already rather loaded. He doesn’t need anything else on there outside of more Lawrence O’Brien Trophy minis, and for once the nine media members who vote on the MVP should probably follow silly, old-school orthodoxy should this series continue apace in Game 6 or even Game 7.

Say James drops another incredible 40-12-11 line in Game 6, shooting 12-30 and generally acting as he’s acted over the course of the first five games. Say Stephen Curry offers a pretty good – but not Game 5’ish-legendary – performance in a Golden State win. James will have outplayed Curry in the Finals, but so what? As media, we all want to get it right – but sometimes there’s no real reward for as much. Just hand the thing to the 2014-15 NBA MVP and leave James alone with his teammates.

(And for those that cannot stand LeBron James, which is oftentimes understandable, imagine if the situation was reversed? What if your personal David – the diminutive Curry – was working without Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, hitting endless three-pointers and acting as the best individual player in a desperate bid to overcome a healthy Cavaliers team featuring James, Irving and Love?

Would you want Adam Silver and some corporate representative to give Curry the award at some ham-hock postgame presser, while the Cavs celebrated a few rooms away?)

James won’t win the award even if he drops 60 in defeat in Game 6, because that voting lineup is likely less full of your usual strident League Pass-watchers and more comprised of the NBA media personalities that you’ve probably already tuned out at this point. Nobody has to worry about LeBron James, star of stage and screen, getting his feelings hurt.

That’s the hope, at least. Somehow, the world’s most famous athlete has somehow turned into a pitiable figure. How weird is this game?

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops