Quick sports thoughts. Basketball version

1) Harden-Curry looks to me still like the best cases for MVP. Westbrook has passed Harden in many discussions publicly but I see two major downsides to his case. He missed too many games, and his team isn't actually playing that great record-wise despite his run of insanity. Durant being out for a portion of that time has not helped, but Harden has had Howard out and basically ineffective most of the season and Houston was not fighting for it's playoff life the way Oklahoma City was for much of the season.

2) I'd still take the odds that Kentucky goes undefeated to be pretty high. They have an insane high chance to win the tournament, depending on how the seeding goes. I've not seen a team over 20% in a while. They're projecting over 40%, and were almost 50%. That will make winning your NCAA pool a little harder. Unless you pick someone else AND that team wins, which is what happened in 1997 for example, when Arizona won and upset both Kansas and Kentucky in route (both teams that were heavily favored). 50-60% still suggests a lot that could happen, but I'm also not sure who else I would take right now either (Arizona again looks like the best potential).

3) Draymont Green isn't a household name. But he should win defensive player of the year pretty handily. He might not because voters are weird. Really the best competition is a 6th man (Gobert, apparently being called the "Stiffel Tower"), a really old guy (Duncan), and a guy who was hurt off and on (Kawhi). That's it (two of them are on the same team, which may be important in the playoffs). But for some reason DeAndre Jordan keeps getting mentioned as a favorite. He has important skills for playing defense and does it rather well, but I do not buy that he is a great defender when I see the Clippers playing. The team defense moreover is pretty average (except at getting rebounds, which is Jordan's main value). Golden State's is fantastic.