This "Kryie has been the better player" narrative that you seem to be going with is perplexing as hell.
I believe (as others do too), that he has been the Cavs' best player in this series. It's certainly arguable.
Lebron has clearly been more valuable than Kyrie on defense, although Kyrie is playing much better on that end than he was in the regular season (not saying much).
Most definitely LeBron have been more valuable on defense, no arguments there. Although I will say this, he's been inconsistent on defense and has made a # of defensive mistakes (I put some of this down to being gassed) in this series. More than most would care to admit. Kyrie's effort has been there on the defensive end, but he's been unfortunate at times to come up against bigger matchups in the post.
Lebron has been far more valuable on the boards.
This doesn't mean much, considering he's closer to the basket on defense and he likes positioning himself to grab weakside boards to bring the ball up (and pad his #s). Cats put far too much emphasis on rebounding when unless you're boxing out bigs all game long and crashing the glass it doesn't have a significant impact. Positional defense and boxing out your matchup is far more important than rebounding in this instance.
Cats focus far too much on box score stats.
More valuable in creating buckets for other players.
If we're talking about their skillsets - of course. Non-debatable. Except it really hasn't been the case in this series. LeBron's dominated the ball more and has been prone to throw errant passes or bailout passes when he's drained the shotclock down. Kyrie hasn't been spectacular in this area, but since no other Cavs player (besides LeBron) has been able to shoot with any consistency, he's taken it upon himself to score rather than to rely on the team.
Drawing more attention from the GS defense - even when he's off the ball. And they've been equal in scoring.
This is not true at all. Far from the truth.
They haven't been equal in scoring. Kyrie's been the better scorer when they've needed him to be - LeBron scored 21 of his 32 points
after the Cavaliers already had a 14-pt lead in the third quarter in Game 3, he scored 7 of his 25 points around the last minute (when the game was essentially over) in Game 4 - all the while averaging more touches per game. Kyrie's been more aggressive to keep them in the game or build leads.
This is like the way you were stanning Derrick Rose. I'm not seeing it at all.
Of course you're not seeing it. You're a LeBron stan.
Kyrie can still win FMVP if he is clearly the Cavs' best player in games 6 and 7. Voters will remember those two wins more than anything else. But Lebron has been the most valuable player through 5, and I don't think that debatable.
It most certainly is debatable. I don't have any issue with anybody arguing that LeBron is, but Kyrie is at the very least in the conversation.
