Corner Three* Ready to argue about who should win M.V.P.? Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via Reuters (*We have a NEW email address, for questions and feedback.) You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure the subject line reads “Corner Three.”) Q: I’ve got the solution to curb tanking — set the draft order at the All-Star break. Even better would be setting it before the trade deadline. It’s so simple. Why can’t this happen? Tanking would immediately disappear. Hold the lottery a week before the trade deadline in late January. Teams who lose the lottery would have the chance to react immediately and do something different at the deadline. There is zero downside. — David Guild STEIN: I’m sorry, David. I gave your idea some spotlight here, but I’m not co-signing it. Although I’m admittedly more resistant to change than I probably should be, I don’t think this proposed switch would rid us of tanking at all. There’s no guarantee it would do anything except move the tanking earlier to a more condensed chunk of the season. The 82-game schedule has plenty of flaws, but cutting things off at 41 games for lottery position — or in the 55-game range to coincide with the All-Star break — would truly eradicate any semblance of balance. Strength of schedule is far from equal, team to team, at those points of the regular season. And let’s be honest: If teams out there really want to tank, they will just set things up to tank for 41 games under your model and then switch gears. I don’t buy the notion that tanking is a second-half phenomenon only. I’m quite sure that the league has considered this suggestion, since it’s not a new one, but I believe that teams will change their behaviors to exploit any such change in determining the lottery order — whether it’s based on records after 41 games, 55 games, 70 games, whatever. Also: I want to give more of a chance to the new system, which has flattened the odds of winning the No. 1 overall pick to 14 percent each for the teams with the league’s three worst records. We won’t start getting a real handle on that until the lottery May 14, but I suspect that some backlash is looming for the teams that finish, say, Nos. 2-4 in the lottery — now that it’s even harder to turn intentional losing into the No. 1 pick. New York, Cleveland, Phoenix and Chicago have all done a l-o-t of losing this season, but only one of those teams can get Duke’s Zion Williamson. Fans around the league may begin to take a dimmer view of tanking — and voice their displeasure at a volume that starts to make things uncomfortable for the teams that pursue it — once the lottery results are known and reality sets in about how unrewarding tanking can be. Q: Be honest: Frank Ntilikina of the Knicks is well below average, right? — Larry Segal STEIN: I can’t be any more honest when I say that I, for one, am nowhere close to writing him off. For starters, Ntilikina has only just been cleared to return to the practice floor, having been sidelined since late January with a groin injury. But I think it’s also important to take the long view, especially with young guards. Ntilikina’s shot and finishing around the rim are undeniable concerns, but he’s only 20 and we’ve barely seen him. Why the rush to declare him a bust when the Knicks are openly tanking and preparing for free agency? They’re not a win-now team. So there’s no need to make a “now” judgment on the player. Because of his size and defensive ability, Ntilikina remains intriguing. I use the tremendous jump in dependability that Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox has made from Year 1 to Year 2 as my latest go-to reminder that it’s foolish to judge guards so hastily. Q: In 2017 you voted for Russell Westbrook because he was making history. Now you take Giannis. Hypocrisy. — @RocketsTX from Twitter STEIN: This tweet was sent to me Friday night in response to my tweet that Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo is the favorite for Most Valuable Player. (For the record, I am no longer a year-end awards voter in the N.B.A. because The New York Times does not permit its reporters to participate in award balloting.) But I think I can still offer some useful insight into the voter mindset, since this is how I (and I suspect many others) always approached it. The M.V.P. award essentially answers the following question: Who had the best season? That’s why winning has so often factored into M.V.P. voting since the news media assumed voting responsibility from the players starting with the 1980-81 season. In 2016-17, I indeed gave my vote to Westbrook even though Oklahoma City won only 47 games. My reasoning: The historic achievement of Westbrook becoming the first player since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double for an entire season not only earned him extra credit on my ballot but also played a huge role in the Thunder making the playoffs that season when many pundits expected them to collapse without Kevin Durant. It was the first time as a voter that I had given my No. 1 M.V.P. slot to a player who was not on a 50-win team, but Westbrook’s individual brilliance in hauling the Thunder to the brink of 50-win territory won me over. When it comes to this season, I infer from your tweet (and James Harden profile picture) that you think I should list Harden as the favorite because of his historic run of 32 consecutive 30-point games. But if you really followed my voting patterns in my ESPN days, you would know that I judged every season unto itself in trying to identify who had the best 82 games. There are unique factors, season to season, that I always tried to account for. I repeat: I am not an official voter this season. If I were, though, Antetokounmpo would get extra credit from me for leading the Bucks to the top spot in the most competitive Eastern Conference we’ve seen in years. That’s a unique aspect of the 2018-19 campaign that has nothing to do with what happened or how I voted in 2016-17. Ditto for the fact that the Bucks are only the team in the league with a realistic chance of getting 60 wins this season. In addition, Milwaukee is the only team currently ranked in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. All of those facts, on this scorecard, bolster Giannis’ case tremendously and are what led me to bill him as the M.V.P. favorite.