Who do you think wins MVP this season? (2025-26 NBA MVP Discussion Thread)

[Cubbies2120]

Yeah they beat Minnesota by 1 point when Edwards was not playing something you "forgot" to mention, they beat Toronto by 3 points and then they got destroyed by Boston I think it was minus 30 at half time or something. The other teams they beat were Portland and Sacramento and they lost one against Portland.

So basically if you count +0.500 teams they beat Toronto by few points and got destroyed by Boston.
Then they beat Minnesota without Edwards and went 1-1 against 9-15 Portland and beat 6-18 Sacramento.

A win is a win...

They also beat that Portland team with no AR15, no LeBron, and no Luka...talk about a powerful supporting cast!

That same Portland team beat Denver and gave OKC their only loss...yet Luka's 2nd stringers are able to beat them... Supporting cast go crazy!

Wait are you saying Jokic lost against Portland? I don't know if that's so great for his MVP case.

Yep just like SGA. The Blazers are able to beat the best team in the league + Jokic, while Luka's world-beating supporting cast (minus Luka, AR15, LeBron) was able to defeat the Blazers.

Maybe Luka has more help than we thought!

[AleksandarN]

When Luka was carrying injury riddled Mavs in 23/24 posting 34/9/10, Jokic stans flooded MVP threads with posts about record and on/off, Gordon and Braun are down and suddenly record and on/off are no longer our morning star, we need nuance.
If Luka leads these Lakers to better record, he's ahead of Jokic easily, Jokic mau be out of Gordon and Braun, Luka has no defenders on his team to begin with, when we said Jokic had elite supporting, the stans cried it was a carry job.

So people arguing for Jokic are stans now? Do better you are a mod. Name calling is unbecoming. Labeling people who posted why Jokic should be MVP “stans” get us no where. Why antagonize people? Btw Luka didn’t even come in 2nd mvp voting that year.

[AleksandarN]

I'm also old enough to remember the Jokic, Nuggets fans taking their way too premature victory laps on the Jokic on/off stuff 10-games into the season ("see, he's still carrying a bunch of scrubs"). Low and behold, no more Mike Malone hockey line-changes and improved bench depth, and it's almost like it's playing out exactly like some of us have been saying for years (+11.9 on the court, +0.4 when he's off). Obviously he's still an all-time ceiling/floor-raiser combo dude, but it turns out the Nuggets also certainly aren't "the Washington Wizards" when he sits...

Weird maybe I am getting different numbers. Cleaning the glass has different numbers. Which has Jokic at the top of the league in on/off even with the better backup and bench.

https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/1883/onoff#tab-team_efficiency

[RB34]

It’s all about decimal increments in EPM, that’s all that matters.

[lethalizer]

PBPstats when removing low leverage actually has the Nuggets at +8.22 this season without Jokic on the floor. Low leverage removing the garbage time minutes of course.



Here's the stats for Shai:

[Mavrelous]

When Luka was carrying injury riddled Mavs in 23/24 posting 34/9/10, Jokic stans flooded MVP threads with posts about record and on/off, Gordon and Braun are down and suddenly record and on/off are no longer our morning star, we need nuance.
If Luka leads these Lakers to better record, he's ahead of Jokic easily, Jokic mau be out of Gordon and Braun, Luka has no defenders on his team to begin with, when we said Jokic had elite supporting, the stans cried it was a carry job.

So people arguing for Jokic are stans now? Do better you are a mod. Name calling is unbecoming. Labeling people who posted why Jokic should be MVP “stans” get us no where. Why antagonize people? Btw Luka didn’t even come in 2nd mvp voting that year.

You're right, it was unnecessary, but it wasn't directed at you, no reason to take it personally.

[Archx]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

The game is evolving, and the stats are evolving along with them as well. We all try to watch as many games as we can, but I don't think we have that much free time to watch every MVP candidate's every game.

I know I watch 82 OKC games for the regular season, but if I had the capacity to watch two other MVP candidates' full games as well, I'd have to to this professionally as opposed to a hobby.

Also after poking around a few of the stats and seeing the outliers in them and their overall formula, you sort of develop a habit of trusting some over the others.

Like I'm not going to take PER seriously in the year of 2025 or any other purely box score related stats. They can be somewhat hopeful but they severely lack painting the full picture for the impact of a player.

As an example: You don't need to average 25 assists to positively improve your offense, you can do it via your gravity and hockey assists as well. But those are not counted as official stats in the NBA, at least not yet.

How do you react to doubles? Do you turn the ball over when facing said doubles or get out of them early? You may not get blocks at all but are you deterring enough shots at the rim to force the opponents misses?

These are simply can't be quantified via basic stats.

So yeah, I'll always look for the more advanced stats as time goes on, cause I want to understand the game better and correlate what I'm watching to quantifiable data.

In a vacuum that's perfectly reasonable but when people start over complicating things then it's like... what's the point of even watching games? You said yourself, don't have time to watch everything, so what's stopping someone to just pull up the paper and read out everything there is? It takes the joy out of watching the game and coming to your own conclusion and just argue a piece of paper without a context.

[Cubbies2120]

When Luka was carrying injury riddled Mavs in 23/24 posting 34/9/10, Jokic stans flooded MVP threads with posts about record and on/off, Gordon and Braun are down and suddenly record and on/off are no longer our morning star, we need nuance.
If Luka leads these Lakers to better record, he's ahead of Jokic easily, Jokic mau be out of Gordon and Braun, Luka has no defenders on his team to begin with, when we said Jokic had elite supporting, the stans cried it was a carry job.

Question for you - does Luka get credit for wins in a suit on the bench / at home in Slovenia?

Because if not, he's got 13 dubs, Jokic has 17...

[Mavrelous]

When Luka was carrying injury riddled Mavs in 23/24 posting 34/9/10, Jokic stans flooded MVP threads with posts about record and on/off, Gordon and Braun are down and suddenly record and on/off are no longer our morning star, we need nuance.
If Luka leads these Lakers to better record, he's ahead of Jokic easily, Jokic mau be out of Gordon and Braun, Luka has no defenders on his team to begin with, when we said Jokic had elite supporting, the stans cried it was a carry job.

Question for you - does Luka get credit for wins in a suit on the bench / at home in Slovenia?

Because if not, he's got 13 dubs, Jokic has 17...

Hard to argue with this kind of logic, you're right Jokic is the MVP.

[Infinite Llamas]

Jokic on/off was going to take a drastic hit after those two injuries and it’s pretty obvious why. Jokic spends more minutes now with Watson and Jones. And those guys are miles from the guys they replace. I think it was a calculated move to keep the bench more intact and count on Murray and Jokic to carry the starting lineup, but yeah. Add that to Cam Johnson’s streaky play and it’s Jokic/Murray taking on the word most games with that unit.

[lethalizer]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

The game is evolving, and the stats are evolving along with them as well. We all try to watch as many games as we can, but I don't think we have that much free time to watch every MVP candidate's every game.

I know I watch 82 OKC games for the regular season, but if I had the capacity to watch two other MVP candidates' full games as well, I'd have to to this professionally as opposed to a hobby.

Also after poking around a few of the stats and seeing the outliers in them and their overall formula, you sort of develop a habit of trusting some over the others.

Like I'm not going to take PER seriously in the year of 2025 or any other purely box score related stats. They can be somewhat hopeful but they severely lack painting the full picture for the impact of a player.

As an example: You don't need to average 25 assists to positively improve your offense, you can do it via your gravity and hockey assists as well. But those are not counted as official stats in the NBA, at least not yet.

How do you react to doubles? Do you turn the ball over when facing said doubles or get out of them early? You may not get blocks at all but are you deterring enough shots at the rim to force the opponents misses?

These are simply can't be quantified via basic stats.

So yeah, I'll always look for the more advanced stats as time goes on, cause I want to understand the game better and correlate what I'm watching to quantifiable data.

In a vacuum that's perfectly reasonable but when people start over complicating things then it's like... what's the point of even watching games? You said yourself, don't have time to watch everything, so what's stopping someone to just pull up the paper and read out everything there is? It takes the joy out of watching the game and coming to your own conclusion and just argue a piece of paper without a context.

Curious, where do you draw the line when it comes to over complicating things?

Also, I highly doubt many users in this forum watch a lot of games. Hell, I'm watching a lot more cause I'm actually switching jobs and currently have a lot of time on my hands because of that.

You're right that context is important, but after a while stats is all we have, and that's also what the MVP voters have as well, they don't watch a lot of games either besides their team.

That's why the evolving stats are important for me. If a Jazz media voter for instance, has a metric that he can choose, he'd make a more sensible vote compared to just looking at the basic stat sheet and going "oh yeah, this guy has great volume stats, I should vote for him".

[Mavrelous]

Jokic on/off was going to take a drastic hit after those two injuries and it’s pretty obvious why. Jokic spends more minutes now with Watson and Jones. And those guys are miles from the guys they replace. I think it was a calculated move to keep the bench more intact and count on Murray and Jokic to carry the starting lineup, but yeah. Add that to Cam Johnson’s streaky play and it’s Jokic/Murray taking on the word most games with that unit.

It was obvious to.me, I predicted it in this thread amd was told I'm wrong, but no, the general perception about on/off and impact stats don't predict this, people.are still.talking about Jokic backup, probabely the least significant factor in the on/off shift.

[lethalizer]

Re: the on/off convo about Jokic

Denver had a bit of a philosophy change going into this season. Last season they used Jokic a lot differently, staggered him with very different lineups. Looking at the data kinda confirms this as well, Jokic played 1076 minutes with Gordon last season when both of them were healthy, which was very low. They had a +13.88 Net rating when paired together in those minutes. Jokic played 550 minutes without Gordon, and those minutes were at +2.12.

Jokic being the offensive juggernaut that he is still carried the non Gordon minutes offensively, but the defense really suffered without him.

Adelman wisely made a change this year and wanted to pair the both of them as much as possible. Before Gordon went down, Jokic and Gordon already had 306 minutes together and 124 without. That's close to a 1/3 ratio instead of the 1/2 last season.

Nuggets have better depth compared to last season which allows these lineup adjustments, but it's also just a bit more common sense if you ask me, and along with Murray's finally good health, it's no wonder Denver is having a great regular season start.

[Doctor MJ]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

Okay, some thoughts:

1. If what you want is a more scouting-oriented conversation between people, I get that. I don't think it's realistic to expect that people won't go into data when discussing awards about things that quantifiable like value, but the worthwhile-ness of scouting-oriented conversations is not in doubt. They are great, and I understand getting more out of them than in a conversation that focuses on analytics.

2. But if you're one of the folks who thinks he can judge value-add simply by only scouting and do so as well as the people using analytics, well, you're wrong. Human brains aren't wired to do this, and this has everything to do with why all the data you see us discussing here is just the tip of the iceberg for what coaching & front office staffs do nowadays. Use of these tools is how people in these positions stopped spinning their wheels and actually started making rapid strategic progress in the 21st century.

3. To be clear, I'm not mentioning anything new. I purposefully started with raw +/- & on-off which we've had access to for over two decades, and when I talk about adding regression into the mix, while the accessibility of the data is newer, the techniques are largely over a decade old. Understandable to not like it, but it's an established part of the lexicon now.

4. I should acknowledge that I tend to lean heavily into data when entering into the thread like I do. I see it as something objective we can discuss we can plausibly get somewhere with. This ties into why I tend to post simpler stuff with more tangible meaning than the regressed stuff, but when people push back on the simpler stuff, pointing to stats with more sophistication is the natural thing to do.

[Doctor MJ]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

The game is evolving, and the stats are evolving along with them as well. We all try to watch as many games as we can, but I don't think we have that much free time to watch every MVP candidate's every game.

I know I watch 82 OKC games for the regular season, but if I had the capacity to watch two other MVP candidates' full games as well, I'd have to to this professionally as opposed to a hobby.

Also after poking around a few of the stats and seeing the outliers in them and their overall formula, you sort of develop a habit of trusting some over the others.

Like I'm not going to take PER seriously in the year of 2025 or any other purely box score related stats. They can be somewhat hopeful but they severely lack painting the full picture for the impact of a player.

As an example: You don't need to average 25 assists to positively improve your offense, you can do it via your gravity and hockey assists as well. But those are not counted as official stats in the NBA, at least not yet.

How do you react to doubles? Do you turn the ball over when facing said doubles or get out of them early? You may not get blocks at all but are you deterring enough shots at the rim to force the opponents misses?

These are simply can't be quantified via basic stats.

So yeah, I'll always look for the more advanced stats as time goes on, cause I want to understand the game better and correlate what I'm watching to quantifiable data.

In a vacuum that's perfectly reasonable but when people start over complicating things then it's like... what's the point of even watching games? You said yourself, don't have time to watch everything, so what's stopping someone to just pull up the paper and read out everything there is? It takes the joy out of watching the game and coming to your own conclusion and just argue a piece of paper without a context.

I would suggest that the joy of watching the game is just not the same thing as a conversation where we debate who happens to be the most valuable player in the league.

Stats don't tell us everything, but if you're really not looking to use stats to help you evaluate MVP, you're going to overestimate and underestimate things significantly, because the human brain just isn't built to figure out how valuable exactly a given type of play is.

[Doctor MJ]

Jokic on/off was going to take a drastic hit after those two injuries and it’s pretty obvious why. Jokic spends more minutes now with Watson and Jones. And those guys are miles from the guys they replace. I think it was a calculated move to keep the bench more intact and count on Murray and Jokic to carry the starting lineup, but yeah. Add that to Cam Johnson’s streaky play and it’s Jokic/Murray taking on the word most games with that unit.

It was obvious to.me, I predicted it in this thread amd was told I'm wrong, but no, the general perception about on/off and impact stats don't predict this, people.are still.talking about Jokic backup, probabely the least significant factor in the on/off shift.

I'm awaiting your follow up from the other post, but I'll emphasize:

It's certainly obvious to many of us that if you switch lineups around that on-off will change, which is why anyone serious isn't just using on-off data in their own analysis. But in a conversation with people who cannot be assumed to have deep knowledge on the subject, starting with obscure stats that are hard to explain is generally not as helpful as using the raw stuff.

[Archx]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

Okay, some thoughts:

1. If what you want is a more scouting-oriented conversation between people, I get that. I don't think it's realistic to expect that people won't go into data when discussing awards about things that quantifiable like value, but the worthwhile-ness of scouting-oriented conversations is not in doubt. They are great, and I understand getting more out of them than in a conversation that focuses on analytics.

2. But if you're one of the folks who thinks he can judge value-add simply by only scouting and do so as well as the people using analytics, well, you're wrong. Human brains aren't wired to do this, and this has everything to do with why all the data you see us discussing here is just the tip of the iceberg for what coaching & front office staffs do nowadays. Use of these tools is how people in these positions stopped spinning their wheels and actually started making rapid strategic progress in the 21st century.

3. To be clear, I'm not mentioning anything new. I purposefully started with raw +/- & on-off which we've had access to for over two decades, and when I talk about adding regression into the mix, while the accessibility of the data is newer, the techniques are largely over a decade old. Understandable to not like it, but it's an established part of the lexicon now.

4. I should acknowledge that I tend to lean heavily into data when entering into the thread like I do. I see it as something objective we can discuss we can plausibly get somewhere with. This ties into why I tend to post simpler stuff with more tangible meaning than the regressed stuff, but when people push back on the simpler stuff, pointing to stats with more sophistication is the natural thing to do.

You do whatever you want to do, i was just talking in general. I always laugh when someone writes entire page and then 2nd guy comes in with his own data then the 3rd guy just says, "dude just watch some games".. That's where i always start laughing, everyone will use their own data and agenda to prove their point. That's just how it is.

Also, since you mentioned +/- and On/Off... to some extend it is perfectly fine but it's just not something i personally ever fully rely on. Because there are players and situations where people used On/Off as a be all stat, then when you tried to use the same data for the player you support, suddenly that wasn't valid anymore and someone will bring up something else to dismiss that.

I mean even look at ESPN, they pulled some metric out of the blue that no one used before and wasn't seen afterwards, the now infamous "Blow by%"... They also show +/- as individual stat how someone performed purely on that during broadcasts.

That's why i said, it's bonkers to what great lengths people will go, even the media.

[lethalizer]

I think the problem in these debates are the fact that people start bringing up advance stats for advance stats... We have stats for stats. It's bonkers... What happened to good old logic and watching games? I feel like literally every single year a new advance stat pops up that people will try and use it to their advantage.

Okay, some thoughts:

1. If what you want is a more scouting-oriented conversation between people, I get that. I don't think it's realistic to expect that people won't go into data when discussing awards about things that quantifiable like value, but the worthwhile-ness of scouting-oriented conversations is not in doubt. They are great, and I understand getting more out of them than in a conversation that focuses on analytics.

2. But if you're one of the folks who thinks he can judge value-add simply by only scouting and do so as well as the people using analytics, well, you're wrong. Human brains aren't wired to do this, and this has everything to do with why all the data you see us discussing here is just the tip of the iceberg for what coaching & front office staffs do nowadays. Use of these tools is how people in these positions stopped spinning their wheels and actually started making rapid strategic progress in the 21st century.

3. To be clear, I'm not mentioning anything new. I purposefully started with raw +/- & on-off which we've had access to for over two decades, and when I talk about adding regression into the mix, while the accessibility of the data is newer, the techniques are largely over a decade old. Understandable to not like it, but it's an established part of the lexicon now.

4. I should acknowledge that I tend to lean heavily into data when entering into the thread like I do. I see it as something objective we can discuss we can plausibly get somewhere with. This ties into why I tend to post simpler stuff with more tangible meaning than the regressed stuff, but when people push back on the simpler stuff, pointing to stats with more sophistication is the natural thing to do.

You do whatever you want to do, i was just talking in general. I always laugh when someone writes entire page and then 2nd guy comes in with his own data then the 3rd guy just says, "dude just watch some games".. That's where i always start laughing, everyone will use their own data and agenda to prove their point. That's just how it is.

Also, since you mentioned +/- and On/Off... to some extend it is perfectly fine but it's just not something i personally ever fully rely on. Because there are players and situations where people used On/Off as a be all stat, then when you tried to use the same data for the player you support, suddenly that wasn't valid anymore and someone will bring up something else to dismiss that.

I mean even look at ESPN, they pulled some metric out of the blue that no one used before and wasn't seen afterwards, the now infamous "Blow by%"... They also show +/- as individual stat how someone performed purely on that during broadcasts.

That's why i said, it's bonkers to what great lengths people will go, even the media.

Blown by data is provided by Second Spectrum who provides data for the NBA but isn't available to the public, it's a paid service.

You can see it referenced in various articles over the years by the way.

[Doctor MJ]

It’s all about decimal increments in EPM, that’s all that matters.

Obviously you're being sarcastic here, but you have a point. There isn't any one single stat that I'd point to and say "If Player A is ahead of Player B here, he must be the more valuable player".

But this is also why I showed a bunch of stats that kept pointing in the same direction. All of those stats were either impact (+/- based), or production-impact hybrids (box score & +/- based), but the production stats also say the same thing, and this is why to me this is all screaming:

All of the data is pointing in the same direction.

This also means I'd welcome people pointing to data in the other direction if it's meaningful to them, but to this point, I haven't seen arguments made beyond game anecdotes.

Now as I say this, there's a rub that frankly keeps pulling me back into the conversation, that relates to two things:

a) Those who do advocate for Luka will tend to look for reasons to dismiss those stats' significance, and oftentimes employ the appeal to authenticity of "watching the game".

b) But they are doing so while advocating for the very player who racks up the biggest raw production stats (points, rebounds, assists).

This juxtaposition is eyebrow raising, as it makes us consider the possibility that what's happening is less about stats vs eyeballs, and more about traditional vs newer stats. I don't think it's so simple, but it's worth reflecting upon.

And to be clear: We all know that there's more to the game than can be captured statistically, and I'm not suggesting that those that disagree with me are just looking up a stat I put less stock in, making that their opinion, and purposefully fabricating an actual basketball explanation.

But having spent a couple decades participating in player comparison & ranking conversations with people here, I would say that folks tend to end up with tiering differences depending on where their analysis begins. If you start first considering players by, say, their PPG, then you're probably going to overindex volume scoring. Similarly, if you start with rings, you'll prolly overindex on rings, if you start with career totals you'll prolly overindex on longevity, etc. We've got to start somewhere so it's not damning that this happens to us, but the fact that we don't normally recognize that we're doing this causes confusion and frustration.

[RB34]

It’s all about decimal increments in EPM, that’s all that matters.

Obviously you're being sarcastic here, but you have a point. There isn't any one single stat that I'd point to and say "If Player A is ahead of Player B here, he must be the more valuable player".

But this is also why I showed a bunch of stats that kept pointing in the same direction. All of those stats were either impact (+/- based), or production-impact hybrids (box score & +/- based), but the production stats also say the same thing, and this is why to me this is all screaming:

All of the data is pointing in the same direction.

This also means I'd welcome people pointing to data in the other direction if it's meaningful to them, but to this point, I haven't seen arguments made beyond game anecdotes.

Now as I say this, there's a rub that frankly keeps pulling me back into the conversation, that relates to two things:

a) Those who do advocate for Luka will tend to look for reasons to dismiss those stats' significance, and oftentimes employ the appeal to authenticity of "watching the game".

b) But they are doing so while advocating for the very player who racks up the biggest raw production stats (points, rebounds, assists).

This juxtaposition is eyebrow raising, as it makes us consider the possibility that what's happening is less about stats vs eyeballs, and more about traditional vs newer stats. I don't think it's so simple, but it's worth reflecting upon.

And to be clear: We all know that there's more to the game than can be captured statistically, and I'm not suggesting that those that disagree with me are just looking up a stat I put less stock in, making that their opinion, and purposefully fabricating an actual basketball explanation.

But having spent a couple decades participating in player comparison & ranking conversations with people here, I would say that folks tend to end up with tiering differences depending on where their analysis begins. If you start first considering players by, say, their PPG, then you're probably going to overindex volume scoring. Similarly, if you start with rings, you'll prolly overindex on rings, if you start with career totals you'll prolly overindex on longevity, etc. We've got to start somewhere so it's not damning that this happens to us, but the fact that we don't normally recognize that we're doing this causes confusion and frustration.

Sorry, my post wasn’t in response to you just a couple things I’ve see in this thread and other platforms. I appreciate the well thought out post though.