NBA MVP Discussion 20/21 (Fresh poll ➥ Vote)

[therealbig3]

LeBron and Jokic are top 2 for sure.

[SA37]

As of now:

1. D Lillard
2. L James
3. K Leonard
4. S Curry
5. N Jokic
6. J Embiid
7. Giannis
8. D DeRozan
9. C Paul
10. J Brown

I just can't give any votes to a Utah player because no one really stands out there.

[Dupp]

Lilly definitely deserves some consideration. He’s certainly not first though and kawhi, who’s team is winning without him and PG, certaily isn’t 3rd.


Not sure where Lilly ranks but he definitely gets taken for granted now though. Should be top 5 though probably

[clyde21]

i'm gonna go with Jokic #1 and I don't care if he's the 8th or 1st seed I think he should get it as long as Denver is in the POs at this point

[Soulyss]

Dame is a bad MF... But even wearing my most homerish Blazer glasses, I would put the Joker and Lebron ahead of him.

[Ballerhogger]

Right now Lebron and Embiid are front runners Kawhi being out and clippers winning didn’t help his case

[Benedict_Boozer]

Man you want to reward Jokic but it’s clear his team won’t have a good enough record at this point. They are just too inconsistent.

[Sedale Threatt]

Which is why the whole "valuable" aspect of major US sports awards is so lame. It adds a totally unnecessary layer that has more to do with the quality of a player's teammates than what he's actually doing. It should just be Player of the Year. At which point Jokic is the pretty easy choice for me at this stage.

[RB34]

So many candidates from the West, even stretching out to the 10th seed. Crickets from the East bar Embiid lol

[bellabiyel]

jjokic needs 2nd to 3rd seed or maybe 4 seed to win the award ..i think he can do it and i think lakers bound to lose some games now that ad is out .. i prefer a rested lebron over mvp exhausted lebron coming into the post season

[OriginalRed]

Jokic fills out every check mark for the MVP except the winning part. If the Nuggets swapped placed with the Jazz record wise, Jokic would be the MVP and wouldn't even be remotely close unless your a Lebron stan.

[SA37]

Lilly definitely deserves some consideration. He’s certainly not first though and kawhi, who’s team is winning without him and PG, certaily isn’t 3rd.


Not sure where Lilly ranks but he definitely gets taken for granted now though. Should be top 5 though probably

Blazers are 4th in the West despite playing at least half the season (up to now) without McCollum, Nurkic, or Collins. Their current starters are Kanter - Covington - Derrick Jones Jr - Trent Jr, whch has to be one of the weakest starting lineups amongst all playoff teams. Of course, Lillard's numbers are as good as anyone's.

Without Leonard, the Clippers have beaten Minnesota, Cleveland, and Miami x 2 (the first game Miami did not have Butler or Dragic). Not exactly the best teams on earth, although beating Miami the other night was impressive. With Leonard the Clippers are 17-6, which is on pace for 60 wins in an 82-game season and 3rd-best in the league.

Still, I did not realize Leonard had missed as many games as Embiid, who is having a better season. I probably should have put Embiid 3rd and Leonard 4th.

I'd put Jokic and Curry as the front-runners for MVP if their teams finished in the top-4.

[Gibson22]

Good game and W for Lebron, great game and loss for jokic, good game and loss for giannis.

So, compared to lebron:
-Embiid has 3.5 less Ws, 6 more missed games
- Kawhi 1Ws, 6 more missed games
-Giannis 5.5 Ws, 1 more missed game
-Jokic 6ws, 0 more missed games

So my list is:
lebron
jokic
embiid
kawhi

[SaintofKillers]

If Harden gets the Nets to at least the second best record in the league, does he have a shot?

[Sgt Major]

Read on Twitter

[Run DLC]

If Harden gets the Nets to at least the second best record in the league, does he have a shot?

Nah. Media desperately want KD to be the focal point MVP on that team even though he has missed a bunch of games and Kyrie and Harden are low-key playing just as good and as impactful as him.

[Dutchball97]

By pretty much every metric Jokic is having an all-time great season right now. According to PER, WS/48 and BPM he's having a top 10 regular season on a per minute basis. It's actually very comparable to Giannis' 2020 but the main difference between these two campaigns is that Giannis played notoriously few minutes, while Jokic is 8th in the league in minutes played. While Giannis lapped everyone in the per minute stats, he actually ended up 4th in WS behind Harden, Dame and AD and 2nd in VORP behind Harden. Yet Giannis still dominantly won the MVP award in the end.

Jokic is not only leading the league in WS and VORP, he's completely dominating. While Embiid is a close second in PER and WS/48 (also second in VORP but the 11.5 to 8 gap isn't really close) he played among the least minutes among MVP candidates. With Jokic leading the league on a per minute basis and only being behind LeBron in minutes played among MVP candidates it shouldn't be a surprise Jokic is lapping the field in WS and VORP.

Giannis, Steph, LeBron, Dame, Harden, Embiid, Kawhi and Gobert are numbers 2-9 on the WS leaderboard. They're all between 4 and 4.3 WS, with every single one of them also having .200 WS/48 or higher. All of them are playing really well and are solid MVP candidates but still none of them are even close to Jokic' 6.1 WS at the moment. In fact procentually this is one of the biggest gaps between number 1 and number 2 in WS ever. It's comparable to Kareem's margin over Gilmore in 77 and KG's margin over Peja in 04 for example.

Unless the Nuggets end up out of the play-offs I don't see why he shouldn't get the MVP award. Right now there is no player that is nearly as important for their team as Jokic is for the Nuggets and to me that is what the MVP award is all about.

[eminence]

Leaders
1. Jokic
2. LeBron

Contenders
3. Embiid
4. Kawhi

Punchers Chance
5. Gobert
6. Steph
7. Lillard
8. Giannis - really no chance, he won't 3peat without a championship in the middle
9. Doncic
10. KD/Harden - KD for now

[Impuniti]

Leaders
1. Jokic
2. LeBron

Contenders
3. Embiid
4. Kawhi

Punchers Chance
5. Gobert
6. Steph
7. Lillard
8. Giannis - really no chance, he won't 3peat without a championship in the middle
9. Doncic
10. KD/Harden - KD for now

Remove 8 + above completely from the list, they're not worth getting mentioned. Otherwise, a good list. Time to start removing the fat.

[scrabbarista]

As of the afternoon of February 17th, with movement since the afternoon of February 9th.

----------------------------------------------------

1. 22.5 - Jokic, DEN
2. 19.1 - Leonard, LAC
3. 18.5 - Embiid, PHI +1
4. 18.4 - James, LAL -1
5. 17.3 - Gobert, UTA +2

6. 16.5 - Lillard, POR (n/a)
7. 16.3 - Antetokounmpo, MIL +2
8. 16.2 - Conley, UTA -3
9. 14.6 - Curry, GSW (n/a)
10. 14.2 - Doncic, DAL (n/a)

-----------------------------------------------------

Since the last post, DEN has gone 3-1. Jokic has averaged 25/10/9 (just 2.5 TO's) on 74% TS% over that span. He also continues to be the only player in the top ten in PPG, RPG, APG, and SPG (not to mention, overall minutes). DEN has been winning nearly all of his minutes for a while now, and his +/- numbers are starting to climb. He's also crushing the rest of the league in nearly every advanced stat, as other posters have mentioned. To summarize: LeBron has the Award locked up ( ).

George and Davis drop just out of the top ten, as their teams win while they sit.

The BKN trio completes the top fifteen, coming in at 13th, 14th, and 15th, which is kind of cool.

Giannis continues to climb despite the team not winning. Antetokounmpo is averaging 28/12/6/2/2/3 on .57/.32/.76 splits over his last eight games, while playing an unusual (for him) 35 minutes per game.

As predicted two weeks ago, Conley continues to drop - now five spots in the last two iterations - showing that the formula is continuing to normalize. In particular, the formula is starting to distribute the credit to other Jazz players (like Gobert), as the team has barely missed a beat while Conley has sat.

Lillard, Curry, and Doncic enter the top ten, with truly MVP-level play coming from Lillard and Doncic, in particular.