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

[Castle Black]

100% FG

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[DrModesty]

MVP tracker from BBall reference. This is the actual list from the website.

Take it as you will. Hard to see how teams can have multiple MVP candidates.

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They don't. Their percentages are:

Jokic 56.2%
SGA 36%
Luka 5.4%
Reaves 0.8%

Essentially BBall reference has it overwhelmingly as a two horse race.

[Snake3]

MVP tracker from BBall reference. This is the actual list from the website.

Take it as you will. Hard to see how teams can have multiple MVP candidates.

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I think the last time this has happened is with the OKC with KD and Westbrook in 16 with the top 5.

AR and Luka have been balling tho. I wonder if AR can keep it up

[mademan]

Luka's last 5 games:

41 / 6 / 9
37 / 10 / 5
33 / 8 / 11
43 / 13 / 9
35 / 11 / 5

Those are clear MVP numbers right there. Luka is now clearly ahead of Jokic apart from anything else there is now also more team success. Not to mention Luka beat San Antonio with Wemby, Jokic lost against San Antonio without Wemby.

Denver plays better basketball with Jokic on the court than the Lakers do with Luka. Lakers are also 3-1 without Luka. Youre giving credit to Luka over Jokic for things that have nothing to do for either one of them, and the win difference is not nearly big enough to compensate for gulf in their stats/impact. Shai, you can make great arguments for, as he's on a historically great team putting up peak Jordan numbers with peak Steph efficiency. No one else has an argument over Jokic.

The 3-1 w/o Luka are:
Kings
Ant-less Eolves on a buzzer beater
Blazers where no one played, fluke game, Nuggets had these games along the years, no one ducked Jokic points for this.

Are we doing rivisionist history now and claiming Lakers supporting cast is better than the Nuggets or are we still on the asinine on/off argument?

Not at all. Lakers and Nuggets supporting cast is very similar, and id probably give the edge to the Lakers. That's crazy to you?

[Mavrelous]

Denver plays better basketball with Jokic on the court than the Lakers do with Luka. Lakers are also 3-1 without Luka. Youre giving credit to Luka over Jokic for things that have nothing to do for either one of them, and the win difference is not nearly big enough to compensate for gulf in their stats/impact. Shai, you can make great arguments for, as he's on a historically great team putting up peak Jordan numbers with peak Steph efficiency. No one else has an argument over Jokic.

The 3-1 w/o Luka are:
Kings
Ant-less Eolves on a buzzer beater
Blazers where no one played, fluke game, Nuggets had these games along the years, no one ducked Jokic points for this.

Are we doing rivisionist history now and claiming Lakers supporting cast is better than the Nuggets or are we still on the asinine on/off argument?

Not at all. Lakers and Nuggets supporting cast is very similar, and id probably give the edge to the Lakers. That's crazy to you?

Yes.
Lakers are a flawed team with 0 defenders on the team who are starter quality, very similar to Luka's early Mavs teams, this is the reason their pre season projections have been very low.

[mademan]

The 3-1 w/o Luka are:
Kings
Ant-less Eolves on a buzzer beater
Blazers where no one played, fluke game, Nuggets had these games along the years, no one ducked Jokic points for this.

Are we doing rivisionist history now and claiming Lakers supporting cast is better than the Nuggets or are we still on the asinine on/off argument?

Not at all. Lakers and Nuggets supporting cast is very similar, and id probably give the edge to the Lakers. That's crazy to you?

Yes.
Lakers are a flawed team with 0 defenders on the team who are starter quality, very similar to Luka's early Mavs teams, this is the reason their pre season projections have been very low.

And Nuggets arent flawed? They have like 5 good players, 2 of which are injured for the next several weeks. Lakers have the better 2nd player (or at least the guy playing decently better currently).

I see nothing crazy about the idea that Luka has the better cast. I wouldnt put my chest behind the argument, but its not crazy at all. We have a decent body of work for the Lakers sans Luka AND AD, going back to a few weeks before the Luka trade, and JJ has had the team playing great ball no matter who's been out there. You dont want to credit the talent? OK. Then call it coaching, or structure or whatever, but the Lakers play great without Luka or without Lebron or without AD

[Mavrelous]

Not at all. Lakers and Nuggets supporting cast is very similar, and id probably give the edge to the Lakers. That's crazy to you?

Yes.
Lakers are a flawed team with 0 defenders on the team who are starter quality, very similar to Luka's early Mavs teams, this is the reason their pre season projections have been very low.

And Nuggets arent flawed? They have like 5 good players, 2 of which are injured for the next several weeks. Lakers have the better 2nd player (or at least the guy playing decently better currently).

I see nothing crazy about the idea that Luka has the better cast. I wouldnt put my chest behind the argument, but its not crazy at all. We have a decent body of work for the Lakers sans Luka AND AD, going back to a few weeks before the Luka trade, and JJ has had the team playing great ball no matter who's been out there.

Are we comparring the teams healthy or injured?
Because we started from you comparing the full season, and Gordon just went down while the LeBron missed all of the season almost.
Funny you take small snapshot of the Lakers before the trade, when the player who was most responsible for the turnaround is no longer there (DFS), and ignore 3 full years of lottery, play in, play in, in both years they made the PO they were swept by the Nuggets.

[mademan]

Yes.
Lakers are a flawed team with 0 defenders on the team who are starter quality, very similar to Luka's early Mavs teams, this is the reason their pre season projections have been very low.

And Nuggets arent flawed? They have like 5 good players, 2 of which are injured for the next several weeks. Lakers have the better 2nd player (or at least the guy playing decently better currently).

I see nothing crazy about the idea that Luka has the better cast. I wouldnt put my chest behind the argument, but its not crazy at all. We have a decent body of work for the Lakers sans Luka AND AD, going back to a few weeks before the Luka trade, and JJ has had the team playing great ball no matter who's been out there.

Are we comparring the teams healthy or injured?
Because we started from you comparing the full season, and Gordon just went down while the LeBron missed all of the season almost.
Funny you take small snapshot of the Lakers before the trade, when the player who was most responsible for the turnaround is no longer there (DFS), and ignore 3 full years of lottery, play in, play in, in both years they made the PO they were swept by the Nuggets.

Its not snap shots. Ive seen the Lakers without AD and no C, ive seen them without Luka, ive seen them without Lebron, and no matter who's out there, they look good. Again, call it coaching if you want, but the Lakers play well as long as they have 5 bodies.

Healthy or not, i see no real difference between LA and Denver's cast. LA has the better 2 and 3, Nuggets better 4-5 but Lakers bench is still better (or the same) as the Nuggets get 15 minutes of JV and the rest are minimum players. I dont know how anyone can confidently take Nuggets cast over the Lakers

[Mavrelous]

Another fallacy of the on/off cult that keeps getting thrown, "MVP is a regular season award".
True, it is, but also, PO are a great evaluator for assumptions you made in RS and lead you to wrong conclusions for you to fix, Luka's success in the PO is very important for MVP discussion, not because the games are part of sample, but because what happened in previous yewrs should make you adjust your estimation and evals.

[Mavrelous]

And Nuggets arent flawed? They have like 5 good players, 2 of which are injured for the next several weeks. Lakers have the better 2nd player (or at least the guy playing decently better currently).

I see nothing crazy about the idea that Luka has the better cast. I wouldnt put my chest behind the argument, but its not crazy at all. We have a decent body of work for the Lakers sans Luka AND AD, going back to a few weeks before the Luka trade, and JJ has had the team playing great ball no matter who's been out there.

Are we comparring the teams healthy or injured?
Because we started from you comparing the full season, and Gordon just went down while the LeBron missed all of the season almost.
Funny you take small snapshot of the Lakers before the trade, when the player who was most responsible for the turnaround is no longer there (DFS), and ignore 3 full years of lottery, play in, play in, in both years they made the PO they were swept by the Nuggets.

Its not snap shots. Ive seen the Lakers without AD and no C, ive seen them without Luka, ive seen them without Lebron, and no matter who's out there, they look good. Again, call it coaching if you want, but the Lakers play well as long as they have 5 bodies.

Healthy or not, i see no real difference between LA and Denver's cast. LA has the better 2 and 3, Nuggets better 4-5 but Lakers bench is still better (or the same) as the Nuggets get 15 minutes of JV and the rest are minimum players. I dont know how anyone can confidently take Nuggets cast over the Lakers

It is a snapshot, you took a team that hasn't been top 6 or 50 wins for 3 seasons, and derived the quality from a small snapshot.

[scrabbarista]

Jokic with 3.71 points per FGA tonight to go with a Sombor Double.

[scrabbarista]

MVP tracker from BBall reference. This is the actual list from the website.

Take it as you will. Hard to see how teams can have multiple MVP candidates.

Read on Twitter

They don't. Their percentages are:

Jokic 56.2%
SGA 36%
Luka 5.4%
Reaves 0.8%

Essentially BBall reference has it overwhelmingly as a two horse race.

Correct.

The reason multiple players per team show up is because

a) team record is a huge factor

b) i'm not sure how best to phrase/explain this, but it's not a ballot of 1-10, but rather, the players whose stat profiles most resemble past #1's (i.e., past winners).

Also worth noting that Luka and Giannis are not on pace to play 65 games, emphasizing again how much it truly is a 2-player race.

Lastly, Jokic at 56% is pretty much the lowest he's been all season, and he will be higher tomorrow, after DEN beat PHO and OKC didn't play tonight.

[Mrakar]

Casual Sombor-Double for Jok. Which superstar in history was taking less shots then Jokic?

PPG
Luka 35.1
SGA 32.9
Jokic 29.1

...but...


Jokic is now 7th in PPG while being 28th in field goal attempts and 19th in FTA(6.9???)
Luka is first in FGA and FTA(12.9!!!!).
SGA is is 8th in FGA and 3rd in FTA(10.1!).

Even Murray is taking more shots then him.

[Bob8]

Casual Sombor-Double for Jok. Which superstar in history was taking less shots then Jokic?

PPG
Luka 35.1
SGA 32.9
Jokic 29.1

...but...


Jokic is now 7th in PPG while being 28th in field goal attempts and 19th in FTA(6.9???)
Luka is first in FGA and FTA(12.9!!!!).
SGA is is 8th in FGA and 3rd in FTA(10.1!).

Even Murray is taking more shots then him.

Are you telling us that C has better efficiency than guards?

[MMyhre]

Oh my goodness, you think that's a long post? On the short side for me.

Re: "you not liking Luka showed in your last sentence." For context, my last sentence was:

"But we're still not quite there, and while there's no denying he's played like an MVP candidate in his career, the fact remains he's never been the kind of top tier contender that warrants the amount of conversation (greater than Shai) he gets."

What is it about this sentence that makes you think it could only be caused by the emotion of a hater?

Re: never been top tier (MVP) contender...made the finals 2 years ago! This is a thread about MVP which is a regular season award.

Let me put it like this: Typically the MVP debate is a 2-man thing. The talking heads are debating between those two guys, and any of them chiming in for a 3rd guy is doing so recognizing that the guy he's mentioning can't win. We then go into the post-season awaiting the voting results knowing that only 2 guys can win.

Luka's never been one of those two guys. Period.

Some might want to debate about my 2 man threshold, but the thing is, the people here arguing for Luka don't think he should have been only 3rd. They say flat out he should have won MVP.

Now, I'm not trying to say that people don't get to have iconoclastic opinions on this stuff - they absolutely do.

But on a meta level, there's the question of why Luka specifically has such passionate advocacy on her in MVP threads year after year when he doesn't get that support from the actual voters.

Now, some will say the reason is because the voters are just wrong, and they get to believe that, but doesn't really explain why it is the voters don't seem to "get" Luka's candidacy like they "should".

I'd say that those supporting Luka would generally say that the voters over-index on team W-L, which is another way of saying they penalize Luka for having a bad supporting cast.

For those of us who've been at this a very long time and are familiar with the analytics, we tend to look at impact-related stats. While there's no way to completely separate the player's raw goodness from the interactive effects that drive impact, what we do know is that if someone is having sufficient on-off signals, they can overcome that disadvantage. The classic example there was Kevin Garnett. The problem for Luka there is that all that data has favored Jokic & Shai over him the last few years.

What's left after that?

Well, as noted, Luka supporters love to bring up the playoffs, and I think that's great move for many threads... but why do they bring it up in a regular season MVP conversation? Pretty clearly because it tells a narrative they can fit in with their beliefs better than just looking at regular season data. The strangeness then is about why they're so insisted on Luka's regular season MVP candidacy when they can't focus just on his regular season play.

And there I'd say the answer is that it's not really about who happens to be the most valuable player in this regular season, but the status they associated with the MVP award that they really want Luka to be anointed with, because they are posting with their fan heart on their sleeve.

Of course all major player's have emotionally driven fans and I don't want to talk as if having emotions here is some kind of a sin.

But particularly potent fandoms are noteworthy, and I'd say that the Luka fandom has been arguably the most significant to emerge in the 2020s. That might be going to far because of Jokic, but on a certain level the Jokic fandom is kinda boring. How could a guy be Top 2 in MVP voting 5 years in a row (before this one) while winning it 3 times and leading his team to a title not have a fandom like this?

The Luka fandom is so interesting because he has that level of passionate loyalty without any of that, while his draftmate doesn't have that fandom despite being an MVP and Finals MVP winner. THAT is interesting.

And that's what I was speaking to above.

One last thing: When you mention LeBron/Jordan/Shaq/Hakeem, you're clearly implying that I'm writing Luka's future success off because of what he hasn't yet done.

I want to be clear that I'm always trying NOT to do that generally, and I've been explicit about this for years about Luka. I generally avoid making actual predictions, both because of what I know I don't know, and because I don't want to get too focused on binary results. I try to focus on process.

So I don't know what Luka's future holds. It's always possible that a player takes a leap because of this skill or that focus in the context to come, and Luka's specifically someone we've all been looking forward to seeing that proverbial final form based on leaps just like that. Should we reach the 2026 off-season with the consensus that Luka has taken the title belt as the best player in the world, this won't be some shocking thing only the zealots foresaw, but something we've all been anticipating since 2020. It's just that that duration of anticipation tends to lead to a dissipation of interest, and that's not what we're seeing with the Luka conversation. And that, is interesting.

Luka has more fans than SGA because his playstyle is more spectacular and he's a much better passer and playmaker. Also going on about Luka not winning a ring is kind of weird. Luka had to play in the finals against the 1st seed Boston which was a historically good team. Meanwhile SGA needed 7 games to win the finals against the 4th seen Indiana and managed to do so only after Indiana's best player Haliburton was injured in game seven.

It's certainly not only the playstyle, there is a racial bias at play here as well. As well as him being hyped up very early with his faster rise to a higher level, which would gather a big fanbase faster, like we see building with Wemby, while SGA has had a slower ascent to the top.

As for your downplay of the Pacers, that was a great team, just calling them a mere 4th seed is not doing their gameplay justice.

[MMyhre]

MVP tracker from BBall reference. This is the actual list from the website.

Take it as you will. Hard to see how teams can have multiple MVP candidates.

Read on Twitter

When you see I-Hart over Giannis you should probably not take that list as a good source of credibility. I love I-Hart, and he is underrated, but his on-off is negative -0.4. On a 19-1 team. Shai is +11.4 and that is with the defensive on/off being terrible at the start of the season, which has slowly become better lately. No one other than SGA on OKC should be mentioned in an MVP discussion at all. Chet had a period where you were like, maybe, and then he dropped 5 points in a game, and has 5 other games with 12pts or less and you realize he is still too inconsistent in his performances.

[Archx]

Luka is first in FGA and FTA(12.9!!!!).
SGA is is 8th in FGA and 3rd in FTA(10.1!).

It's interesting when you look at the totals.

SGA has 201 Total FTA and made 179 of them (Leads the NBA) - (10.1 FTA)
Luka has 172 Total FTA and made 138 of them (4th in the NBA) - (12.3 FTA)

Obviously if you add those averages to games played, totals would also look differently, but still feels like SGA is slowly ramping up his FTA/averages.

[Optms]

Denver plays better basketball with Jokic on the court than the Lakers do with Luka. Lakers are also 3-1 without Luka. Youre giving credit to Luka over Jokic for things that have nothing to do for either one of them, and the win difference is not nearly big enough to compensate for gulf in their stats/impact. Shai, you can make great arguments for, as he's on a historically great team putting up peak Jordan numbers with peak Steph efficiency. No one else has an argument over Jokic.

The 3-1 w/o Luka are:
Kings
Ant-less Eolves on a buzzer beater
Blazers where no one played, fluke game, Nuggets had these games along the years, no one ducked Jokic points for this.

Are we doing rivisionist history now and claiming Lakers supporting cast is better than the Nuggets or are we still on the asinine on/off argument?

Not at all. Lakers and Nuggets supporting cast is very similar, and id probably give the edge to the Lakers. That's crazy to you?

That's interesting how the narrative flips. Before the season you probably had the Nuggets as the higher seed, along with literally everyone else, and the Lakers as a borderline play-in team.

But now, even with injuries, Luka has the Lakers 2nd only behind the Thunder and suddenly the Lakers cast is better around Luka. How convenient.

[1993Playoffs]

Oh my goodness, you think that's a long post? On the short side for me.

Re: "you not liking Luka showed in your last sentence." For context, my last sentence was:

"But we're still not quite there, and while there's no denying he's played like an MVP candidate in his career, the fact remains he's never been the kind of top tier contender that warrants the amount of conversation (greater than Shai) he gets."

What is it about this sentence that makes you think it could only be caused by the emotion of a hater?

Re: never been top tier (MVP) contender...made the finals 2 years ago! This is a thread about MVP which is a regular season award.

Let me put it like this: Typically the MVP debate is a 2-man thing. The talking heads are debating between those two guys, and any of them chiming in for a 3rd guy is doing so recognizing that the guy he's mentioning can't win. We then go into the post-season awaiting the voting results knowing that only 2 guys can win.

Luka's never been one of those two guys. Period.

Some might want to debate about my 2 man threshold, but the thing is, the people here arguing for Luka don't think he should have been only 3rd. They say flat out he should have won MVP.

Now, I'm not trying to say that people don't get to have iconoclastic opinions on this stuff - they absolutely do.

But on a meta level, there's the question of why Luka specifically has such passionate advocacy on her in MVP threads year after year when he doesn't get that support from the actual voters.

Now, some will say the reason is because the voters are just wrong, and they get to believe that, but doesn't really explain why it is the voters don't seem to "get" Luka's candidacy like they "should".

I'd say that those supporting Luka would generally say that the voters over-index on team W-L, which is another way of saying they penalize Luka for having a bad supporting cast.

For those of us who've been at this a very long time and are familiar with the analytics, we tend to look at impact-related stats. While there's no way to completely separate the player's raw goodness from the interactive effects that drive impact, what we do know is that if someone is having sufficient on-off signals, they can overcome that disadvantage. The classic example there was Kevin Garnett. The problem for Luka there is that all that data has favored Jokic & Shai over him the last few years.

What's left after that?

Well, as noted, Luka supporters love to bring up the playoffs, and I think that's great move for many threads... but why do they bring it up in a regular season MVP conversation? Pretty clearly because it tells a narrative they can fit in with their beliefs better than just looking at regular season data. The strangeness then is about why they're so insisted on Luka's regular season MVP candidacy when they can't focus just on his regular season play.

And there I'd say the answer is that it's not really about who happens to be the most valuable player in this regular season, but the status they associated with the MVP award that they really want Luka to be anointed with, because they are posting with their fan heart on their sleeve.

Of course all major player's have emotionally driven fans and I don't want to talk as if having emotions here is some kind of a sin.

But particularly potent fandoms are noteworthy, and I'd say that the Luka fandom has been arguably the most significant to emerge in the 2020s. That might be going to far because of Jokic, but on a certain level the Jokic fandom is kinda boring. How could a guy be Top 2 in MVP voting 5 years in a row (before this one) while winning it 3 times and leading his team to a title not have a fandom like this?

The Luka fandom is so interesting because he has that level of passionate loyalty without any of that, while his draftmate doesn't have that fandom despite being an MVP and Finals MVP winner. THAT is interesting.

And that's what I was speaking to above.

One last thing: When you mention LeBron/Jordan/Shaq/Hakeem, you're clearly implying that I'm writing Luka's future success off because of what he hasn't yet done.

I want to be clear that I'm always trying NOT to do that generally, and I've been explicit about this for years about Luka. I generally avoid making actual predictions, both because of what I know I don't know, and because I don't want to get too focused on binary results. I try to focus on process.

So I don't know what Luka's future holds. It's always possible that a player takes a leap because of this skill or that focus in the context to come, and Luka's specifically someone we've all been looking forward to seeing that proverbial final form based on leaps just like that. Should we reach the 2026 off-season with the consensus that Luka has taken the title belt as the best player in the world, this won't be some shocking thing only the zealots foresaw, but something we've all been anticipating since 2020. It's just that that duration of anticipation tends to lead to a dissipation of interest, and that's not what we're seeing with the Luka conversation. And that, is interesting.

Luka has more fans than SGA because his playstyle is more spectacular and he's a much better passer and playmaker. Also going on about Luka not winning a ring is kind of weird. Luka had to play in the finals against the 1st seed Boston which was a historically good team. Meanwhile SGA needed 7 games to win the finals against the 4th seen Indiana and managed to do so only after Indiana's best player Haliburton was injured in game seven.

And the Celtics were hunting Luka in the finals. And SGA actually won

[Jamaaliver]

Giannis defense this year has been inconsistent at best.

And Jokic's defense has been consistently...mediocre.

It's actually Giannis whose defense has been consistently mediocre over the past 3 seasons (including this season).

While Jokic has been improving on that end over the past 3 seasons. It is pretty evident when you watch them play.

Bruh...

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