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

[hugepatsfan]

Obviously not a candidate to actually win it, but how high in the voting could Jaylen Brown realistically finish? He’s currently at 29/6/5 with a on a team that’s outperforming expectations as the 3 seed in the East. Does he have a shot at finishing top 5? Keep in mind that Welby/Giannis might miss the 65 game cut off. His counting stats and efficiency are reasonably competitive with and in some cases better than most other candidates in the poll and his “narrative” argument is pretty strong right now.

Like I said, not a candidate to win it but a top 5 mvp finish would really be a tremendous and somewhat validating achievement for him so curious if anyone thinks he’s got a shot at it.

[Infinite Llamas]

Obviously not a candidate to actually win it, but how high in the voting could Jaylen Brown realistically finish? He’s currently at 29/6/5 with a on a team that’s outperforming expectations as the 3 seed in the East. Does he have a shot at finishing top 5? Keep in mind that Welby/Giannis might miss the 65 game cut off. His counting stats and efficiency are reasonably competitive with and in some cases better than most other candidates in the poll and his “narrative” argument is pretty strong right now.

Like I said, not a candidate to win it but a top 5 mvp finish would really be a tremendous and somewhat validating achievement for him so curious if anyone thinks he’s got a shot at it.

If Boston gets 1-2 seed I think he will be a lock for top-5.
Jokic/SGA/Luka are the locks right now. Couple spots open for grabs.

[Cubbies2120]

I didn't think that Luka could have a better year than his last full year in Dallas with 33/9/9. But he's on pace for it now.

Thank you Nico!

If Luka were able to hold these averages, and I doubt that he can, I think it would be the best (PPG + RPG + APG) NBA season since Kareem in 1972.

KAJ 1972
34.8/16.6/4.6
56.0 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Luka 2026 so far*
35.0/9.2/9.1
53.3 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Luka 2024
33.9/9.2/9.8
52.9 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Russ 2017
31.6/10.7/10.4
52.7 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Jokic 2025
29.6/12.7/10.2
52.5 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Jokic 2026*
29.2/12.3/11.0
52.5 (PPG + RPG + APG)

Lebron will be in and out of the lineup all year due to being an old man so that leaves a lot of usage there for Luka. I think what Luka is doing is very sustainable with the likely hood of his scoring even increasing or his assists depending on what direction he wants to attack teams as the season goes on. Looking like its shaping up to be the best season of his career thus far.

Problem for Luka is, it's SGA and Jokic's best season of their careers thus far too...

Both Jokic and SGA are putting up:
- Best personal stats
- Best team record to start season

Luka is a distant third in the MVP voting unless the voters want to cast some pity votes.

[hagredionis]

Problem for Luka is, it's SGA and Jokic's best season of their careers thus far too...

Both Jokic and SGA are putting up:
- Best personal stats
- Best team record to start season

Luka is a distant third in the MVP voting unless the voters want to cast some pity votes.

That's of course not true. First of all the MVP award is not "the best personal stats" award. One has to consider that SGA plays on a stacked team which is crushing their opponents by 30 points margin without him. Jokic has guys Gordon and Murray who are able to score 50 points this year plus his defense has gotten worse. Meanwhile the Lakers under Luka's leadership are now in second something that nobody expected given the roster. Before the season people were even going on whois going to have more success the Lakers or the Clippers but Luka managed to drag the Lakers into second.

[Cubbies2120]

Problem for Luka is, it's SGA and Jokic's best season of their careers thus far too...

Both Jokic and SGA are putting up:
- Best personal stats
- Best team record to start season

Luka is a distant third in the MVP voting unless the voters want to cast some pity votes.

That's of course not true. First of all the MVP award is not "the best personal stats" award. One has to consider that SGA plays on a stacked team which is crushing their opponents by 30 points margin without him. Jokic has guys Gordon and Murray who are able to score 50 points this year plus his defense has gotten worse. Meanwhile the Lakers under Luka's leadership are now in second something that nobody expected given the roster. Before the season people were even going on whois going to have more success the Lakers or the Clippers but Luka managed to drag the Lakers into second.

Gordon, their best defender, and Braun have been out for half the season.

Luka has missed 6 games so far this season and the Lakers win-rate without him would have them the #3 seed in the East.

He's only allowed to even miss 9 more games I believe...troublesome for an injury prone player like Luka.

Also important to note that Nuggets and Lakers have exactly the same record, and because:
Nuggets vs. Lakers H2H is 0-0
Lakers division is trash so they're division leaders (vs Nuggets sharing division with OKC)

This is the only reason Lakers are temporarily #2...now factor in that Luka missed 6 of those games...not sure we'd give him credit for 'dragging them into second'. AR15 should get that credit tbh...

[hagredionis]

Problem for Luka is, it's SGA and Jokic's best season of their careers thus far too...

Both Jokic and SGA are putting up:
- Best personal stats
- Best team record to start season

Luka is a distant third in the MVP voting unless the voters want to cast some pity votes.

That's of course not true. First of all the MVP award is not "the best personal stats" award. One has to consider that SGA plays on a stacked team which is crushing their opponents by 30 points margin without him. Jokic has guys Gordon and Murray who are able to score 50 points this year plus his defense has gotten worse. Meanwhile the Lakers under Luka's leadership are now in second something that nobody expected given the roster. Before the season people were even going on whois going to have more success the Lakers or the Clippers but Luka managed to drag the Lakers into second.

Gordon, their best defender, and Braun have been out for half the season.

Luka has missed 6 games so far this season and the Lakers win-rate without him would have them the #3 seed in the East.

He's only allowed to even miss 9 more games I believe...troublesome for an injury prone player like Luka.

Lebron missed 16 games, Gordon missed 10 games. Btw how many of those 6 games that Luka missed were against +.500 teams?

[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.

[Ron Swanson]

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...

[Cubbies2120]

That's of course not true. First of all the MVP award is not "the best personal stats" award. One has to consider that SGA plays on a stacked team which is crushing their opponents by 30 points margin without him. Jokic has guys Gordon and Murray who are able to score 50 points this year plus his defense has gotten worse. Meanwhile the Lakers under Luka's leadership are now in second something that nobody expected given the roster. Before the season people were even going on whois going to have more success the Lakers or the Clippers but Luka managed to drag the Lakers into second.

Gordon, their best defender, and Braun have been out for half the season.

Luka has missed 6 games so far this season and the Lakers win-rate without him would have them the #3 seed in the East.

He's only allowed to even miss 9 more games I believe...troublesome for an injury prone player like Luka.

Lebron missed 16 games, Gordon missed 10 games. Btw how many of those 6 games that Luka missed were against +.500 teams?

Hang on, are we comparing LeBron missing games to Gordon missing games? Didn't you just use Gordon's impact (50+ points this year!) to detract from Jokic, therefore Gordon's impact >>> LeBron's impact?

Pick - is Gordon a very impactful player or not?

Also to answer your question, half the games he missed were against .600 or better teams...not even .500. Team is 2-1 in those games.

[hagredionis]

Gordon, their best defender, and Braun have been out for half the season.

Luka has missed 6 games so far this season and the Lakers win-rate without him would have them the #3 seed in the East.

He's only allowed to even miss 9 more games I believe...troublesome for an injury prone player like Luka.

Lebron missed 16 games, Gordon missed 10 games. Btw how many of those 6 games that Luka missed were against +.500 teams?

Hang on, are we comparing LeBron missing games to Gordon missing games? Didn't you just use Gordon's impact (50+ points this year!) to detract from Jokic, therefore Gordon's impact >>> LeBron's impact?

Pick - is Gordon a very impactful player or not?

Also to answer your question, half the games he missed were against .600 or better teams...not even .500. Team is 2-1 in those games.

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.

[Doctor MJ]

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 first off, the use of the term "stan" here is obviously not helpful for a rational conversation, and I'll say for myself: I struggle with whether to respond to Luka supporters specifically because I see Luka supporters as vastly more emotionally invested in this than any other fanbase. None of that is mean to say "Jokic supporters don't act badly", but I just don't think we've really seen anyone since probably Kobe wherein a player's supporters have been so aggressively like this for so long when it comes to MVP advocacy.

To put another way: I think Luka supporters need to understand that to everyone else, allegations of "standom" by them just makes them lose credibility.

Re: "suddenly record and on/off are not our morning star, we need nuance". Well, we always needed nuance, and even just statistically, we've had the nuance for well over a decade now. Raw +/- & on/off are simple first-pass measures that should naturally go along with regression based techniques, and the thing is that there's just never been a time where raw +/- & on/off make Luka look lesser but something like RAPM or EPM or whatever makes him look greater.

In terms of why some of us are more likely to post the first-pass measures, well, they're easier for people who don't use more sophisticated stats to understand, and so long as they are telling us the same story as the sophisticated stuff, that makes them not less but more effective at communicating what's going on to someone who doesn't already know and has an open mind.

Of course this runs is into this issue where people look to respond to +/- & on/off as if they are the entirety of the argument, and then feel like we're moving the goalpost when we bring up regression stats when really it's more a matter of "Okay, if you're ready for more nuance, here's some more nuance."

So then any time people are bringing up Malone's substitution patterns or the like, these is stuff that's adjusted for with regression, and there's nothing in any of that which implies that Jokic (or SGA for that matter) is getting extremely overrated by the simpler metrics. The top guys always look better than Luka by these models to this point, and that's just how it goes.

None of this means it always will, and when it changes, I hope to see this and embrace it without bias, but to this point, I don't see any data along these lines.

Last note: People have brought up in this thread how good Luka's on/off looked toward the end of '23-24, and yes, there is something there! It absolutely is an indicator that Luka can have greater impact with the right collection of fitting talent around him. But:

a) It's not really relevant to '25-26 value add.

b) The idea that Luka is being held back because he keeps being on teams with redundant talent rather than synergistic talent is potentially meaningful, but also leads us to ask why it had been so much easier to find talent Luka will be redundant with than be synergistic with. There is some luck there, but there is also the matter that extremely ball-dominant high usage players are generally going to have redundancy with other players we see as "stars".

And I'll note there that there's no reason at all to expect that other top guys (Jokic, SGA, whoever) won't have some of those same issues - they do, it's just that by impact data it hasn't looked as extreme as Luka to this point, and Luka himself is the most extreme high usage player in NBA history.

[Doctor MJ]

double post

[Doctor MJ]

Various leaderboards with regression stats right now:

From nbarapm:

4yr RAPM:
1. Jokic 9.0
2. Shai 7.7
14. Luka 4.1

3yr RAPM:
1. Jokic 8.7
2. Shai 7.8
7. Luka 4.2

2yr RAPM:
1. Shai 7.0
2. Jokic 6.3
20. Luka 3.3

Time Decay RAPM
1. Jokic 7.5
2. Shai 6.7
23. Luka 3.5

And from Dunks & Threes:

EPM Actual Estimated Wins for '25-26:
1. Shai 6.9
2. Jokic 6.1
10. Luka 3.6

All of this stuff is telling the same story and it cannot be countered by arguments against on/off, because it's these are the next-level tools that account for those arguments.

Doesn't mean that Luka can't improve, nor does it mean he can't already be better in a playoff series, but if you're just looking at regular season impact indicators, there's just a massive gap here between what Jokic & Shai show and what Luka has ever showed.

[Cubbies2120]

Lebron missed 16 games, Gordon missed 10 games. Btw how many of those 6 games that Luka missed were against +.500 teams?

Hang on, are we comparing LeBron missing games to Gordon missing games? Didn't you just use Gordon's impact (50+ points this year!) to detract from Jokic, therefore Gordon's impact >>> LeBron's impact?

Pick - is Gordon a very impactful player or not?

Also to answer your question, half the games he missed were against .600 or better teams...not even .500. Team is 2-1 in those games.

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!

[Mavrelous]

So first off, the use of the term "stan" here is obviously not helpful for a rational conversation, and I'll say for myself: I struggle with whether to respond to Luka supporters specifically because I see Luka supporters as vastly more emotionally invested in this than any other fanbase. None of that is mean to say "Jokic supporters don't act badly", but I just don't think we've really seen anyone since probably Kobe wherein a player's supporters have been so aggressively like this for so long when it comes to MVP advocacy.

To put another way: I think Luka supporters need to understand that to everyone else, allegations of "standom" by them just makes them lose credibility.

You're right, stans is not helpful, it was a harsh word in response to the usual condescending and inflamatory posts, but neither is you painting with broad brush, you are not the rational person talking to irrational people and the sooner you drop the tone, the better this conversation can advance, in fact reading your posts paint a very obvious picture of you lacking understanding of the stats you cite, and you've been doing this from the beginning of the thread, so a look in the mirror would be helpful.
For the rest of your post, I'll address once I get to PC, it won't be easy from a phone.

[Doctor MJ]

So first off, the use of the term "stan" here is obviously not helpful for a rational conversation, and I'll say for myself: I struggle with whether to respond to Luka supporters specifically because I see Luka supporters as vastly more emotionally invested in this than any other fanbase. None of that is mean to say "Jokic supporters don't act badly", but I just don't think we've really seen anyone since probably Kobe wherein a player's supporters have been so aggressively like this for so long when it comes to MVP advocacy.

To put another way: I think Luka supporters need to understand that to everyone else, allegations of "standom" by them just makes them lose credibility.
[\quote]

You're right, stans is not helpful, it was a harsh word in response to the usual condescending and inflamatory posts, but neither is you painting with broad brush, you are not the rational person talking to irrational people and the sooner you drop the tone, the better this conversation can advance, in fact reading your posts paint a very obvious picture of you lacking understanding of the stats you cite, and you've been doing this from the beginning of the thread, so a look in the mirror would be helpful.
For the rest of your post, I'll address once I get to PC, it won't be easy from a phone.

Well, let's first note you cut out the part of my post where I talked about my own struggles with objectivity. I'm not immune to the issue, but be careful not to take me acknowledging my concerns about myself as me being inflammatory. I get that it can be tough when I single out Luka supporters, but that's me literally talking about the issues I've had with Luka supporters going around and calling everyone else "stans". If Luka supporters can't see the singularity of their steadfastness to their guy, well, they should.

As for me not understanding the stats I quote, well, I suppose I await enlightenment from you.

[hagredionis]

Hang on, are we comparing LeBron missing games to Gordon missing games? Didn't you just use Gordon's impact (50+ points this year!) to detract from Jokic, therefore Gordon's impact >>> LeBron's impact?

Pick - is Gordon a very impactful player or not?

Also to answer your question, half the games he missed were against .600 or better teams...not even .500. Team is 2-1 in those games.

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.

[Primedeion]

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 first off, the use of the term "stan" here is obviously not helpful for a rational conversation, and I'll say for myself: I struggle with whether to respond to Luka supporters specifically because I see Luka supporters as vastly more emotionally invested in this than any other fanbase. None of that is mean to say "Jokic supporters don't act badly", but I just don't think we've really seen anyone since probably Kobe wherein a player's supporters have been so aggressively like this for so long when it comes to MVP advocacy.

To put another way: I think Luka supporters need to understand that to everyone else, allegations of "standom" by them just makes them lose credibility.

Re: "suddenly record and on/off are not our morning star, we need nuance". Well, we always needed nuance, and even just statistically, we've had the nuance for well over a decade now. Raw +/- & on/off are simple first-pass measures that should naturally go along with regression based techniques, and the thing is that there's just never been a time where raw +/- & on/off make Luka look lesser but something like RAPM or EPM or whatever makes him look greater.

In terms of why some of us are more likely to post the first-pass measures, well, they're easier for people who don't use more sophisticated stats to understand, and so long as they are telling us the same story as the sophisticated stuff, that makes them not less but more effective at communicating what's going on to someone who doesn't already know and has an open mind.

Of course this runs is into this issue where people look to respond to +/- & on/off as if they are the entirety of the argument, and then feel like we're moving the goalpost when we bring up regression stats when really it's more a matter of "Okay, if you're ready for more nuance, here's some more nuance."

So then any time people are bringing up Malone's substitution patterns or the like, these is stuff that's adjusted for with regression, and there's nothing in any of that which implies that Jokic (or SGA for that matter) is getting extremely overrated by the simpler metrics. The top guys always look better than Luka by these models to this point, and that's just how it goes.

None of this means it always will, and when it changes, I hope to see this and embrace it without bias, but to this point, I don't see any data along these lines.

Last note: People have brought up in this thread how good Luka's on/off looked toward the end of '23-24, and yes, there is something there! It absolutely is an indicator that Luka can have greater impact with the right collection of fitting talent around him. But:

a) It's not really relevant to '25-26 value add.

b) The idea that Luka is being held back because he keeps being on teams with redundant talent rather than synergistic talent is potentially meaningful, but also leads us to ask why it had been so much easier to find talent Luka will be redundant with than be synergistic with. There is some luck there, but there is also the matter that extremely ball-dominant high usage players are generally going to have redundancy with other players we see as "stars".

And I'll note there that there's no reason at all to expect that other top guys (Jokic, SGA, whoever) won't have some of those same issues - they do, it's just that by impact data it hasn't looked as extreme as Luka to this point, and Luka himself is the most extreme high usage player in NBA history.

Bringing up Bryant in a thread that has absolutely nothing to do with him lmao. And your "point" is nonsense. Nobody is more invested than Nash fans in the past and Jokic fans now.

[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.

[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.