FinnTheHuman wrote:donnieme wrote:FinnTheHuman wrote:
Yeah, but somehow the majority of voters always ends up voting for the deserving player, and the deserving player wins. Most of these people don't want to be labeled "corrupt" by voting for the undeserving media darlings.
We'll see if the push for Jokic gains traction in the coming days. If not he'll probably have to finish with a higher record to solidify it. The stuff about deserving candidate is subjective. They always go for the person with a higher record. Harden should have won it in 15 but they gave it to Curry for having the better record, in 2017 Harden had the better record but they decided to ditch their own criteria to give it to Westbrook as an 8th seed for averaging a triple double. Harden was my deserving candidate those two years. I however don't think Lebron is undeserving if the Lakers for example finish significantly higher in the standings (now very unlikely). That's just following the established criteria for 9 of the last 10 MVPs
That's established criteria when 2 players are close statistically. Otherwise Gobert and Mitchell would be candidates number 1 and 2. But Jokic and Lebron are not close statistically, Jokic is leading in 99% of the stats by a hefty margin, be it advanced stats or regular stats. These journalists voting don't want to be clowned for the rest of their careers for following an unfair agenda, even tho you wish they would.
Again:

I just noticed you added that image. Notice Lebron has the x in the one relevant criteria. Team record. Also, no, team record has never been surbodinate to individual stats or used only as a tie breaker. The one instance that shows this is Rose's 2011 MVP. His stats were nowhere close to Lebron's, vastly inferior but he had the top seed.
As long as the player puts up first option numbers he is given consideration.
Jokic will win if the Nuggets maintain a close distance with the Lakers but I had to point out statistical dominance was never the primary criteria. Haden in 15, Lebron in 2011, Kobe in 06 all missed out on MVP despite having superior numbers to the winner. There's a vastly bigger sample of statistical dominance getting snubbed in favour of team record
What season are you actually referring to when you say team record is only used when two players are tied statistically?
edit a post from a different thread regarding this