bisme37 wrote:There was an MVP discussion on NBA Today just now. Perk's top 5 is pretty silly imo. But they bickered about it and everyone has Tatum at #1 except Richard Jefferson who has Giannis. Curry and Jokic were not mentioned by any of them.
Ticks a lot of the right narrative boxes I think:
- Scores a lot of points
- Very efficient at scoring
- Team is winning a lot of games - currently the most games
- Team plays much better when he's in the game than when he's out
- Has played in most of the team's games so far
- Hasn't won MVP before (no voter vatigue) - most of the other contenders besides Luka have already won at least once, and some more than once
- History of making all-NBA team and having deep playoff runs, so he's not coming out of nowhere as a fringe candidate
There are some things working against him. Luka, Giannis, and Curry all have larger raw counting stats right now. Curry, Luka, and Jokic beat him out on certain advanced metrics early in the season. Luka and Jokic in particular and to a lesser extent Giannis and Curry will get some credit for carrying their teams, while Tatum will get a bit of a ding because the team is so deep that they're good even when Tatum's off the court. Jokic and Curry have insane scoring efficiency. Guess maybe you could throw KD in there if the Nets actually get good as a guy who is carrying his team and has really insane scoring efficiency too. And of course, this REALLY hinges on the Celtics being a top seed, which isn't guaranteed to stay true through the end of the season.
I think I would have Tatum as the favorite right now, but not an odds-on favorite over the field.
