By Justin Stulpe
The National Basketball Association has been around since 1946, drawing in the best talent from across the world for the better part of seven decades. The most impressive individual feat a player can achieve is regular season most valuable player, the trophy for the who was deemed to be the most impactful and valuable player in the league for a given season.
The voting process for this award has changed drastically since it was first introduced in 1956, when it was originally voted on by the players themselves. It has since transitioned to a panel of highly respected and decorated sportswriters and broadcasters casting a ballot to hand out the award. The transition has caused some points of contention throughout the last 45 years, with certain MVP award winners being labeled as undeserving for different reasons.
A clear divide has been established between certain panel voters when it comes to handing out this prestigious award. Back in the early MVP voting days, the award more likely than not went to the best player on the best team in the league, which, in theory, sounds like a good way to determine who receives. However, in more recent years, an analytical movement has changed that perception on how the award should be given out, pivoting towards a more focused meaning to the word “value,” with advanced stats displaying that a player can be the most impactful player on the court at all times while his team success is lackluster compared to their gaudy raw numbers.
With this in mind, the current NBA regular season is experiencing this sort of impasse of how people feel that MVP awards should be handed out. The two runaway MVP favorites epitomize this difference in ideology on how to hand out the award perfectly and have resulted in much debate on the topic of how to truly hand out an award named the most valuable player.
Firstly, is the odds-on favorite to take home the award, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is dominating on both offense and defense to help lead the Thunder to the best record in the league and possibly one of the best regular season teams of all-time. He averaged 32.8 points per game, the most in the NBA, to go along with five rebounds and over six assists a game. Simply put, Gilgeous-Alexander gets buckets, as he leads the league in 20, 30, 40 and 50-point games this year while also being an impactful defender every night. Gilgeous-Alexander is having an all-time scoring season with incredible efficiency on the best team in the league, so that means he should be the runaway favorite to win MVP, right?
It would take an almost unheard-of individual season performance to dethrone Gilgeous-Alexander from winning his first MVP, but that is exactly what Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić has done all season. Jokić has won three of the last four MVP awards himself, but the obscene fact is that he is almost definitely having his best season of his career this year, avering a 29.6 point per game triple-double on ludicrous efficiency, while also posting a 61-point triple-double on Apr. 1 in a historic showing of skill. He also was the first player to record a 30-20-20 triple-double in NBA history, while also easily being the most impactful player on the court everytime he suits up backed up by advanced stats.
Both of these players are having all-time great individual seasons and are the reason why voters for this award will have to rewrite history in giving out the award this season.
The argument for either player comes down to a few main points as to why they should take home MVP. Both have extreme merit that makes this arguably the greatest MVP race in recent times.
First, Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP case lies within his raw stats and team success, as he is putting up a top 30 scoring season in NBA history, leads the league in scoring and would even lead the league in total points if he only played three quarters each game. This ridiculous fact, in addition to the fact that the Thunder ended the regular season with the fifth-most wins by a team in a single-season in history, drives home how scoring and all-around play is leading to wins and success at an unprecedented level. Along with the stats and team success, he is also on the right side of history when it comes to narratives and storylines winning an MVP award, as he has not won the award before and that has been a large part in prior voting cycles.
The reluctance to give an award to the same player year after year is known as “voter fatigue” and has plagued some of the greatest players to ever play. Michael Jordan has five MVP awards in his career and he certainly was the best player on the planet for more than five years in his prime, the same way LeBron James has only four MVPs when he was the best player in the world for the better part of a decade. It goes to show that the “best player” or even “most valuable” player doesn’t always get the award due to external factors outside of their control, such as winning the award too many times or simply being passed up for someone else who would bring fresh blood to the award to display some parody in determining the best player.
This idea of voter fatigue is certainly one of the main reasons as to why Jokić is not the overwhelming favorite to win the award for the fourth time in five seasons. Jokić has done some heavy lifting into changing MVP voters’ minds about viewing advanced stats as an important cog into voting for the award rather than just looking at the best player on the best team in the league, and to view it more as the guy who is dragging a mediocre team to a great record.
Rather than why Jokić is on the wrong side of history in winning an ultra-rare fourth MVP in just a five-year span, he could be an outlier in winning the MVP this year and overcome the odds that Jordan and James suffered from in the past. As mentioned previously, Jokić is posting his best individual season in terms of stats, meaning that if he does not win the award this year at the peak of his powers, what image would be portrayed about the award itself. Would the voters really reward Jokić for posting great numbers but not do it when he is having his best season? Would the voters not give a three-time MVP the award when he most deserves it, how does that make any sense? It would almost suggest that the definitive best player in the league right now has gotten better since his recent dominance over the award and it wouldn’t be enough to win the trophy this year.
No matter what way this topic is approached, history and precedence will be made when the winner of the MVP award is announced for the 2024-2025 NBA season. Fans of the NBA are witnessing two of the greatest individual seasons in the history of the sport in the same year in completely different ways, with Gilgeous-Alexander dominating the traditional team success and raw scoring numbers side, while Jokić is putting on a show on how the best player in the world can become even better than his previous MVP form and lift a middling team to one on the moist formidable in the league on out of this world efficiency.
The only question left is who is going to come away with the MVP for this historic season and it will certainly bring up immense amounts of talking points no matter which way the voters choose to hand out the award.
Who will buck the trend, the upstart league-leading scorer on the best team in the league who has the trends and narrative in his favor to take home his first MVP, or the best player in the world who is averaging a near 30-point triple-double on record efficiency who has gotten better from his previous three times winning the award?
Whoever it is, history will be made regardless.
