2016-17 NBA Awards Season: Top 5 Fringe MVP Candidates

With the 2016-17 regular season over, it’s time to review the top candidates for NBA awards season. Here are the top 10 fringe MVP candidates outside of the obvious top-four.

The 2016-17 NBA regular season is over and the 2017 NBA Playoffs are already underway. But even with the postseason getting started, there’s still one thing that needs to be taken care of: NBA awards season!

Though a Golden State Warriors-Cleveland Cavaliers Finals battle seems inevitable for the third straight year, basketball fans were treated to a truly exceptional regular season.

From Russell Westbrook‘s triple-double feat to Kawhi Leonard‘s rise to greatness to a historic, unexpected season from James Harden, there were plenty of awe-inspiring performances and juicy story lines for NBA fans to digest in the MVP debate this season. Unfortunately, that also makes it much harder to decide between all the leading candidates for award season.

The debate over LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden and Russell Westbrook deserves its own in-depth breakdown, but with so many superstars having exemplary seasons, it felt wrong not to give them their due as well. Bearing that in mind, it felt right to cover the five fringe MVP candidates that we’d be talking about if our four frontrunners didn’t exist.

We’ve already covered Coach of the Year candidates, the top 10 for Rookie of the Year, the best Most Improved Player of the Year options, the Sixth Man of the Year frontrunners and a tight Defensive Player of the Year race, so today we’ll be inching our way toward perhaps the greatest MVP race in league history.

Honorable Mentions:  Rudy Gobert, Chris Paul, Draymond Green, Paul Millsap, DeMar DeRozan, Damian Lillard, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, Anthony Davis, Mike Conley