The race for the 2016-17 NBA MVP award is nearing its conclusion. Can the two-time defending award-winner catch up in time?
The race for the 2016-17 NBA MVP award is coming to an end. There are still games to be played, but the herd of candidates is thinning and the voters are beginning to make final decisions on who deserves the prestigious honor.
In this week’s edition of the NBA Player Power Rankings, the question beckons: who is winning MVP and who might join them on the All-NBA teams?
With the exception of choosing an MVP frontrunner, the most difficult aspect of compiling this week’s Player Power Rankings was excluding good players on bad teams. That included Karl-Anthony Towns, who has been unstoppable for months on end.
The reality is: Towns is getting big numbers on a bad team, while the player who replaced him has been producing well on a team that’s winning.
Towns will undoubtedly return to the Player Power Rankings, but the criteria is becoming more strict. Winning tends to take precedence when comparing two legitimately equal candidates, most notably when one isn’t in the postseason picture or making NBA history.
The question is: which stars made the cut and who are the current favorites for the 2016-17 MVP and All-NBA honors?