NBA MVP Ladder: Usual suspects emerge, with a (Dallas) Maverick crashing the party
By Phil Watson
Through one month of the NBA season, the early contenders for the MVP award are familiar, including 3 former winners. But a new kid has emerged as well.
With a full month of the NBA schedule now complete, we can at least begin to look at early contenders for the annual awards, beginning today with the NBA Most Valuable Player honor.
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There’s still a ton of season left to play, but there are a couple of hard-and-fast guidelines for assembling this list.
- The media has never selected an MVP from a team with a losing record, so for now we eliminate potential contenders Kyrie Irving, Andre Drummond, Nikola Vucevic and Chris Paul.
- The media seldom gives much MVP love to players from teams outside the top 10 in the standings, so to Karl-Anthony Towns, we bid a quick “tough luck, kid.”
So the first NBA MVP Ladder of the season is limited to the stars from those top 10 teams. Additionally, since it is rare for more than two or three players to draw first-place votes, the ladder will be limited to five players — the real legitimate contenders that have emerged thus far.
More often than not, at least recently, the MVP goes to the best player from the best team. This makes sense for the most part. The latest example of this was Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks last season. The Bucks won a league-high 60 games and Antetokounmpo drove the bus. Easy.
James Harden (2017-18), Stephen Curry (2014-15 and 2015-16) and LeBron James (2012-13) followed similar paths.
But in the age of the dynamic duo, that might become more difficult to define. Among the early contenders in a broad view, there are four sets of teammates that warrant consideration. Many times, that has the effect of splitting the vote — thus eliminating both players. But when one scans the current NBA landscape, there are no superteams to be had, so the duos may fare better.
So with apologies to the the players that narrowly missed the first cut on the NBA MVP Ladder — Bam Adebayo, Nikola Jokic and Jimmy Butler — we begin the climb.