How Giannis Antetokounmpo can wrap up his second-straight MVP award

Giannis Antetokounmpo is on pace to win consecutive NBA MVP awards. Do his statistics outweigh the narratives of LeBron James and James Harden?

Basketball-Reference’s MVP Award Tracker gives Giannis Antetokounmpo a 56.7 percent chance of repeating as the National Basketball Association’s Most Valuable Player. Last year, Giannis won the award will playing 32.9 minutes per game. The only player to win the NBA’s highest individual honor while playing fewer minutes per game is Stephen Curry, who won MVP in 2015 while averaging 32.8 minutes per game.

Antetokounmpo averages 30.9 minutes per game this year. When his physician asks him if he gets 30 minutes of exercise a day, he is in danger of having to say no. That he is so well-positioned to win the MVP award again is a testament to his regular season brilliance.

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Still, the same MVP Award Tracker gives both of Antetokounmpo’s adversaries James Harden (13.1 percent) and LeBron James (12.4 percent) double-digit percent chances at securing the award.

With that in mind, it is worth evaluating Antetokounmpo’s candidacy for MVP: Is it as simple as Giannis being the best player on the league’s best team? Does he need a better narrative to win the award? Or is Giannis just the best player in the league who makes his team the best in the league?

Going off of net rating, the case is quite simple. Of players who have appeared in more than 40 games, Giannis has the highest net-rating by 1.7 points at +16.7. That the first six players in net rating are members of the Milwaukee Bucks, a roster constructed specifically around Antetokounmpo, shows how easily Giannis has turned this team into a well-oiled machine.

The basketball community can talk numbers until they are blue in the face. What such conversations tend to overlook, however, is defense. When it comes to who brings the most value on defense, it is not even close.

With Giannis on the court, the Bucks are posting a simply preposterous defensive rating of 96.5. Not only is he the best player on the best team, but he is also the most important defender on the league’s best defense. While Brook Lopez’s strides in defending the rim are useful and Eric Bledsoe’s defense is as pesky as ever, Giannis has the ability to impact the game on the defensive end more than perhaps any other player in the league.

His abilities shape the Bucks defensive scheme. He rarely gets beaten off the ball. His help defense allows Lopez to drop to the rim when a big man sets a screen. He is long enough to close out easily on corner threes. Forcing opponents into above the break three-point attempts is vital to the Bucks’ defense, and Antetokounmpo is a huge part of that.

Defense is where Giannis blows his challengers out of the water. To understand what Antetokounmpo must do to lock up consecutive MVP awards, it is worth evaluating the ways in which his would-be challengers can take the throne.

Challengers

James Harden

Basketball-Reference currently projects James Harden as the second most likely player to win the award, putting his likelihood at a 13.1 percent chance. He is nominally still in second in this race, but it is difficult to construct a narrative that gets him this award.

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Harden’s scoring numbers, though still historic, are slightly down from last season. His net rating is 9.3 points lower than Giannis’. The Houston Rockets are on pace to win the same number of games as the team did last year.

Harden’s one-man army scoring barrage did not move the needle for voters last year. I would expect Harden’s chances at winning this race to continuously drop as the season winds down. Russell Westbrook is proving to be a more integral part of this team with each game.

Westbrook’s unforeseen resurgence means there is perhaps a world in which he finishes higher on some voters’ ballots than Harden does. That Harden has taken more of a backseat this year while Antetokounmpo is doing more in less time ultimately does not bode well for Harden’s candidacy.

LeBron James

The more realistic challenger to Antetokounmpo is the supposed “#WashedKing.” Somehow, despite being 35 years old, in his 17th season and recently eclipsing 58,000 total minutes, James continues to bolster his already beautifully decorated GOAT resumé. His MVP narrative is almost too easy to construct.

The Los Angeles Lakers crater when he is off the court, posting a +10.4 net rating while he is on the court and falling to a -1.0 when he is off, per NBA Stats. He is on pace to lead the league in assists for the first time in his career. He has embraced playing point guard full-time for the first time in his career. His defense, while still leaving a lot to be desired, is miles ahead of where it usually is at this point in the season.

Perhaps most importantly, he wears Purple and Gold and plays in Los Angeles. His team is in the spotlight in a way that no Milwaukee Bucks team, no matter how successful, will ever be. When it comes to LeBron vs. Giannis, which side of the debate you fall on shows what you believe is more important for the award: narrative or on-court product.

Still, James’ case is not flawless. Similar to Curry and Kevin Durant from seasons past, James and Anthony Davis cannibalize each other’s cases. Davis has the highest defensive rating in the NBA of anyone not on the Bucks. Two top-five NBA players sharing 25 minutes a game makes it much more difficult for one to stand out enough to be considered to be the most valuable player in the league.

To win the award, Antetokounmpo must count on voters recognizing that the pros to his candidacy, and dearth of cons, outweigh the lesser pros and more apparent cons of LeBron’s candidacy. Giannis should not be penalized for being younger than LeBron and playing in Milwaukee instead of Los Angeles. He must continue to put up such strong numbers that the narrative surrounding LeBron James cannot overcome him.

The ever-looming question of whether or not a Mike Budenholzer ball club will succeed in the playoffs still hangs over the Milwaukee Bucks. Like it or not, the NBA’s MVP Award is still only for the regular season, and Giannis Antetokounmpo should be rewarded for having one of the best regular seasons in recent memory.