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NBA MVP Race Player Rankings: Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic vie for No. 1

By Duncan Smith

Mar 26, 2018; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (15) is fouled by Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid (21) during the third quarter of the game at the Wells Fargo Center. The Philadelphia 76ers won the game 123-104. Mandatory Credit: John Geliebter-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 26, 2018; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (15) is fouled by Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid (21) during the third quarter of the game at the Wells Fargo Center. The Philadelphia 76ers won the game 123-104. Mandatory Credit: John Geliebter-USA TODAY Sports /
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NBA Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports /

Every week that goes by seems to have a uniquely distinctive characteristic in the NBA this season. Last week was a wasteland for multiple teams with the Washington Wizards coming off almost two weeks out of action due to COVID and the Memphis Grizzlies missing several games themselves, but this week seems to be calming down on the missed games front.

So far only the Detroit Pistons and Denver Nuggets have had a game called off, just minutes before tip on Monday night. It’s too early to be confident about this, but perhaps the NBA’s crackdown on contact tracing has paid off.

NBA MVP Race Player Rankings: Week 5

Before we get started, let’s go over our ground rules as laid out way back in Week 1:

"This won’t be an exact science as we’re not going to be plugging everybody’s BPM, RPM and PIPM into a calculator and dividing by 36 minutes. It’s going to use healthy amounts of recency bias, popular narrative, team success (or lack thereof) and whatever other elements I choose to incorporate at a given time. It could be messy, chaotic and a bit unpredictable, and it’s certainly going to get flipped on its head every week."

Now that it seems we can start focusing more attention on the actual basketball and less on the postponements, our NBA MVP Race Player Rankings can continue. Fortunately, with fewer missed games of late, most players were able to play full schedules and that’s going to help us make a more complete ranking.

After having to drop players out of the top 10 simply because their teams weren’t playing, it’s a nice change of pace to get back to normal.

Let’s get started by going over this week’s snubs, and this period ranked includes all games played since the afternoon of January 26th.