Winning the NBA regular season MVP is something all players dream about. Sure, taking home NBA titles and making All-Star squads are high on the agenda as well but being named the best player in the league for that particular season is almost unthinkable.
Only a handful of players are ultimately able to say that they have one sitting on their mantle. Also, a select few have an MVP that they simply shouldn’t didn’t deserve.
There’s a lot that goes into winning the award. Team success is heavily valued. So is individual dominance. Yet, who got it wrong? There are a number of head scratching MVP winners that make you look twice and wonder: How?
Simply put, how in the world did this player take home an MVP?
To answer that question, we’ve decided to take a look at every MVP winner in the history of the game and compare them to the peers they beat on that particular season. While players such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and even Michael Jordan are worthy of their awards, there were several times where even players as great as they were, didn’t deserve it on a particular year.
We took everything into account, from win shares and individual statistics to how a certain team played all season long. In short, we left no stone unturned.
Now, let’s dive into the 25 players who should have won MVP in retrospect.