This year's MVP race has been one of the most competitive in recent memory. Each of the top-3 candidates in Giannis, Embiid and Jokić, have a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) that are on pace to be the greatest in NBA history. All of them would clearly be a legitimate pick for the award, and even players slightly behind like DeMar DeRozan or Luka Dončić would also be valid choices, however in the end only one player can win, and this article will be ranking who currently is having the best season.
#1 Nikola Jokić: 26.0 PPG, 7.9 AST, 13.8 REB, 65.4 TS%, 32.35 PER, +7.2. #1 in FiveThirtyEight's RAPTOR, #1 in Bball-Index's LEBRON, and #1 in Basketball-reference's MVP Tracker.
Removing all suspense, Nikola Jokić is my pick for MVP right now, and it should be obvious as to why. He is absolutely dominant by all statistical accounts, his traditional stats are awesome, 65.4 TS% for a primary offensive creator is absurd, and he is also having a historically good year in terms of the all-in-one metrics, in some of which he is literally double the score of the next best player.
He is dragging a team whose 2nd best player is either Will Barton or Aaron Gordon to a 34-25 record, and he is literally the only reason this team isn't getting destroyed every night- he has an unfathomable +24.7 on/off differential per Cleaning the Glass, and this year his defence has also been much improved. No disrespect to his teammates intended- Barton and Gordon fit well with Jokić and are having great years, but it is just impossible to imagine any other player in the league dragging a team with this weak a supporting cast to so many wins every night.
The defensive metrics love Jokić, although I would argue that they are giving him too much credit for the Nuggets' overall defence as their only viable center. However, although he will undoubtedly still get exploited in the playoffs, he has gotten to the level where he is at least a defensive neutral in the regular season, and probably a positive at this point, with his high basketball IQ allowing him to have a high steal rate- he leads all centers in steals this year, and his rim protection numbers have improved to a league average 62%. A huge improvement from a few years when he was absolutely killing their defence on a nightly basis.
Watching Jokić film is one of the most fun things you can do as a basketball fan, whether he is feathering in hooks from the block, hitting step-back threes, throwing a behind-the-head pass to cutters; he is even a nightmare in transition, where he is able to manipulate defenders with his eyes and throw hit-ahead through defenders to create easy layups.
On top of incredible offensive manipulation like the play above, Jokić is perhaps the most composed offensive player in the NBA, he embraces double teams and immediately fires the ball to the open man. The video below charts every possession this season he has been doubled on out of the post, and just watching it for 30 seconds will immediately highlight his vision and composure, as he nearly always makes the correct basketball play. Jokić is the best offensive player in the NBA, and in my opinion, it's not particularly close.
#2 Joel Embiid: 29.8 PPG, 4.4 AST, 11.1 REB, 61.3 TS%, 32.10 PER. #3 in FiveThirtyEight's RAPTOR, #2 in Bball-Index's LEBRON, #3 in Basketball-reference's MVP Tracker
Joel Embiid is also having an incredible season and is currently the betting favourite to win the award. He is an incredibly versatile scorer, pouring in a variety of mid-range pull-ups, post-fadeaways, stepback threes, but perhaps his greatest offensive attribute is just his physical dominance. Although officially listed at 7"0, he is closer to 7"2, and it is just unfair for defenders to have to deal with his agility combined with height and heft. He leads the league in free-throw attempts, and he is an absolute foul-drawing machine, with a bag of rip-throughs, pump faking and jumping into his defender, awkward Euro-steps, etc. But most of his fouls come from attacking the rim hard, and it is impossible to find defenders who can match up with his combination of size, agility and skill- the end result is an overstretched defence that is ultimately forced to foul to stop him.
His physical dominance is on full display in the clip below, as he can power up from near the free-throw line straight into a dunk, and his athletic dominance is only a small part of his MVP-calibre play.
His jump-shooting has been extremely important to his levelled-up play this year, as Joel is shooting a very solid 43.7% on mid-rangers this year, and on extremely high volume- he makes the 6th most mid-range shots a game, ahead of savants like Chris Paul and Kyrie Irving, and it is Embiid's mid-range proficiency that opens up the rest of his game.
Embiid generates the majority of his mid-range shots out of his face-up game in the post, and he is extremely comfortable shooting them as a counter to his drive game, spinning over either should into his shot in a fluid motion. The threat of this shot forces post defenders to play him honestly, rather than overplaying his drive game, or they are forced to send a double at him.
The doubling is where Embiid’s performance is somewhat more mixed. He frequently has trouble finding the right pass out of the double, often settling for shooting over the double, and often his pass outs are rushed, or lazy and it is these situations that result in the majority of his turnovers. In this clip, he spins back into the double and is immediately ripped. The lack of playmaking out of the post holds back his overall offensive game in this aspect, and although he is clearly still a top 2 post-player in the NBA, I would argue that Jokić's greater patience and poise in this aspect of the game elevates both his own and his teams performance on the offensive end.
Embiid’s defensive impact is another massive aspect of his game. He is most effective in drop coverage, able to swallow up guards driving to the rim in his huge 7”5 wingspan, and he has an almost Rudy Gobert-like presence in the paint, dissuading guards from even trying to attack him, and although he has at times been disengaged on defence this year; (probably a side-effect of his huge offensive burden), he is clearly the most important defensive player on the '76ers, and a significantly better defender than Jokić (despite what the defensive metrics might say!).
#3: Giannis Antetokounmpo: 29.7 PPG, 5.9 AST, 11.5 REB, 63 TS%, 32.66 PER. #2 in FiveThirtyEight's RAPTOR, #3 in Bball-Index's LEBRON, #2 in Basketball-Reference's MVP Tracker
Giannis Antetokounmpo is having a criminally underrated season in which many analysts are calling the battle for MVP a 2-man race between Jokić and Embiid. It really shouldn't be, as Giannis is easily having the best two-way impact of any top player in the league, as well as his by-now typical offensive dominance. While lacking the offensive versatility of the players above, Giannis makes up for it with his sheer dominance and offensive relentlessness, he is a threat as both a pick-and-roll ball handler and roller, he is arguably the best transition scorer in the game, he is an elite rebounder, mercilessly attacking the offensive boards and dunking on anyone unlucky enough to be under the rim. The 'skill' aspects of his game have also improved, with a more confident (perhaps too confident?) jump shot from both mid-range and three-point land, while his percentages in this area are still not elite, they force defenders to play him somewhat more honestly, opening up his deadly drive game and making him more of a threat in the clutch.
In a recent 43-point outburst against the Atlanta Hawks, Giannis showed his full offensive package, everything that makes him such a threat, including physical drives to the basket, taking advantage of his freakish stride length and strength, relentless offensive rebounding, transition attacks, and his huge catch radius as a lob finisher.
While his offensive game is objectively more 'simple' than Embiid and Jokic's, that doesn't make him any easier to stop, and his offensive numbers this year highlight his value to the Bucks offence- the team has a +10 net offensive rating with Antetokounmpo on the floor, and he is shooting a god-like 75% at the rim. Giannis has been able to score at a high volume with incredible efficiency this season.
He has also been able to leverage the threat of his individual offence to make some great passes this season, and he has shown a nice level of patience. His assist/turnover ratio is well above his 1.61 career average at 1.84, and while assists are by no means a perfect measure for measuring a players passing, this statistic nicely encapsulates the level of patience Antetokounmpo has had when looking for his teammates this year.
This play highlights how his scoring threat forces the defence to react, creating open looks for his teammates, and this season Giannis has been better than ever at waiting for the perfect opportunity to throw the pass. He is not quite Jokić or LeBron when it comes to court vision, but he has been a very willing playmaker this year, which could bode well for the playoffs when teams will inevitably try and defend him with the 'build a wall' strategy famously employed by the 2019 Toronto Raptors. His execution on some of these passes is still not perfect, highlighted in the clip below, but the fact that he is actively looking for these passes is what is more important in his regular season campaign, elevating the opportunities for the Bucks' primary shooters like Grayson Allen and Bobby Portis.
The aspect of Giannis's game that arguably elevates his MVP campaign over Jokic or Embiid is the incredible value he brings to the Bucks defensively. He is not as effective as Embiid as a 'drop' big, but he is incredible as a roamer, perhaps the best help defender in the NBA today, as he is consistently able to fly over from the weak side and make spectacular blocks at the rim, or break up lobs in a similar fashion to Draymond Green. The compilation below highlights some of his most impressive blocks in these situations, but what is more important to his defensive value is his consistency. He may not always end possessions this way, but he is almost always makes the correct rotation, and perhaps the greatest testament to his defensive value is the amount of times he has been dunked on- while other players avoid these help plays for fear of ending up on the wrong end of a highlight, Giannis has no fear in these positions, and the value he provides to the Bucks paint-protecting style of defence is huge. Antetokounmpo protects the rim at the 5th best rate in the league, allowing a stifling 51.9%, which is made even more impressive by the fact that most of the other rim protectors are traditional bigs, who are defending the rim in advantageous drop situations, whereas Giannis is almost always 'putting out fires' having to cover huge amounts of ground to erase what would otherwise have been easy layup attempts.
Ultimately, the MVP race is extremely tough decide at this point in time, and the fact that it is so tight, despite the three incredible seasons examined here that likely would have won any of these players MVP in a normal season is what makes this race so exciting, and as NBA fans we should continue to not take this season for granted.
