MVP debate heats up

An anonymous player poll published on April 10 found Shai Gilgeous-Alexander getting 40.8% of the vote for Most Valuable Player, ahead of Nikola Jokić at 24.2% and Luka Dončić at 17.5%, which tells you the race inside the league still feels open even with the regular season almost over. (sports.yahoo.com) That poll matters because the actual award is decided by media, not players, but Most Valuable Player races are often shaped by the same arguments players repeat in locker rooms and reporters repeat on ballots: best stats, best team, and best story. (nba.com) Gilgeous-Alexander’s case starts with team success and scoring volume: he entered the weekend averaging 31.1 points and 6.6 assists for the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Oklahoma City had already clinched the top seed in the Western Conference. (espn.com) (usatoday.com) His argument is the cleanest one voters usually like: the best player on the best team, with a scoring average above 31 and shooting 55.3% from the field as a guard, which is unusually efficient for someone carrying that many possessions. (espn.com) Jokić’s case looks different because it is built on all-around control instead of scoring titles: he entered the weekend at 27.8 points, 12.9 rebounds, and 10.9 assists, which is a triple-double average over a full season. (espn.com) That is why Jokić never really leaves the conversation even when Denver is not sitting at No. 1: a center averaging nearly 28, 13, and 11 is doing point guard, power forward, and finisher jobs at the same time. (espn.com) (nba.com) Dončić is the wild card because his numbers are the loudest of the three: he entered the weekend leading the league at 33.5 points per game while adding 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds for the Los Angeles Lakers. (espn.com) His problem is the one high-volume scorers usually run into in this award: voters tend to ask whether huge box-score totals came with enough wins, and Gilgeous-Alexander has had a much easier answer to that question with Oklahoma City locking up the conference’s top line. (espn.com) (usatoday.com) The National Basketball Association’s own Most Valuable Player ladder on April 3 described this as an unusually crowded top tier, and that tracks with the split in the player poll: one candidate has the best record, one has the strangest all-around stat line, and one has the biggest scoring average. (nba.com) (sports.yahoo.com) So the argument heading into the playoffs is really a choice between three different definitions of value, and the player poll sharpened that choice instead of settling it. (sports.yahoo.com)