NBA -Windowing: Why Nikola Jokic is the only effort to make for MVP

I’m not saying Nikola Jokic will Wind MVP.

I’m not even saying that Jokic should be preferred to win. After all, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has an MVP-worthy season. SGA leads NBA in the scoring and second place in stealing while leading the team with the best record at the Western Conference. It’s legitimate.

What i is To say is that if you want to put an effort on the NBA MVP at this point of the season, it is to bet on JOKIC for MVP the only option that makes sense.

According to Espn betThe Gilgeous -Alexander is -700 to win MVP while Jokic is +400. These are “finished” odds, with SGA as the Forty of the runway to win. Odds for -700 mean that you had to bet seven units to win one. There is no upside to make a bet with odds that are short, with a little return on investment for an effort that will not be paid out for almost two months. Meanwhile, +400 is great value for a player with a legitimate chance of winning.

So the question we need to ask is; Does Jokic still have a legitimate chance of winning? Let’s explore.

Three MVPs in four seasons: NBA Historic Royalty

Jokic has been the best player in the league in the last five seasons with a significant margin. In the four seasons before this, these have been Jokics finish in the MVP voting:

2020-21: JOKIC FIRST (91 First place votes), Joel EMBIID SECOND (a first place vote)
2021-22: JOKIC FIRST (65 First place votes), Embiid Second (26 first places)
2022-23: EMBIID FIRST (73 First place votes), Jokic Second (15 in first place)
2023-24: JOKIC FIRST (79 First place votes), Gilgeous-Alexander Second (15 first place votes)

Jokic joins Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and LeBron James as the only players in NBA history winning three MVP awards in any four-season span. Michael Jordan, for whom the MVP trophy is named, won three MVPs in a five-season voltage broken up by two of Magic’s MVPs.

If Jokic was to win again this season, he would join Russell and LeBron as the only players who won four MVPs in five seasons. Historical things.

Box Score Magic: Rarefied Air

When we talk about historically, Jokic is in progress this season to become the first center and only the third player in the NBA story, which average an average of a triple double for a whole season. JOKIC goes in on Friday with an average of 28.8 ppg, 12.8 RPG and 10.4 Acts. Oscar Robertson (once) and Russell Westbrook (four times) are the only players who have achieved this, and the first time Westbrook did (2016-17) he won MVP on a 47-Win Thunder team ending the sixth at the western conference.

JOKIC is currently third place in NBA in points per year. Fight, third in rebounds per. Match and number two in assists per Match. He is in the process of becoming the only player in the NBA story that ends in the top 3 in all three categories.

Jokic is also fourth overall (really a rounded band to the second) with 1.8 stealing per day. Match. He is in the process of becoming the only player in the NBA story completed in the Top4 in four of the five major boxing categories (points, rebounds, assists, stealing and blocking per match).

MVP caliber impact

The basis of the “best player on the best team is the MVP” argument is the assumption that the player is leading his team to the best record, the player plays the biggest influence on winning in the league. But as the NBA analysis has become more sophisticated, we have other tools to measure influence besides just looking at team results. In fact, we can isolate with a solid degree of accuracy, how much an individual player contributes to his team’s winnings.

A new approach to this was just released this week by my colleague Dean Oliver, one of the godfathers of NBA Analytics. Oliver introduced Net Points, an all-encompassing metric that uses play-by-play data to evaluate a player’s performance. According to Oliver quantifies Net points “any rebound, shot, revenue and free throw and assign credit and guilt to the players on the field. It shares credit and guilt based on the difficulty of players’ contribution to success or failure o the team.”

Per. Netpoints analysis pageGilgeous-Alexander ranks number two in the NBA in both offensive (+317.8 offensive net points) and overall (+355.4 net points) influence. But Jokic first ranks in the NBA in both (+362.7 offensive net points, +423.4 Total Net Points).

Another way to estimate the playing influence is with the family to plus/minus statistics that track how a team does with a player on the field versus how they do with him. According to Basketball-reference.com, Thunder is 15.8 points better per 100 belongings with sga on the field than when he is on the bench. An elite mark. But again, Jokic is better. Nuggets are as much as 20.0 points better per day. 100 possessions with Jokic on the field than when he is on the bench and when he is on the bench, the thunder is out with 8.6 points per day. 100 belongings.

The bottom line

Again, I don’t say Jokic will win the MVP this season. Gilgeous-Alexander seems to have the wind on his back; He puts elite statistics on the board of directors of one of the best teams in the league.

With that said, Jokic turns in a season that historically wins MVP prices. Although he already has a four-season stretch of MVP expertise, which includes him among the extremely short list of greatest players in NBA history, Jokic is very without a doubt to reverse his best campaign to date.

Jokics Dominance measured in the box’s score is unique. Again, the only modern player in the Post-Ferrger NBA, which was on average a triple-double-double in the season (Westbrook), also won the MVP that season, even on a 47-win sixth-seed team. Jokic turns in his MVP season on a team in a virtual draw to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.

No center ever has an average of a triple-double.

No player is ever finished with top-3 in each of the points, assists and rebounds per day. Match.

No player is ever finished with top-4 in four of points, assists, rebounds, stealing and blocks per day. Match.

And Jokic leads NBA, over SGA, in estimated influence on his team’s winnings by both a boxing score method (Net Point) and a completely non-box score method (on-off +/-).

And that is why all considering if you want to put an effort on the NBA MVP at this time of the season, there is only a effort that has any practical value and it is at Nikola Jokic to win.