An Historically-Proven Simple Formula to Determine the NBA MVP

The voters have more common sense than you think.

Every year when the NBA season begins, sports-talk pundits start discussing who will be the league’s regular-season Most Valuable Player (MVP). As the season progresses and a few players really stand out, the discussion becomes philosophical:

• Do we give the MVP to the best player, that is, the first player we’d choose if we were to start a team?
• Do we reward a player with an outstanding statistical achievement?
• Do we give it to a player whose team wouldn’t be nearly as good without him?

These debates ultimately go nowhere, and I started wondering if there is a hidden logic behind how NBA voters actually vote.

I thought about two players and two of their best seasons. Each led the league in John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Ratio (PER), and had no teammate who were First, Second, or Third-Team All-NBA or an All-Star. In other words, they were very valuable — indispensable — to their teams.

• Anthony Davis, 2015 30.8 PER, Pelicans win 45 games
• Lebron James, 2010, 31.1 PER, Cavaliers win 61 games

James won the MVP, and Davis did not, because wins matter in MVP voting.

Based largely on general impressions, I thought of three primary factors in determining the MVP: