NBA MVP Chase Update 12/30/2022

Show up and win!

Welcome to the MVP Chase, where I look for, or chase, the best objective criteria in determining greatness without personal subjective bias.

Today’s topic: The NBA MVP Chase

Photo: public domain

My ideal system for determining the NBA MVP (and all MVP) is to rank each player’s contribution to team victories on a game-by-game basis. For instance, in one game Steph Curry makes the greatest contribution to a victory, and in the next victory he makes the fourth-greatest contribution. I would tabulate the contributions for every game of the season.

I don’t have the time or infrastructure for that. I do think, however, that the best shorthand is to add together a player’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER) to the number of victories in which he’s played.

I look at the top 30 in PER, and then see how many games each player has won. Joel Embiid, for example, has played in only 15 of the 20 76er victories, so I add 15 to his PER.

A player’s PER doesn’t fluctuate much from game to game, so a combination of a Nuggets slump and a Mavericks winning streak can see the #1 Jokic and #2 Doncic switch spots.

Here is the Top 20 in the MVP Chase as of the afternoon of December 30, 2022. Each player’s MVP…