NBA MVP Chase: Who’s #2?

A runaway leader right now.

Photo: Public Domain

The Cavaliers and Thunder are in first place in the Eastern and Western conferences respectively, each with a six-game lead over the second-place team. Thus, it’s not surprising that these teams have MVP Chase candidates.

But one player, the Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, is running away with the MVP Chase and will likely win my MVP vote if he stays healthy and the Thunder keep winning at a high rate.

In the NBA MVP Chase, I look at players who are shown to be proficient offensively (a Player Efficiency Rating -PER- of 20 or more) and counted the number of “MVP games” in which:

• The player’s team won
• The player had a +/- of 10 or more, or…
• When the player’s +/- is less than 10, the sum of Minutes Played (MP) plus +/-is 40 or more (for example, 36 MP and a +/- of 6 is 42).

As of the games completed through January 17, 2024, Shai had 29 MVP games. Three others are tied for a distant second at 23. I ranked them by how many more games they had a high MP plus +/- near 40. For example. Jayson Tatum had three games with MP plus +/- at 38 or 39; Evan Mobley had two such games, and Karl-Anthony Towns had none. Therefore, that’s how I’m ranking them.