What makes an MVP in basketball?

On Monday, I spotted the tendencies of NBA MVP voters. The MVP of the league is one who:

• Is on a team that won a lot of games
• Played in all or nearly all of those games
• Has a high Player Efficiency Rating (PER)

As a shortcut, I’d vote the same way, and even created Wilson’s Simple NBA MVP Formula. But while it’s accurate, something’s missing. The PER measures how well a player plays in losses as well as wins.

While a high PER and other statistical measures should lead to other accolades such as all-NBA teams, the “value” in MVP should be in contributions to victories.

Let’s say Bradley Beal has 40 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals, and 0 turnovers in a loss. If he does that every game, should he be considered the games best player? Yes. All-NBA? Yes.

Most valuable? Not if his team keeps losing.

And that’s where we should begin when we talk about the MVP: who’s winning?

If a Most Valuable Player award is given for every game, it will go to someone on the winning side. One would think it would go to one who contributed the most to the victory.

How do we determine that? Points scored? Assists? Rebounds?

I suggest something that may be counter-intuitive, or maybe it is the most intuitive: who played the most minutes, and what was the scoring differential when he was out there?