At the risk of adding yet another take to The Great MVP Debate of 2020-21, it might be worth illustrating the size of the advantage Nikola Jokic’s combination of good fortune and overall durability has conferred upon him.
If the purpose of an award is to drive discussion, the vagueness of the criteria for choosing the NBA’s MVP has to be considered a smashing success. Within the ‘most valuable player’ moniker, the last word is the only one for which there is essentially a universal agreement on the definition. What is meant by either ‘most’ or ‘valuable’ says more about what the voter deems important than about what they voted on. If I was going to indulge in maximal cynicism, I might suggest that the definition chosen tends to be more a result of ad-hoc, post-facto justification for support of a player already preferred.
