We are now just a few weeks away from the end of the 2025 NBA regular season, and by this point, the MVP race is usually all but wrapped up. But what do you do when there are two MVPs? History says you vote for the guy who is leading his team to the most wins of any team in a decade while putting up Prime Michael Jordan numbers. But the league hasn’t seen a season like Jokic’s season ever. The most compelling case someone can make to be the most valuable player in the league is to put up the best numbers in the league. This isn’t the only ingredient to the MVP recipe, but it’s a big one. And right now, Jokic and Shai aren’t just having the two best seasons in the NBA—they’re having two of the best seasons of all time. Just looking at some simple box score numbers, Nikola Jokic jumps off the screen like the obvious favorite: a near 30-point triple-double on nearly the best efficiency in the entire league, and the first player to ever be top three in points, rebounds, and assists. Numbers that make Shay’s season look a bit pedestrian, despite being historic—33-5-6 on at least 60% true shooting is a stat line that has only been achieved by three other players in NBA history: Michael Jordan, James Harden, and Luka Doncic across five different seasons. Although none of them were as efficient from the floor as Shai is this season. However, box score numbers by themselves have never
been quite enough to compel voters. A deeper look into some of their more advanced numbers, we can see just how remarkable Shai and Jokic have been this season and why the MVP race is as close as it is. To put into perspective the caliber of season these two are having, LeBron at his absolute statistical peak had a box plus-minus (BPM) of 13.24, and Steph Curry at his absolute best had a BPM of 11.94. This season Jokic has a BPM of 13.2 which ranks number four all time with Shai not too far behind at n
umber 14 with a BPM 11.58. In most cases, when two players are having incredible seasons, the tiebreaker in the eyes of fans and voters comes down to how well their team is playing. The second ingredient to the MVP recipe—win and win often. 25 of the last 30 MVPs went to players who clinched either the first or second seed in their conference, and right now, the Thunder aren’t just winning more games than the Nuggets; they are the fourth-highest winning team in modern NBA history. But recently, team success has held less weight in the MVP discussion than it has in the past, with three of the last four MVPs going to players outside of the top two seeds. Nikola Jokic being just the second player in over 40 years to win the MVP despite his team not even cracking 50 wins in a full season back in 2021. As if the voters have made the decision that the MVP isn’t limited to simply the best player on the best team, but rather the player who has the largest impact on a winning team. But value isn’t just when your team wins. It’s how much your team depends on you to win. If we look at each team’s net rating when their MVP candidate is on the floor, it’s clear that the Thunder are easily the best team in the league when Shay is on the court with an absurd net rating of +18.3. This means that when Shay is on the floor, the Thunder are nearly 20 points better than their opponents per 100 possessions, followed by the Cavs with Mitchell and the Nuggets with Jokic. But the most revealing measure is the difference a player makes for their team when they’re on the court versus when they’re off the court, where Nikola Jokic jumps out as by far the most valuable and important player to his team in the entire league. when you translate these on/off splits to an estimation of impact on Denver’s record, the Nuggets are a staggering 45 wins better as a team when Jokic is on the floor versus when he isn’t. For comparison, Shay’s on-court impact on the Thunder projects to them being about 15 wins better as a team. But this is where the discussion becomes a matter of what you value most in your most valuable player, because while Jokic elevates the Nuggets to one of the best teams in the league, Shay elevates the Thunder to being one of the best teams of all time. The narrative seems to be that voters will have to choose between a player who has consistently performed well and created an almost flawless MVP case or someone who is having one of the most impactful individual seasons seen in modern NBA history.
