NBA awards: Picks for MVP, All-NBA teams, Rookie of the Year

As the NBA picks back up in earnest after the All-Star break, the competition for the league’s individual awards has taken shape.

With a third of the schedule remaining, we have a good idea now which players will reach the 65-game threshold necessary to win major awards, including Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year. And while there’s room for the races to shift between now and April, favorites — or, in the case of Most Improved Player, co-favorites — have emerged for each award.

With the help of current odds from ESPN BET and an eye on what advanced statistics tell us about player performance, let’s take a closer look at how the races for the NBA’s major awards can be expected to play out, including whether Shai Gilgeous-Alexander can unseat three-time winner Nikola Jokic to become the league’s MVP.

The leader in the MVP straw poll conducted last week by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, Gilgeous-Alexander has moved ahead of Jokic by virtue of doing something nobody has done in years: surpassing Jokic in the most advanced value stats that combine box scores with impact on team performance (adjusted for teammates), opponents and luck.

Although Jokic has a slight edge in the LEBRON impact metric, Gilgeous-Alexander has more comfortably outperformed him in estimated plus-minus (EPM) wins, which Jokic has led every season since 2020-21. Add in Oklahoma City’s regular-season dominance (a league-best 104.5 defensive rating) and Gilgeous-Alexander has rightfully emerged as the MVP favorite.

The MVP odds narrowed slightly after the straw poll, and on “The Hoop Collective” podcast, Bontemps laid out the path for Jokic to win a fourth MVP if the Nuggets surge into second in the West. Ninth in the standings after an 11-10 start, Denver has moved within a half-game of the Memphis Grizzlies for second with Jokic averaging a triple-double.