NBA MVP Rankings: Making sense of the wildest race in league history

The NBA's 2021-22 regular season ended Sunday. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you already have an idea which players are in the running for the NBA's top regular-season honor. Below are the final MVP cases for the league's best 11 players.

11. LeBron James, Lakers

Before you explode from snickering over LeBron's inclusion, consider his case detached from the miasma of decrepitude wafting off his team's season.

All James did in a year bookended by injuries was put up 30.3 points, 8.2 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 1.3 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game with the fifth-highest true shooting percentage of his career. That adds up to the fourth-best player efficiency rating in the league and the greatest season ever by a 37-year-old.

10. Kevin Durant, Nets

Durant's case is similar to James: a sensational individual season, though one limited by injury, and for a Brooklyn Nets team that didn't set the league on fire as expected.

He comes up right behind James in PER, too, boasting the NBA's fifth-highest mark, albeit over just 54 appearances, the lowest output of any player on this list. He still put up 30.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 6.2 assists in 37 minutes a night, and Brooklyn is 36-19 (.655) when Durant has taken the floor but just 8-19 (.296) without him.

9. Stephen Curry, Warriors

This hasn't been one of the finer years of Curry's run. Not counting his five-game 2019-20 season, his season-long mark of 38% on threes is easily the lowest clip of his career - the first time he shot below 40% from deep.

But consider this: After a decade of lining up alongside Klay Thompson and Draymond Green (and Durant for three years), the Golden State Warriors' Big Three in terms of total minutes together was Curry flanked by Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney.

Injuries hurt, but the Dubs still finished the year with the fourth-best net rating - and through it all, the mere threat of Steph hoisting from 25-feet-plus bent the defense to the Warriors' will.

8. Luka Doncic, Mavericks

It's been a tale of two seasons for Luka Doncic, who hit only 28.9% of his threes through his first 29 outings but connected on 36.5% on nine 3-point attempts per night since Jan. 1, buoying the offense while the Dallas Mavericks' seventh-ranked defense took care of the rest.

This isn't Doncic's year, but he only turned 23 in February - he's going to be in contention for MVP for years to come.

7. Karl-Anthony Towns, Timberwolves

The Minnesota Timberwolves finished with the league's 10th-best net rating in large part because Karl-Anthony Towns led the team in minutes - they outscored opponents by a team-best 5.3 points per 100 possessions with the sweet-shooting center on the floor.

Complementing the impact of his 24.6 points, 9.8 boards, 3.6 dimes, 1.1 blocks, and one steal per game with 41% shooting from deep was the fact that Towns arguably played the best defense of his career. While no future Defensive Player of the Year candidate, his steps toward competency on that end of the floor had the T-Wolves boast a top-15 defense for the first time since he arrived in 2015.

6. Ja Morant, Grizzlies

Thanks to the Memphis Grizzlies' 20-5 record without Morant this season, the team with the fifth-best net rating in the NBA owns the odd distinction of seemingly being better without its lone All-Star: Memphis outscored opponents by 4.1 points per 100 possessions with the 22-year-old in the game but boasted a whopping 6.4 net rating with him on the bench.

No, Memphis is not better without its best player. You don't remove someone averaging 27.4 points per game on a career-best 53% effective field goal rate and improve. The Grizzlies are not in a more advantageous position without the man with the league's ninth-best PER. Thinking so only punishes Morant for his team's tremendous depth and all-around organizational success.

5. Devin Booker, Suns

Devin Booker's season line of 26.8 points, five rebounds, 4.8 assists, and 1.1 steals per game isn't the gaudiest among MVP candidates. He's a fine defender - and occasionally even great - but you won't confuse him for Kawhi Leonard on that end.

But Booker's the heart of a Phoenix Suns team that was so far and away the best squad in the league this season. Any sentiment that last year's Finals run was a fluke has been buried.

Chris Paul's impact can't be ignored, of course. With less than a month until his 37th birthday, CP3 just averaged a double-double, led the league in assists, and came close to being the steals per game leader, too.

Where Booker edges out his teammate: he kept the Suns charging toward the playoffs even while Paul was sidelined post-All-Star break with a thumb injury. With Booker active and Paul out from Feb. 28 through March 23, the Suns still went 8-3, with Booker elevating his averages to close to 28-5-7 and two steals per game.

4. Jayson Tatum, Celtics

Jayson Tatum has been great for a few years now. The difference this year - and especially since Jan. 21, when the Boston Celtics were 23-24 - is that there's simply more of him. More of everything.

Since erupting for 51 points against the Wizards on Jan. 23 (his first of two 50-pieces this season), he averaged 29.1 points per game on 50/40/87 shooting splits. Overall, Boston boasted a net rating of 12.1 points per 100 with him in the game but -1.9 when he sits - more of the fifth-year Duke product is undeniably a good thing.

Those scorching shooting numbers - plus the emergence of the now-injured Robert Williams as an all-league-caliber defender in the paint - saw the Celtics finish the year on a 28-7 tear. Though they enter the playoffs with the sixth-best record, they own the league's second-best net rating, and are as strong a bet as any team to advance out of the East.

3. Joel Embiid, 76ers
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks
1. Nikola Jokic, Nuggets

We may as well rip the Band-Aid off: Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, the reigning MVP, once again merits the honor. But we can't talk about the Joker without mentioning Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid in the same breath.

Traditional stats

Jokic scores about three fewer points per game than the other two, but compensates with nearly two more assists per game than Giannis and almost four more than Embiid. He also pulls down two more rebounds per game.

(Note that we've combined steals and blocks into one category - "stocks," listed as "STK" - and swapped out overall field goal percentage for 2-point percentage.)

Each has their shooting strengths - Jokic hit twos at a higher rate while Embiid is the superior 3-point shooter. Ultimately, it all translates to Jokic having the best true shooting percentage of the three. In fact, Jokic's 66.1% TS is almost as efficient as Steph's mark of 66.9% in 2015-16, when he became the league's first unanimous MVP.

For what it's worth, Embiid did lead the league in scoring. Should that guarantee an MVP win? Considering LeBron was only a pair of big games away from qualifying for and winning the scoring title, probably not - but it's still a credit to Embiid's case.

Advanced stats

There's not much more that needs to be said here. Jokic didn't just lead the league in PER, he set a new all-time single-season record. Mathematically, Jokic's year was literally more efficient than the year Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points, 25.7 rebounds, and 2.4 assists while playing more than 48 minutes per game.

That doesn't discredit the others' historically exceptional seasons. Antetokounmpo's PER ranks third all time, while Embiid's came in at 14th - still superior to the highest single-season marks of greats like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, and Hakeem Olajuwon.

Defense

Defense is hard to quantify because it's never wholly singular; it's about all five players working in unison to bend the offense to their will. You can't make a fist with one finger.

Still, we can glean some insights from how opponents shot from key areas - within six feet of the hoop and from beyond the 3-point line - when the stars were the closest defender.

Unsurprisingly, Antetokounmpo, a Defensive Player of the Year winner, was a menace on that end, particularly close to the hoop, all while playing more minutes at center than ever due to Brook Lopez's early-season injury.

Embiid beats out Jokic in terms of defense at the rim, but the two players' overall DFG% conceded is much closer than you might have thought, thanks in large part to Jokic's surprising effectiveness in space - even out beyond the 3-point line, where his DFG% is comparable to Giannis'.

Additionally, Jokic's 6.1 contested rebounds per game led the league this year - even higher than overall rebounds-per-game leader Rudy Gobert's mark of 5.8. You don't lead the league in contested rebounds per game without scraping for every inch of position on the interior.

Caliber of teammates

Below, beside each player, are their three most common teammates in terms of total minutes played together. In brackets is that player's career PER.

Thanks to the year-long absence of guard Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.'s injury-marred season, Jokic's three most common teammates were Aaron Gordon, Monte Morris, and Will Barton - a decidedly average threesome.

Embiid had the second-worst crop of teammates, thanks to spending most of the season without last season's DPOY runner-up, Ben Simmons. Still, he had an above-average running mate in Tobias Harris and already logged over 500 minutes alongside former MVP James Harden since his arrival in February. He also had the privilege of backstopping a pair of recent All-Defensive Team wings in Matisse Thybulle and Danny Green.

With Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton in the fold, Giannis clearly had the best supporting cast.

Impact on winning

With all of that in mind, how did the MVP candidates' individual contributions, combined with their teammates, translate to winning basketball games?

Naturally, each team boasted a strong record with its star in the game (and fell apart to various degrees when he sat). But the number that jumps out the most is the difference between the Nuggets' net rating with Jokic on the court compared to when he sat:

That gulf in Jokic's on/off-court splits is the same as the difference between the net ratings owned by the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons. With the Serbian point-center in the game, Denver had a puncher's chance against anyone; without him, this banged up Nuggets squad would've been destined straight for the NBA lottery.

When it comes down to it, what Jokic overcame to get the Nuggets where they finished - 48 wins and a guaranteed postseason berth, a cut above the play-in fray - gives him the slightest edge over his contemporaries, whose teams recorded only a few more wins with better (or even vastly superior) players.

If that doesn't make Jokic the MVP in your eyes, that's fine; given the glut of talent atop the league this year, there's no such thing as a truly wrong answer.