"His value to our team, it’s hard to quantify." - Monty Williams on Mikal Bridges
Right now, Mikal Bridges is tied with Steph Curry in my NBA MVP Chase.
Should that be?
And what is the MVP Chase, anyway?
It's a system of determining the strongest candidates for league MVP based on their contributions to victories.
For the NBA MVP Chase, I don't use traditional statistics or even advanced stats. Instead, I ask three basic questions:
Did the player's team win the game? The answer is in the final score.
How much value did the player's coach place on him? I measure this by minutes played.
How much better was the team with this player on the court? I use the +/- statistic to determine this.
If his team wins the game, a player earns an MVP point if the sum of his minutes played (MP) and +/- equals 32 or more.
In the following examples, assume you're an NBA player and (very important) your team has won the game.
Play 30 minutes with a +/- of 2? You get an MVP point!
Play just 15 minutes but your +/- is 17? That totals 32; you get an MVP point.
Play 40 minutes and your +/- is -8? That's 32, and you still get an MVP point.
In the last example, you were on the court for a reason. Maybe your substitute was in the game for 8 minutes and had a +/- of 9, which was the difference that allowed your team to win the game. Just because the sub was effective with fresh legs and limited minutes, doesn't mean your play wasn't valuable. The sub would have sucked if he had to play as much as you did.
Having looked at the numbers of a few seasons, 32 seems to be where the best players on the best teams separate from their role-playing teammates. If I set the bar at 30, the winningest teams would be providing too many MVP candidates.
Role players still appear on the list. Mikal Bridges is probably not going to get MVP votes. But the MVP Chase provides data about how often the best players show up and win. Maybe some of the best players aren't in the top ten of the MVP Chase because they miss too many games due to rest or injury, or lose too many games because they're on bad teams.
But some of the best players do show up and win. A lot. Just as the MVP in a single game would come from the winning team, so should the season MVP be a major contributor to a large number of victories.
Not all of the following players are MVP candidates. But would you pick someone for MVP right now who isn't on the list?
Top Ten NBA MVP Chase Leaders through December 25, 2021
(Players who are tied are listed alphabetically)
Mikal Bridges, Suns, 25 MVP Points
Steph Curry, Warriors, 25
Chris Paul, Suns, 23
Kevin Durant, Nets, 20
Rudy Gobert, Jazz, 20
Jrue Holiday, Bucks, 19
Kyle Lowry, Heat, 19
Donovan Mitchell, Jazz, 19
Andrew Wiggins, Warriors, 19
James Harden, Nets, 18
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoy his articles, subscribe and exchange value for value. You may contact him for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.
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