There more than halfway through the season and my prediction stands. That's if Joker gets a devastating injury, he should win.
NBA MVP Award Tracker
www.basketball-reference.com
I think the vegas odds are much more indicative of what's likely to happen than the modelled probabilities. SGA has been a huge contributor to a team that's doing marvelous and that's enough for him to win. He's a big time betting favorite now.
It's certainly true that SGA's having an MVP caliber season whereas Jokic's season thus far is further out on the distribution (basically one of the greatest individual seasons of all time), reality is the stats leaderboard lights up this year in Jokic's favor like it has for the past 5 years. But any narrative people can run with to award it to someone else will be used, and honestly, there's a more legit narrative this year, then when Embiid won it. Realistically outside of team performance, there isn't much logic for SGA -- he gets a few more PPG from higher usage and free throw baiting with a friendly-rigged whistle that Jokic could only dream of.
What's going to be odd is that in the past 5 year span, it's likely Jokic WON'T win MVP in his best two individual seasons. I mean, when Embiid got it over him Jokic did have a great team season as a one seed, but he was averaging a near triple double, on a league leading ridiculous efficiency of over 70% true shooting. So it will probably be the second time in a few years where someone having a "one person in 20 years" type of season loses to someone that has a more "regular" every year MVP campaign.
Then I think you add on the other intangibles:
1) Jokic really doesn't care about the award,
2) Jokic supporters are generally sick of explaining over and over to other city stans (76er stans before, Mav stans, and OKC stans) about why Jokic is the MVP (decision making efficiency, being the entire system and on/off impacts, elevating teammates - even Westbrick this year) etc.
3) Jokic is so clearly the best player in the world on a mediocre team that this type of issue is likely to last for possibly the next 3 years unless Wemby further matures into a generational type talent. It's just really boring at this point.
