NBA MVP Rankings: A New Contender Enters the Fold

Everybody hoping that the 2022-23 NBA MVP race was going to get any easier any time soon should brace themselves for monumental disappointment.

More than one-quarter of the way through the season, this year's field of candidates is deep as hell. And it's only getting deeper.

Consider the sheer number of players having megastar impacts who deserve consideration: Giannis Antetkounmpo, Devin Booker, Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, Luka Dončić, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić, Donovan Mitchell, Ja Morant, Jayson Tatum and Zion Williamson. Not all these names can crack our top 10—even though I tried to make it so. Fewer than half can grab a top-five spot.

Math sucks, sometimes.

The breadth of recalibrations that must be made every few weeks is genuinely wild. So much so that, for this edition only, the No. 6 player was promoted from "Honorable Mentions" to a standalone explainer.

As a reminder: This ranking reflects a snapshot in time—what my ballot would look like if the season ended prior to Monday night's games. Recent performances are worth a metric ton of value because two-week intervals continue to make up a large portion of the schedule. But this is still a yearlong evaluation at its heart and will not be entirely subjected to spur-of-the-moment swings that are implicitly unsustainable.

Much like last time, there is stability at the peak of this ladder. That doesn't make it airtight. The margins between candidates remain relatively small, making this a race that is far from settled.

T-10. Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets, and Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers

Kevin Durant Previous Ranking: Unranked

Joel Embiid Previous Ranking: Unranked

Embiid leads the NBA in scoring and remains an utterly dominant force. But I don't feel comfortable putting someone who ranks outside the top 125 in minutes played higher. The Sixers have outscored opponents by 104 points with him on the floor—a top-35 mark. His case will strengthen as he remains available or weaken following the return of James Harden.

I've so far resisted slingshotting Durant up this ladder. That may not last much longer. He leads the NBA in minutes and is averaging 30.0 points and 5.4 assists per game with 66.2 true shooting for the Eastern Conference's fourth-best team. His three-point clip has waxed and waned, as have his defensive performances. I also don't trust the Nets. None of us should. But Durant is shooting 58 percent from mid-range and a typo-esque 81 percent at the rim and generally remains brilliant.

---

9. Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland Cavaliers

Previous Ranking: 9

Mitchell has steadily tumbled down this list since the start of the season, which is both weird and unsettling because it's through no fault of his own. The Cavs have other top-end talent driving their success, and he hasn't needed to shoulder an ultra-heavy playmaking lift with Darius Garland off and running.

On the flip side, Mitchell's holding serve since last time is a feat amid this field. He's averaging 29.5 points and 4.3 assists while downing 48.6 percent of his triples over the past two weeks, including a still-thermonuclear 40.0 percent of his off-the-dribble treys.

---

8. Ja Morant, Memphis Grizzlies

Previous Ranking: 8

It isn't hard to find reasons for Morant to be higher. The Grizzlies have the second-best record in the Western Conference, his playmaking remains bonkers, he's topping 27 points per game, and Memphis nukes opponents with him on the court.

Continued pull-back in scoring efficiency is the only thing worth nitpicking. Morant is shooting under 45 percent on twos, 31 percent on threes and 69 percent at the charity stripe since the last MVP ladder. Coupled with his still placing outside the top 80 in minutes, showing restraint feels right.

---

7. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder

Previous Ranking: 4

SGA's perimeter efficiency has started to nosedive. He's hitting under 39 percent of his mid-range attempts, and his three-point clip is below 20 percent since the last MVP ladder. The Thunder are starting to handedly lose the minutes he plays to boot—though recent slumps against Memphis (Wednesday) and Cleveland (Saturday) may overstate just how much.

The centrality and difficulty level of Gilgeous-Alexander's role matters. He continues to incite bedlam when venturing inside the arc and visibly uplifts, if not singularly defines, the half-court offense. Whether his top-seven MVP case sustains might be determined by how he and OKC finish this stretch of 11 games against playoff hopefuls.

Previous Ranking: Unranked

Going from unranked to sixth is not an acknowledgement that I just realized Zion Williamson exists. His stop-and-start availability to begin the season left him on the outskirts of this discussion for so long. He's not on the periphery anymore.

Zion is averaging 25.0 points, 4.2 assists and 1.2 steals per game while converting 62 percent of his twos and driving the offense of the West's No. 1 seed. His defense on and away from the ball has noticeably improved, and the New Orleans Pelicans are blasting opponents by 12.2 points per 100 possessions with him in the lineup.

This is all happening, mind you, despite spotty play from CJ McCollum and limited availability from Brandon Ingram, who has not appeared in a game since Nov. 25 after suffering a left toe injury.

Absences and adversity aren't always blessings in disguise. But New Orleans was almost forced to put the ball in Williamson's hands more and has (re)discovered the best version of itself as a result.

Sticking him sixth almost feels too conservative. Williamson ranks outside the top 100 in minutes but isn't terribly far behind some of his peers who follow. Oh, he also owns the league's fourth largest plus-minus (plus-173).

Still, this ladder takes the entire season into account. Differences in sample sizes, however seemingly marginal, absolutely matter when you're in this type of MVP race.

That doesn't mean it's forever. The week-to-week changes in this exercise prove just the opposite. If Zion is still playing like this two weeks from now, the tippy-top of this field will look materially different yet again.

Previous Ranking: 6

On-off-split devoutists will be less than thrilled to know Nikola Jokić's marks have slid over the past couple of weeks. This is to say: He still owns the highest net-rating swing in the league, only without the hilariously large margin.

Winning two straight publicly contested MVP awards seems to have harshed Jokić's mainstream case. He isn't being mentioned with nearly the same frequency in overarching top-five discussions.

That's a mistake. His spot is not absolute; his consideration is inarguable. And if the past two weeks are any indication, he is not fading into the background any time soon.

Jokić is averaging a triple-double since the previous MVP ladder—26.0 points, 10.8 rebounds, 10.0 assists—while knocking down a can't-be-real 69.2 percent of his twos. His free-throw shooting has dipped (66.7 percent), but he's nudged his three-point clip up near 35 percent.

There's this conception the Denver Nuggets aren't winning enough to warrant another Jokić-for-MVP movement. That's also a mistake. They may not be the sturdiest No. 3 seed of all time, but they have the sixth-best record in the league, and Jokić remains the lone barrier separating their title hopes from fringe irrelevance.

Previous Ranking: 5

Remember for a few weeks how Giannis Antetokounmpo seemed, like, sort of mortal? Good times.

Shaky efficiency is no longer dragging him down. Though Giannis still isn't hitting his twos outside the restricted area, he spent the past two weeks shooting 79.4 percent inside the dotted lines, 35.0 percent from three (7-of-20) and 71.7 percent on 10 free-throw attempts per game.

The Milwaukee Bucks, believe it or not, lost the minutes he played during this stretch. That's just noise. Antetokounmpo remains a monster on defense at every level and has been impassable as both the primary and helper around the basket. Opponents are shooting 47.4 percent at the rim with him in the vicinity—the league's stingiest mark among 92 players who have contested at least 75 point-blank opportunities.

Anecdotally, people might not like that the Bucks lost to both the Los Angeles Lakers (Dec. 2) and Houston Rockets (Sunday) over the past couple of weeks. Get over it. The Lakers are less of a laughingstock, and the Rockets have been friskier of late and played perhaps their most inspired basketball of the season in the absence of head coach Stephen Silas after the death of his father, former NBA player and head coach Paul Silas.

Previous Ranking: 3

Jayson Tatum's "best player on the best team" case is alive and well. Plenty of people will insist No. 3 is too low.

Others will call for him to tumble a peg or two. The Boston Celtics are incredibly deep even when they're not at full strength, after all, and Tatum just turned in another by-his-standards dud against the reigning champion Golden State Warriors on Saturday night.

To what extent that loss should play a factor is debatable. On the one hand, Boston had neither Al Horford nor Robert Williams III. On the other hand, the Warriors were without Andrew Wiggins, their most important perimeter defender.

Klay Thompson gave Tatum fits all night. It's easy to make that more about the latter. Tatum shot 6-of-21 from the floor, including 2-of-9 from three, and his struggles were reminiscent of the motions he went through during the 2022 NBA Finals. But Thompson deserves a ton of credit for sticking with Tatum. He hasn't moved that well on defense in literal, actual years.

Ascribing too much value to one performance over the course of an 82-game season doesn't make sense. Tatum is still tearing it up, at both ends, for the league's might-be championship favorite. He has never been a more lethal driver or finisher, and while his playmaking has sagged since the last MVP ladder, he offset it with a 40.4 percent knockdown rate from three on 8.7 attempts per game and his usual dose of All-Defensive-consideration-demanding efforts.

Previous Ranking: 2

Perhaps a different outcome in Celtics vs. Warriors on Saturday night could've resulted in a shakeup at Nos. 2 and 3. We'll never know.

Stephen Curry didn't want us to.

Even a downtick in scoring over the past two weeks didn't render his output any less gaga. He still averaged 25.0 points and 6.8 assists while drilling 41.7 percent of his 12(!) three-point attempts per game.

Sticklers will want to spotlight receding efficiency inside the arc. Let's go ahead and do that. Curry is converting just 35.5 percent of his twos outside the restricted area since the last MVP ladder.

Let's also agree to not care. Especially when he swished 47.1 percent of his off-the-bounce triples. And particularly when he continues to elevate the opportunities around him just by virtue of being on the floor.

Golden State's effective field-goal percentage improves by 9.8 percentage points with Steph in the game. Among everyone who has logged at least 200 minutes, no one injects a greater bump in that department. This has been cited before, and it will be cited again, and there will be no apologies for either. It's that big of a deal.

Previous Ranking: 1

Luka Dončić has built his case for No. 1 largely on "look how much he has to do for the Dallas Mavericks!" logic. That sentiment stands here. It's also no longer the only backbone for his case.

Otherworldly efficiency is starting to define Dončić's place in the MVP discussion. In other words: His three-ball is falling. He has found nylon on 42.6 percent of his triples since the last ladder and is now up to 34.3 percent from distance on the season, including 36.4 percent on those vaunted, ultradifficult step-back treys.

That the Mavericks are starting to play better only helps. In the past two weeks, they have secured wins over Golden State, Phoenix and Denver.

Yes, Dallas was a play-in team at this writing. And sure, its games remain entirely too stressful. The Mavs need to hit their crunch-time free throws for crying out loud—they'd have beaten the Bucks on Friday if the did—and this still very much feels like a one-man-show.

But there's at least more substance to the stress when Dončić is on the floor. Dallas has outpaced opponents by 17.3 points per 100 possessions with him in the lineup during this two-week stretch, through which Dončić himself has averaged 32.3 points and 10.0 assists.

Can an MVP winner hail from a team that finishes 10th inside its own conference? Dončić is playing well enough, awkward body language and all, for us to assume we needn't provide an answer to the question. He will ferry the Mavs to a higher-end finish. And in the event he can't, Dallas will have bigger problems than Dončić's place in the MVP discourse on its hands.

---

Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass and accurate entering Monday's games. Salary information via Spotrac.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.