If you trust recent NBA history, there are only three viable candidates to win the 2025-26 MVP award. The first is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, which obviously makes sense as he’s the reigning MVP winner on the reigning NBA champion. The second is Anthony Edwards. Again, makes sense. He’s been to back-to-back Western Conference finals and has improved meaningfully in every offseason of his career thus far. The third is… Evan Mobley?
That one might surprise you, and I’m not suggesting that he’s going to win the award. I’m merely pointing out the rather formulaic nature of recent MVP voting. Since LeBron James won in 2012, every MVP has had two things in common. The first is that they’ve been between the ages of 24 and 28. Gilgeous-Alexander is 27. Edwards and Mobley are 24 on the dot. The second is that they made either First- or Second-Team All-NBA in the previous season. Of the 10 players that could feasibly describe, six are too old (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Donovan Mitchell, Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Jalen Brunson), and the seventh, Jayson Tatum, is recovering from a torn Achilles. So our formula suggests that the MVP will be Gilgeous-Alexander, Edwards, or Mobley.
Now, obviously, this is a gross oversimplification. We haven’t even mentioned Luka Dončić, who will obviously factor prominently into this race if he plays 65 games, which he didn’t last season. The formula is meant to illustrate a point. The NBA’s MVP award is hallowed ground. This is not football, where a breakout player wins it in his first great season. This is not baseball, where outlier candidates regularly emerge and players regularly compete for and win MVPs in their 30s.
You’re practically not even allowed to enter the discussion until you’ve reached a certain level of stardom. As the All-NBA cutoff suggests, most MVPs enter their award-winning seasons already considered a top-10 player in the league. However, in an NBA increasingly obsessed with load management and protecting player health across 82 games, older players have a hard time competing simply because they tend not to take the regular season seriously enough. Winning this award means dominating for 82 games, not two months in the spring.
Even under those conditions, we should obviously consider players besides Gilgeous-Alexander, Edwards and Mobley. So below, we’ll pick the players with the most value as MVP bets going into the 2025-26 season. Those players will be divided into three tiers: those with odds shorter than +1000, those with odds between +1000 and +2500, and those with odds longer than +2500.
The favorites
We have three candidates to cover here, and they’re the obvious ones: Gilgeous-Alexander, Dončić and Jokić. Despite what our formula would have you believe, I actually view Gilgeous-Alexander as the worst value of the three. For starters, he has the shortest odds. The best line available on him as of this writing is +250 at DraftKings. You can find Jokić at +350 on BetMGM and Dončić at +400 at Bet365. But even if the three were flat, I’m dubious of a Gilgeous-Alexander repeat.
History tends to show that MVP winners improve in some measurable or intangible way between their first and second trophy. One of the obstacles Gilgeous-Alexander is likely to run into is that it’s just hard to imagine his case getting any stronger. The Thunder won 68 games last season. Are they going to win 69? Because if they don’t, that could easily be held against him. Don’t laugh. Michael Jordan lost the 1997 MVP dipping from 72 to 69 wins with very little statistical difference. Is he going to score more? He just had the 11th-highest scoring season a guard has ever had in NBA history.
Of the 10 players above him, half did so on teams that won 50 or fewer games (2006 Allen Iverson, 1980 George Gervin, 1973 Tiny Archibald, 2006 Kobe Bryant, 2024 Luka Dončić). The other half belonged to James Harden, the most heliocentric player in NBA history, and Michael Jordan, arguably the best player in NBA history. They’re both outliers. It’s very rare for an individual player to post the sort of numbers Gilgeous-Alexander did on a team that won as much as the Thunder did last season. More often, those numbers come from players carrying bad teams. With the Thunder likely placing less emphasis on the regular season than they did a year ago and trying to incorporate a new ball-handler in Nikola Topić, the likelihood for Gilgeous-Alexander is that he and the Thunder are still sensational, but slightly worse than they were a year ago. Fair or not, that tends to be held against MVP candidates. Reigning winners are competing against their former selves as much as their opponents.
Dončić is going to be the narrative darling, at least early on. He looked spectacular at EuroBasket. He’s seemingly in the best shape of his career. The Lakers’ hope is that he’s going to come out and make the Mavericks look foolish for trading him. Frankly, I’m pretty confident that he does that. I think this is going to be the best basketball Dončić has ever played. But that doesn’t necessarily align with what wins MVPs.
This is, first and foremost, a statistical award. Dončić has never played with more ball-handling than he is now. Is he going to be able to accumulate stats as easily as he did in Dallas while playing next to not only LeBron James and Austin Reaves, but a number of role players who historically use more possessions than the sort of lob threats and 3-and-D players he made the Finals with in Dallas? Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart, Rui Hachimura, these are players that dribble more than typical role players. Every possession they use is one Dončić won’t. I believe the ways in which Dončić is going to thrive this season are going to be subtler. He’ll likely be more efficient. Hopefully he’ll step up defensively, which the Lakers need. But this is someone who lost an MVP averaging nearly 34 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds per game. To overcome the likely statistical dip, he’d need to win more than I expect the Lakers to.
Which brings us to my personal pick to win the award and, frankly, the safest bet almost every year: Nikola Jokić. Safe is the easiest way to frame it because Jokić never gets hurt and his game, considering how little it relies on athleticism or shooting variance, is the least vulnerable to season-to-season swings. He has finished either first or second five years in a row. If you’re building a portfolio, you absolutely want to have a Jokić ticket because you know he’s going to be in the mix at the end, and you can hedge elsewhere as necessary throughout the season. He might not win, but if there are three contenders in February and March, you can feel reasonably confident that he’ll be among them.
The Thunder won 18 more games than the Nuggets last season, but it’s reasonable to assume that gap will be smaller next season. While Oklahoma City was indeed better with their star on the floor than Denver was, the bulk of Denver’s problems came when Jokić rested. Oklahoma City outscored opponents by 5.2 points per 100 possessions without Gilgeous-Alexander. Denver got outscored by 9.3 points per 100 possessions without Jokić. That’s a 14.5-point gap per 100 possessions. If you assume Denver’s strong offseason fixed the bench, that’s going to go a long way towards closing the standings gap. Denver likely won’t win more games than Oklahoma City, but an eight-game gap is more palatable to voters than an 18-game gap. If you want a cherry on top, no player is likely to benefit more from the NBA’s new heave rules than Jokić. If his missed heaves hadn’t counted last season as they won’t this season, he would have jumped from below 42% on 3-pointers to above 44%, making him the NBA’s second-most accurate 3-point shooter last season.
There is an entirely reasonable chance that these are your top three finishers, and any of them are plausible winners. Of the three, Jokić is just the best preseason value.
The middle of the pack
First thing’s first: we covered Anthony Edwards above. He’s available at +2500 and should be on any extensive MVP portfolio. That doesn’t necessarily mean he needs a sizable bet, but he checks basically every MVP box. He’s in the right age range. He was a top-10 player last season. Unlike Mobley, he scores at an elite level. Every MVP since Kobe Bryant in 2008 has averaged at least 25 points per game except for 2015 Stephen Curry, who only missed the mark because the Warriors blew teams out so badly that he didn’t play enough minutes to do so. Edwards took a massive jump as a shooter last season. He’s spoken about adding a post game over the summer, and with Mike Conley declining, expect to see him shoulder a greater playmaking burden. He’s a dark horse, but he’s the best dark horse bet on the board.
And that concludes our coverage of Western Conference MVP candidates outside of the true long shots. The only other West player in this odds range is Victor Wembanyama. Despite pre-draft predictions suggesting he might be the best player in the NBA by his third season, there are just too many hurdles for him to feasibly climb here. Is he going to score enough on a team that, within the past year and change, has added three high-usage guards in Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper and De’Aaron Fox? Is he going to be able to win enough in a conference this loaded with such a young roster? How much work was he able to put in while recovering from a blood clot? Even without the blood clot, how confident are we in him playing 65 games? In a year, I’ll be happy to consider Wembanyama at this price point. I just don’t view +1800 as especially enticing at this moment.
With that, we move East, where someone is going to emerge as a candidate, we just don’t know who yet. The obvious name here is Giannis Antetokounmpo. If we were blindly handing out the trophy on the basis of statistics, I think you could argue Antetokounmpo would be the favorite. He’s effectively going to play point guard this season. Last season, when Damian Lillard got hurt, Giannis took over that role and proceeded to average 31.6 points, 11.3 rebounds and 8.6 assists. With no real Lillard replacement coming, the idea here will seemingly be to put the entire offense in Antetokounmpo’s hands and surround him with shooting. Individually, he’s going to shine.
Will the team? Frankly, I’m dubious. There is not a starting-caliber guard on this roster. Both Antetokounmpo and flashy offseason addition Myles Turner have declined defensively from their peaks. And then there’s the wear and tear component. Miss 18 games and you’re officially out of the running thanks to the 65-game rule. Over the past five seasons, Antetokounmpo has missed 11, 15, 19, nine and 15 games. He’s always right around that figure. Now he’s 31 years old and being asked to carry a greater burden than ever on one of the worst rosters he’s ever played for. Trade rumors are going to come quickly if they start slow. They have no room for any injuries, to him or anyone else. Even in a weak East, the Play-In seems likelier than the playoffs for Milwaukee. I’m just not interested in +1200 odds on a player I expect to be on a .500 team. The reason you’d take these odds, if you want to, is that you expect the Bucks to trade their 2031 first-round pick in a win-now move midseason. The formula here is, essentially, 2008 Kobe Bryant: beloved player carries mediocre team early until reinforcements make that team a true winner again. It’s possible. I just don’t consider it likely. Besides, Bryant had the narrative boost of never having won before. That isn’t the case here.
The long shots
As amazing as it sounds, after Antetokounmpo, every single player in the Eastern Conference can be found at odds of 50-to-1 or longer at one or more books. Inevitably, one or two such players will pop and find their way into the conversation. The question is who it’s going to be, and offhand, none of the teams we expect to be at the top of the conference have ideal choices.
Jalen Brunson (+8000) plays no defense and has too many mouths to feed offensively. His individual numbers dipped last season as he adjusted to Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges. Keeping the two of them involved and engaged is more important than posting gaudy numbers for the Knicks. I’d expect Brunson to pace himself and not seriously compete for the award.
If Cleveland was going to produce a candidate… wouldn’t it have done so a season ago? If they win 64 or so games again, it’s likely because the system kept humming. That means Donovan Mitchell’s (+10000) numbers are suppressed and everyone else eats. Mitchell’s own health issues make him a scary bet on the 65-game front. Maybe Mobley (+30000) has another level to jump on offense, but it’s just hard to imagine him touching the ball enough to get to an MVP level unless Mitchell and Darius Garland both suffer injuries, and if that’s the case, Cleveland just isn’t going to win enough for him to be a factor. The Cavaliers are built for balance. There’s not a good pick here.
Orlando’s pecking order is too poorly defined. Franz Wagner was sensational when Paolo Banchero was hurt last season. And then he himself got hurt. When they’re on the floor together, neither has the ball enough to win MVP. Besides, even with Desmond Bane, the spacing here isn’t going to be strong enough for someone to post MVP-caliber numbers. This is a defense-first team. Such teams can produce MVPs. Derrick Rose in 2011 is the blueprint. But Rose wasn’t splitting possessions as Banchero and Wagner do.
These are the three teams we expect to finish with the best records in the conference. Inevitably, that won’t be how it plays out. One or two of them will have injuries or be worse than expectations, and one or two teams below them will vastly outperform expectations and win 50 or more games. Finding an MVP candidate in the East therefore amounts to finding the teams that are going to do that. Three candidates stand out for me.
- Cade Cunningham (+5500) checks a lot of our boxes. He just turned 24. He was a Third-Team All-NBA pick last year, so right on the borderline of where we’d expect a winner to come from. He topped 25 points per game, will be among the regular-season assist leaders and is a part of a great defense. The Pistons started 11-17, but then went 28-14 before Cunningham suffered a late-season injury. That’s almost a 55-win pace. If you assume that’s roughly who the Pistons are with a full year in this system under their belts and more progression from the youngsters, we have our possible breakout Eastern Conference team. Cunningham is the undisputed alpha here, so he’d have a path to candidacy.
- Trae Young (+10000) probably doesn’t have Cunningham’s upside as he’s three years younger and comes with weaknesses and a reputation to buck, but the profit here is potentially bigger. The Hawks are everyone’s favorite Eastern Conference sleeper, and they’ve done a stellar job of building a defense and depth around Young, who is in a contract year and will be eager to prove he can make this team a contender. He’s the obvious favorite to lead the league in assists. He’s been an All-NBA player. He’s in our preferred age bracket. And there’s an easy narrative to form around him proving the naysayers wrong ahead of his free agency. He’ll never be a good defender or off-ball offensive player, but the bar has been so low in the past that his subtle improvements last year largely went unnoticed. If he’s merely below average in those respects, but the Hawks are otherwise humming, he’ll get some respect for that.
- Joel Embiid (+15000) has literally won this award. Recently. Do I expect him to play 65 games? No. Do I expect him to play at an MVP level when he’s on the court? Again, no. But these odds are so absurdly long that I wouldn’t recommend leaving him out of a portfolio that includes any long shots. For anyone else in this tier, you’re projecting that they’re capable of jumping up to an MVP level. That’s not necessary with Embiid. We know he can do that because he’s done it. Pretend last year never happened. Just look at the names on the roster. You can’t tell me there’s no chance that group, on the slim chance it stays healthy, wins 50 or 55 games behind a big statistical Embiid season.
Beyond the East sleepers, there’s one last Western Conference player I’d like to touch on, and I’m almost positive it’s not who you’re thinking. Let’s talk about Alperen Sengun (+30000). Someone in Houston is going to have to take on a bigger ball-handling load with Fred VanVleet down. We assume it will be Amen Thompson. Why couldn’t it be Sengun, who was perhaps the single biggest individual winner of EuroBasket? What if the Jokić comparisons he drew, as sacrilegious as they seemed in the moment, were somewhat accurate? Sengun took an enormous defensive leap last season. He has the playmaking chops. He’ll have more support this season. If his finishing near the rim reverts to where it was in 2024 and his volume increases without VanVleet, he’s going to strongly be in the All-NBA mix. At that point, 300-to-1 odds are absolutely worth the swing.