How To Bet On NBA MVP: Odds, Winners & Betting Tips

First, let’s take a look at the NBA MVP odds for the 2024-25 season at DraftKings Sportsbook. Odds are subject to change.

• Nikola Jokic: +200
• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: +300
• Jayson Tatum: +400
• Giannis Antetokounmpo: +1100
• Anthony Edwards: +1500
• Anthony Davis: +1500
• Luka Doncic: +1800
• Donovan Mitchell: +3000
• Stephen Curry: +4000
• Victor Wembanyama: +6000
• Jalen Brunson: +9000

Things constantly change as the NBA regular season progresses, and those variables cause MVP odds and lines to fluctuate at NBA betting sites throughout the year. These swings can be caused by coaching changes, player injuries, trades, streaky performances, team success and even something as superficial as the “media narrative.”

For example, if a player unexpectedly takes a massive leap from one season to the next and leads his team to a great record, that player could have an advantage over a more established star.

MVP odds can shift for any of those reasons throughout the year, and very rarely does a player open as a betting favorite and hold that spot for the entirety of the season.

If an MVP favorite has plus-odds, there is often a reason for it. One such reason could be that the regular season has not started yet (or is still early on), in which case there is unlikely to be a minus-odds favorite because the award is still up for grabs between a vast pool of candidates.

For example, Jokic, Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic and several other players have a legitimate chance to win MVP every season while in their prime. None of those players is so far ahead of the pack that they deserve to have implied odds (chances of winning) of greater than 50% before the start of the season.

Therefore, an MVP favorite will often have plus-odds early in the year and sometimes even late into the regular season due to various uncertainties. This is the case with most futures bets.

The correlation between a player winning NBA MVP and being the regular-season scoring leader is not as strong as you might think. Of the 69 players to win MVP since the award was first handed out after the 1955-56 season, only 19 MVPs have also been the regular-season scoring leader, which amounts to roughly 28% of the time.

There are some trends to note, though, as the correlation can shift. For instance, between the 1975-76 and 1986-87 seasons, no player won MVP and led the league in scoring in the same season. This trend changed in 1987-88 when Michael Jordan won his first-ever MVP award while leading the league in scoring, a feat he accomplished four more times over the next decade.

A similar drought happened after Allen Iverson won the MVP and scoring title in 2000-01, as the next player to secure the MVP while leading the league in scoring was Kevin Durant in 2013-14.

However, there has been a new trend over the last 11 seasons: Five of the 11 MVP winners in this stretch (Durant, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Embiid) also won the NBA scoring title in that same season, which suggests that scoring may play a bigger role in modern MVP voting than in previous eras.

The NBA MVP award has been awarded yearly since the 1955-56 season. Over the first 28 years, centers took home the NBA MVP award a whopping 23 times, which can be attributed to several factors specific to that era.

In the early years of the NBA, centers were the most valued position in the league. Without the 3-point line, bigger and taller players often had an easier time scoring around the basket, which gave them an advantage as rebounders and scorers in the paint. As a result, having a talented center in that era usually equated to team success.

Additionally, the late 1950s through the early 1980s yielded more generational centers than any other position, including Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone – all of whom won multiple MVP awards during that stretch.

Centers have become less dominant over time, however, especially with modern analytics emphasizing open 3-pointers and drives to the basket as the most efficient shots in the game.

Outside of Jokic and Embiid, who have combined to win each of the last four MVP awards, a center had not won the award since Shaquille O’Neal in the 1999-00 season.

Still, center is the most common position to win the award overall, accounting for 30 of the 69 MVPs (43.5%) given out across NBA history.

One thing that has remained consistent is the lack of shooting guards to win the NBA MVP award. There have only been four shooting guards who have won an MVP: Jordan, Bryant, Iverson and Harden, who combined to win eight of 69 MVP awards overall (11.6%).

From 1956 to 2024, the average NBA MVP award winner was roughly 27 years old entering his award-winning season, while 15 of the last 16 MVP winners were between 24 and 28 years old. An NBA player’s prime years are often between 26 and 30, so this should be no surprise.

The NBA MVP award’s youngest recipient was then-Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose, who was 22 years old and in just his third NBA season when he won the award in 2010-11. Wes Unseld was also 22 years old entering his MVP-winning season in 1968-69 and joined Chamberlain as the only players to ever win NBA MVP as a rookie.

The oldest player in NBA history to win MVP was Karl Malone, who was 35 entering the 1998-99 season. Malone also won the award two seasons prior when he was 33. Outside of Malone, only Jordan, Abdul-Jabbar, Nash, Chamberlain, Russell, Hakeem Olajuwon, Julius Erving and Magic Johnson have won MVP in their age-30 season or later.

Regarding older MVPs, all of the aforementioned players are considered among the top 20 players of all time except for Nash, who is still regarded as one of the greatest point guards ever. This trend indicates that the players who win an MVP in their 30s are usually generational, game-changing figures.

Winning matters, and the MVP award has often reflected that throughout NBA history. However, the exact weight that winning carries for this award has fluctuated.

With a few exceptions, NBA teams have consistently played 82 games per year since the 1967-68 season. In that stretch, MVP winners have seen their teams post a roughly 60-win pace (73% win percentage), and most of those teams earned a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the postseason.

Since the NBA merger in 1976-77, only eight players have won MVP for a team seeded outside of the top two in the conference. Additionally, no player has won an MVP for a team seeded No. 7 or worse, and only three players (Jokic, Westbrook and Malone) have won MVP for a team that finished as the No. 6 seed in its conference.

When considering the players who won MVP on a team outside of the top two seeds, those situations were mostly seen as justifiable. In the 2021-22 season, Jokic’s Denver Nuggets finished as the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, but he carried that team to the playoffs despite injuries to Denver’s other two best players and finished with the highest PER (Player Efficiency Rating) for a single season in league history (32.85).

In 2016-17, Westbrook put the Oklahoma City Thunder on his back, carrying them to a sixth seed in the West while averaging a triple-double across the entire season (31.6 PPG, 10.7 RPG, 10.4 APG). Without Westbrook, that team would have likely been a bottom-of-the-barrel team in the standings.

For some of the earlier MVP winners on teams that didn’t finish as a No. 1 or 2 seed, there were antiquated division rules that existed at the time that didn’t always result in a conference placement based purely on winning percentage.

Winning has always mattered to the MVP-voting panelists. That said, the last four MVP winners have come from teams that did not finish first in their conference.

The MVP is ultimately a narrative-based award, but winning has been paramount to voters for decades.

Playoff results do not factor into MVP voting. If they did, Jokic likely would have won the MVP award over Embiid for the 2022-23 season.

Jokic helped the Nuggets win their first-ever NBA championship while averaging 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists per game on roughly 55/46/80 shooting splits across the entire postseason, posting one of the most dominant playoff lines in NBA history.

Meanwhile, Embiid struggled quite a bit relative to his regular-season output, and the Philadelphia 76ers lost in the Eastern Conference semifinals to the Boston Celtics. Despite those results, Embiid still won the MVP for the season, and the reason is simple: panelists submit their votes before the start of the postseason, so the award is only based on regular-season results.

The NBA MVP voting process is rather straightforward. The NBA selects 100 panel members to vote on the MVP award via a process based on the “Borda Count,” which allows panelists to rank their first-place through fifth-place candidates, with each player garnering a certain number of points from those votes.

For example, a vote for first place awards the player 10 points, while second place is worth seven points, third place is good for five points, fourth place counts for three points, and fifth place gives the player one point. The point totals are added up from the 100 ballots, and the player with the most points wins the NBA MVP award for that season.

Before the 1980-81 season, the NBA MVP award was voted on by the players. However, in the years since, voting has been conducted by key members of the sports media, including writers, broadcasters and media personalities. The voters are not to be currently affiliated with an NBA team, though there are still some voters who have ties to former teams, whether they played for them or coached them.

Beginning with the 2023-24 season, the new CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) forces players to suit up for at least 20 minutes in at least 65 regular-season games to be eligible to win the NBA MVP award. This should incentivize players to avoid resting for too many games, especially those with a shot at taking home an individual award like the MVP.

There are a few “protections” to this stipulation, including if a player suffers a season-ending injury after 62 games or if they fall short of 20 minutes (but still play at least 15 minutes) in two of their minimum 65 games.

A recent additional alteration involves the changing of the MVP trophy’s name to the “Michael Jordan Trophy” to acknowledge the five-time MVP winner, whom many consider the greatest player of all time. The MVP winner previously received the “Maurice Podoloff Trophy,” which is now awarded to the team with the best regular-season record.

As with any voting system or process, the Borda Count has a few susceptibilities and weaknesses. There are usually between two and five legitimate MVP candidates in any given season and, for the most part, there is consistency with the candidates who receive points.

Effectively, that means that if Jokic, Doncic, Antetokounmpo, Embiid and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – the five preseason favorites to win the 2024-25 award – are all MVP candidates, they are likely to appear on the majority of panelists’ lists and would be awarded at least some points for that.

For that reason, the NBA usually avoids a common pitfall of the Borda Count when too many candidates create a logjam, yielding a result that could be different and not as accurate as what could happen under an alternative voting system.

However, there is one area where the Borda Count falls short. While it has not caused substantial MVP controversy, it is worth addressing after two incidents with suspect outcomes in recent years.

In 2020-21, Derrick Rose received one first-place vote for the MVP award despite no votes from the other 99 panelists. Rose appeared in only 50 of 72 total regular-season games in that shortened season and averaged just 14.7 points, 4.2 assists and 2.6 rebounds on 47% shooting from the field.

Rose spent the first 15 games of the season playing for the Detroit Pistons, who traded him away before eventually posting the worst record (20-52) in the Eastern Conference. The New York Knicks finished fourth in the East with a 41-31 record, with Rose playing in fewer than half (35) of New York’s 72 games that season. No matter how you slice it, it was tough to justify Rose as the league’s most valuable player that season.

The other situation, which the voter claimed was an honest mistake, happened during the 2022-23 MVP voting when former NBA player and coach Mark Jackson left Jokic off his ballot entirely, meaning he didn’t rank the two-time MVP anywhere in his top five.

Jokic was the best player on the best team in the Western Conference and posted one of the all-around greatest single seasons in league history, averaging 24.5 points, 11.8 rebounds and 9.8 assists on an otherworldly 63.2% shooting from the field. The advanced analytics backed the box-score statistics and were arguably even more impressive.

The mistake ultimately didn’t cost Jokic, who received just 15 of a possible 100 first-place votes and finished well behind Embiid in the final MVP tally. Regardless, these two recent situations highlight the weaknesses in this voting process for the NBA’s top individual award.

Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images

Here’s a list of the most recent NBA MVP winners.

• 2024: Nikola Jokic
• 2023: Joel Embiid
• 2022: Nikola Jokic
• 2021: Nikola Jokic
• 2020: Giannis Antetokounmpo
• 2019: Giannis Antetokounmpo
• 2018: James Harden
• 2017: Russell Westbrook
• 2016: Stephen Curry
• 2015: Stephen Curry
• 2014: Kevin Durant
• 2013: LeBron James