Race to define the league’s best player

Typically, the final rounds of the NBA playoffs also function as a referendum, or a reminder, on the league’s best player, making this season an outlier.

As Noah Coslov noted on Twitter after the Phoenix Suns and Devin Booker were eliminated, this is the first year in NBA history that none of the top four in MVP voting (Booker finished fourth behind winner Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo) reached the conference finals.

As injuries and rest have played a bigger role in determining MVP voting in recent years, he increasingly departs from ESPN’s rankings of the league’s best players. Still, that also shows a power vacuum in this year’s playoffs. None of the top three in preseason NBArank (Kevin Durant, Antetokounmpo and LeBron James) remain active either, presenting an opportunity for a new leader next fall.

Which players have a chance to improve their standing by leading their team to a championship? Or will we see a repeat of last season, when Durant finished No. 1 in NBArank despite his team’s early exit?

Let’s take a look at how the postseason could shape the race to be the league’s best player.

PLUS: Everything you need to know about the conference finals.

The evolving meaning of MVP
To some extent, the early eliminations of this year’s MVP favorites are an inevitable product of voters placing less weight on team success during the regular season. None of the top three in the voting were on teams that finished in the top two seeds by conference, meaning their losses in the first two rounds were not unexpected.

The collective winning percentage of .610 for teams with the top three MVP spots this season was the lowest since 1978-79, with 2020-21 (.625) as the second-lowest in that span.

Booker, the top vote-getter on a Suns team that had a league-best 64-18 (.780) record, was a more conventional MVP contender. The Suns’ second-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks was part of another recent trend: higher seeded teams are more vulnerable; of the 18 teams that won at a pace of 60 wins or more since 1984 and were eliminated in the first two rounds, four were in the last three postseasons (Milwaukee and Toronto on the 2020 bubble, Utah Jazz in 2021 and now Phoenix).

The third trend affecting MVPs is that it is less reflective of the consensus of the league’s best players. Prior to last year, no healthy reigning MVP finished lower than fifth in NBA rank before the following season (Durant fell to eighth in 2014 after suffering a broken right foot during training camp; he would ultimately play just 27 games that season).

Surprisingly, both the most recent winner (Jokic) and the No. 2 pick (Embiid) were outside the top five last year, ranking sixth and seventh, respectively.

Jokic has benefited in MVP voting because of his durability during the regular season, less considered in the playoffs. And while both Jokic and Embiid have been part of strong defenses, their difficulty rotating and switching on defense with their size has been an occasional challenge in the postseason. So has Embiid’s tendency to suffer untimely injuries, including the orbital fracture and concussion this year that sidelined him the first two games of the Philadelphia 76ers’ second-round loss to the Miami Heat.

As a result, the first two MVP finalists are unlikely to be considered the league’s best players heading into 2022-23.

A great opportunity for playoff standouts

The two remaining top-five players in last year’s NBArank face off in the Western Conference Finals, with Stephen Curry (5) and the Golden State Warriors leading Luka Doncic (4) and the Dallas Mavericks 3-0. Despite a remarkable postseason with the Mavericks’ first two series wins since winning the 2011 championship, a lopsided loss in the conference finals would prevent Doncic from making a real advance to the top spot in 2022-23.

That leaves an opening for Curry, who never finished higher than second in the preseason rankings because of LeBron’s dominance over them during Curry’s prime. This hasn’t been a transcendent playoff run for Curry, who came off the bench in the first four first-round games and struggled at times with his three-point shooting against the Memphis Grizzlies. Still, if Curry can lead the Warriors to a fourth title without Durant to help carry the load, he could move up in the standings.

Significant jumps are in store for Eastern Conference Finals opponents Jimmy Butler (16th in the 2021 NBArank) and Jayson Tatum (14th), both of whom have burnished their reputations in different ways. For Tatum, who finished sixth in MVP voting, a solid playoff run has cemented the expected jump he made during the regular season to the NBA’s elite.

In Butler’s case, this is a reminder of his postseason prowess. If the Heat return to the NBA Finals for the second time in three years, this breakthrough will be harder to dismiss than Miami’s surprising run on the bubble. By most metrics, Butler has been the most valuable player so far in the playoffs despite missing Game 5 in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks and missing the second half of the Heat’s Game 3 win in Boston due to knee soreness.

Butler certainly deserves credit for stepping up in the playoffs, particularly as a scorer. He’s averaging 28.1 PPJ so far, much better than his best regular-season performance (23.9 PPJ in 2016-17 with the Chicago Bulls) even after factoring in increased playing time. But it’s also partly a product of Butler simply being on the court. His advanced stats have long suggested elite per-minute contributions, albeit in no more than 65 games in any season since 2016-17 (Butler missed 25 games this year).

A clear choice for No. 1 next season.
Ultimately, the most likely outcome is that Antetokounmpo will emerge this season considered the league’s best player. No one else can match his combination of consistent success in both the regular season and playoffs.

Any lingering questions about Giannis’ playoff performance were answered in the 2020 playoffs, when he returned from a hyperextended knee suffered in the conference finals to dominate the Suns in the NBA Finals, culminating in a 50-point performance on 16-of-25 shooting in the decisive Game 6.

While Milwaukee won’t repeat as champions after a hard-fought seven-game loss to the Celtics, it’s impossible to blame Antetokounmpo, who led all players in the series in points (33.9 per game), rebounds (14.7) and assists (7.1). He was the first player to do so in a losing cause since Jokic in 2019 against the Portland Trail Blazers. LeBron and Russell Westbrook are the other two players to lead all three categories in a losing series since 1997.

In many ways, Giannis’ performance in a seven-game loss in the conference semifinals was similar to what Durant did in 2021 against the Bucks with teammates James Harden and Kyrie Irving affected or sidelined by injuries (Milwaukee was without its second-leading scorer, Khris Middleton, for the entire series against Boston).

That early elimination didn’t stop Durant from overtaking Antetokounmpo for the top spot in NBArank. With Giannis surpassing KD’s production against the same Celtics defense in a first-round sweep for the Brooklyn Nets, Antetokounmpo likely earned the title of best player in the world as he sits at home witnessing the final two rounds of the playoffs.