Way-Too-Soon 2024-25 NBA MVP Rankings and Predictions

The MVP debate has become one of the driving conversations during every NBA campaign. And each year, it seems to get started a little sooner.

We’re going to jump the gun by looking at the race before the 2024-25 campaign even gets started.

Based on 2023-24 performance, age, team situation, expected narratives and plenty of subjectivity to tie it all together, here is your way-too-soon MVP ranking for this coming season.

After finishing fifth in MVP voting this season, Jalen Brunson went for 32.4 points, 9.2 free-throw attempts, 7.5 assists and 2.0 threes per game in the playoffs.

He looked like a bona fide superstar capable of carrying a title contender, assuming he has the right supporting cast.

The problem, of course, was that his current teammates were dropping like flies in the regular season and postseason. By the end of their playoff run, Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson, OG Anunoby, Bojan Bogdanović and Josh Hart were all either out or compromised.

Presuming a little better health for the Knicks, Brunson shouldn’t have to shoot anywhere near the 26.2 times per game he did in the playoffs. Randle is almost certain to take some of his usage, too.

That means Brunson’s numbers should come down a bit, but his recent modus operandi revolves around exceeding expectations. So another top-five finish in MVP voting certainly isn’t out of the question.

If this seems premature to you, let me remind you how bonkers Victor Wembanyama’s rookie campaign was.

He averaged 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 3.6 blocks, 1.8 threes and 1.2 steals per game. Needless to say, no one in league history matched or exceeded all of those marks for an entire season. And the other six players to complete 20-10-3-3 seasons are all in the Hall of Fame.

Doing that in his first campaign, as a 19-20-year-old makes it pretty easy to expect massive production again. The trickier part is where the rest of his team will be.

MVP has long been tied to team success, and the San Antonio Spurs were one of the worst teams in the league in 2023-24. There’s already a path to far more successful basketball, though.

When they played Wemby with Tre Jones (an actual point guard, as opposed to the “Jeremy Sochan as lead playmaker” experiment) and Devin Vassell, the Spurs were plus-10.2 points per 100 possessions.

Relying more heavily on that trio alone would help. Bringing in really any help could have San Antonio competing for the kind of finish that could put Wemby in MVP talks.

Prior to 2023-24, Stephen Curry had finished in the top 11 in MVP voting in 10 of his last 11 seasons. He played just five games in the one season he missed.

That stretch ended this season when Curry failed to register a single point from the awards voters, but consider this slide a prediction that that 10-of-11 number turns into an 11-of-13 after 2024-25.

He still made third team All-NBA and won Clutch Player of the Year this season, with averages of 26.4 points, 5.1 assists and 3.8 threes.

And after missing the postseason in 2024, aggressive win-now moves to take advantage of the final superstar seasons of Curry’s career could be on the way this summer.

If that happens, Draymond Green stays out of trouble and Golden State sniffs the top four in the West again, Curry will be in the mix for MVP.

Anthony Edwards finished seventh in MVP voting this season and is coming off a run to the Western Conference Finals in which he averaged 27.6 points, 7.0 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 2.9 threes and 1.5 steals while shooting 40.0 percent from deep.

Despite a pretty quick exit from that round, Edwards should be entering the 2024-25 campaign with a lot of momentum toward individual honors. And if Karl-Anthony Towns is traded, he may need to score even more going forward.

But Ant’s regular-season production has long trailed way behind what he does in the playoffs. That’s good for the team’s ultimate goal of winning a championship, but MVP is obviously a regular-season award.

And Edwards probably needs to take more strides as a playmaker and ball-handler to contend with the game’s more heliocentric stars for awards like this.

It seems almost absurd for this season’s second-place MVP finisher, a still-developing 25-year-old playmaker, to drop all the way to sixth on a list like this.

It’s more a testament to the talent at the top of the league than any criticism of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Seemingly every year now, we have five or six players putting up numbers that would’ve made them seem like MVP locks 20 years ago. And Gilgeous-Alexander should be in that group again in 2024-25.

SGA has averaged at least 30 points and five assists in each of the last two seasons. In 2023-24, he shot 57.6 percent on two-point attempts.

If that kind of production keeps up (and the only thing potentially preventing that is more usage from players like Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren) and the Oklahoma City Thunder lead the brutal West in regular-season wins again, Gilgeous-Alexander could win the award.

Joel Embiid won the MVP in 2022-23, and he somehow had a much stronger argument for the award in 2023-24, at least before a meniscus injury knocked him out for several weeks in the middle of the season.

In 39 games, Embiid averaged 34.7 points in 33.6 minutes, making him the first player since Wilt Chamberlain to have more points than minutes for a season. He averaged a career-high 5.6 assists. And, as usual, his team was far better with him on the floor than it was when he was off.

When available, Embiid remains perhaps the most dominant scorer in the league, in large part due to his ability to fill it up from the 15-20 foot range (whether he’s shooting free throws or mid-range twos). He’s also a legitimate “you can build a defense around this guy” level rim protector.

Of course, “when available” is the big caveat there. Now 10 years since he was drafted, there’s really no way to expect 65-plus games (the new requirement for awards consideration) out of Embiid. He’s only averaged 43.3 games per year for his career.

Right or wrong, some voters are going to hold Embiid’s postseason struggles against him in future seasons, too. He’s never made it past the second round, and in 2024, he was out after the first.

Embiid isn’t the only player whose recent postseason play will be a factor for next year’s awards races.

A few players, including Brunson, Edwards and Jayson Tatum, will almost certainly get a bump based on what they’ve done the last couple months.

For Tatum, whose basic numbers typically fall well shy of some of the primary playmakers ahead of him on this list, that bump should be even more dramatic.

After years of playoff scars callousing, Tatum led his Boston Celtics to a title in 2024. He had 31 points and 11 assists in the closeout game.

He now has one of the strongest postseason resumes of any sub-27 player in NBA history. He’s the all-time leader in playoff points before a 27th birthday. He’s made five conference finals and two Finals. And now he has a championship.

Carrying all of that into next season will have him on MVP ladders all over the internet from the outset of the season. And his Celtics should probably finish first in the East again. That’ll help with the voters, too.

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks were eliminated in the first round of the 2024 playoffs, but he missed every game with a calf injury.

He certainly deserves (and will likely get) a pass for that quick exit. And it might even fuel him to attack the 2024-25 regular season with even more passion.

Already one of the best competitors in the league, Giannis averaged 30.4 points, 11.5 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.1 blocks in 2023-24.

And after significantly reducing his jump-shooting diet, he was arguably the league’s most efficient scorer.

At 29 years old, Giannis is likely to come back every bit as dominant in 2024-25. And if a full offseason of schematic implementation for new coach Doc Rivers helps the Bucks get back near the top of the East, he could secure a third MVP.

Despite his team’s second-round exit, plenty of numbers still point to Nikola Jokić as the NBA’s best player. And that obviously goes a pretty long way in MVP debates.

But he could be dinged by some voters for the failed pursuit of a repeat championship. Voter fatigue toward the player who’s won three of the last four MVPs will be another issue. The depth of the Western Conference might be the biggest.

By the end of 2024-25, Jokić will likely have averages around where he’s been the last four seasons (26.1 points, 12.2 rebounds, 8.7 assists, 1.4 steals, 1.1 threes and 0.8 blocks), but there will be just enough negative talking points to prevent a fourth win in five years.

Luka Dončić’s absurd postseason run ended without a title on Monday, but his Dallas Mavericks were thoroughly outmanned in a Finals matchup against the juggernaut Celtics.

And after beating three 50-win teams on the way to this series, Luka averaged 29.2 points, 8.8 rebounds and 5.6 assists against Boston. He’s responsible for Dallas getting to this point, and he did what he could to pull off the impossible.

Next season, he’ll once again average a near-triple-double with 30-plus points. Kyrie Irving will be back, and the rest of the Mavericks will have a little more confidence after a deep playoff run. Finishing higher than fifth is in play (though the brutal West makes that impossible to predict).

And with those boxes checked and some voter fatigue heading Jokić’s way, Luka will very much be in the mix for his first MVP.

Luka has 11,470 points, 3,472 rebounds and 3,317 assists. There are only 75 players in NBA history who hit all three of those marks. Dončić, obviously, has played the fewest games of anyone on that list at 400. And none of the other 74 got there before their age-25 season.

MVP awards (yes, plural) are likely on the way. And the pain of getting within three wins of a championship will fuel Dončić to be even better in 2024-25.

With that and improved play from the rest of his team, Luka is likely to get the first of a few Michael Jordan Trophies.