Nikola Jokic is ranked tenth on the NBA's first MVP ladder of the season. He hasn't forgotten how to play. His team started slow, so a three-time MVP gets filed below nine other names after two and a half weeks of basketball. The ladder even admits it, telling you straight out to "blame the Nuggets' sluggish start." Once you read that line, the whole exercise falls apart in your hands.
This is the debut edition, posted November 6 by Shaun Powell on NBA.com, and the season only tipped off October 20. Most teams have played somewhere between seven and nine games. Nobody on this list, or anywhere in the league, is close to the 65-game bar you need to actually win the award. We are ranking the best player of a year that is roughly a tenth over.
Take the content on its own terms and it's defensible enough. Luka Doncic sits at number one because he's been on an absurd scoring run, dropping at least 40 in five of his last six games and clearing 20 first-half points six games straight. Victor Wembanyama is second, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander third. Those are real, and if you want to reward the hottest hand in early November, Doncic is your guy. The problem is what putting anyone at the top this early actually measures.
It measures noise. Jokic at tenth proves it. His game hasn't dipped; Denver's win column has. A format that's supposed to rank individual brilliance just docked the best player in the sport for his teammates' schedule luck. That's the machine working exactly as built. A ranking that moves a former MVP eight spots because of a few bad team nights is just tracking the standings with extra steps.
And the standings right now are a snapshot that'll be unrecognizable by Thanksgiving. As of November 6, Philadelphia led the East at 8-1, while Portland, the Lakers and Houston paced the West. One three-game skid and any of those pecking orders flips. Pin an MVP race to that and you're building on sand.
The cleanest tell is Doncic's own history on this exact list. He topped it back in November 2022, then slid to third by late December and fifth by January, all in the same season. Same player, same ladder, wildly different verdicts a few weeks apart. The list doesn't predict the award. It barely predicts next month.
The defense is that it'll self-correct: Jokic climbs as Denver wins, Giannis settles in at eighth, and the overreactions fade. But if the honest expectation is that the ranking is wrong now and will fix itself later, you've already conceded the point. A thing you already know is distorted isn't worth arguing about, and the hours spent debating whether Curry should be above Shai or why Ty Jerome is on here at all are hours spent treating a weather report as a climate forecast.
None of this is Powell's fault as a writer. He's filling a slot the league created, and he's honest about the distortions baked into it. The fault is the slot itself: a monthly MVP ladder that starts when the season is a rounding error, demanding takes before there's anything to take. In early November, we just need to watch Luka cook without pretending we've already counted the votes.
