The definitive MVP argument for Victor Wembanyama

An electric regular season is nearing its end, which means two things:

1) We’re about to flow into an even crazier postseason, and 2) it’s time to put the finishing touches on award races.

Chief among them is the MVP award, the NBA’s most prestigious regular season honor. There have been plenty of great individual campaigns this season, but the MVP race has largely dropped to a four-player group: the reigning winner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a multi-time winner in Nikola Jokić, and a pair of megastars in Victor Wembanyama and Luka Dončić hunting for their first.

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This week, I’m breaking down the cases for all of them — or at least I planned to before Dončić suffered a hamstring injury that may make him ineligible for any awards. This series is less about who I think should win — I revealed that on Friday’s episode of The Dunker Spot — and more about helping others either bolster their arguments for their favorite candidate, or understand the legitimacy of the other cases.

After examining the Jokić case on Tuesday and SGA on Thursday, we’re going to talk about Wemby today.

Let’s dig in, shall we?

All stats are updated through games played on April 10.

Tale of the tape

Record: 50-14 (78.1% win rate, 64-win pace); 12-5 without him (58-win pace)

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Notable per-game rankings (min. 50 games): 13th in scoring, 4th in rebounds, 1st in blocks

Notable advanced stats: 1st in LEBRON, 1st in defensive estimated plus-minus (D-EPM), 2nd in estimated plus-minus (EPM), 4th in Win Shares per 48

The basic case: Who’s providing more per-possession impact?

The framing here is important.

Wemby, due to a combination of early injuries, preventative maintenance (nine games as a reserve), and the Spurs’ own dominance in 2026, simply will not play more than Jokić or SGA. He’s trailing both by nearly 400 total minutes, and that’s just not a gap that’s going to close in any significant way on Sunday.

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Despite the minutes gap, Wemby has driven winning to an insane degree. The Spurs have won at a 64-win pace in the games he’s appeared in, and have outscored opponents by a whopping…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/the-definitive-mvp-argument-for-victor-wembanyama-160005192.html

Author : Nekias Duncan

Publish date : 2026-04-11 16:00:00

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