“This What I Don’t Like,” Fred VanVleet Questions How the NBA MVP Race Really Works

At this time of year, the NBA likes to present the MVP race as a neat moral exercise, a season-long search for the player who mattered most. But the closer the calendar gets to the finish line, the messier that idea becomes. One star puts up historic numbers, another lifts a contender into the top tier, a third has the loudest month, and suddenly the conversation starts moving faster than the basketball itself.

That is the tension Fred VanVleet stepped into when he reacted to Victor Wembanyama’s public MVP push and used Luka Doncic as the counterweight. He said, “This is what I don’t like. Luka has been averaging 40, 10, and 10 for the last two, three weeks—he’s going down the list. Wemby gets up there at a press conference and says ‘I’m the MVP,’ he goes up. Now, he’s very deserving. I would not be mad if he won. But I’m just saying, sometimes it’s like, what is this—what is this shit really about?”

Doncic just finished a roaring March in which he averaged 37.5 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.4 assists, scored 600 points in the month and drove the Lakers to a 15-2 stretch that turned them into one of the West’s most dangerous teams.

The veteran player is asking whether the award is really about value, or whether it has become part performance, part momentum, part public campaign. Wembanyama did, in fact, make his case publicly, saying there “should be” a debate and that he believed he should lead the race. Currently, San Antonio is surging to second in the West, while the Lakers are sitting third, and Houston is playoff-bound without VanVleet on the floor.

1. Wembanyama’s Campaign Exposed How Fluid The Race Was, But There’s a Twist

Wembanyama did not hijack the MVP conversation out of nowhere. He stepped into one that was already waiting for him. After the Spurs clinched their first Southwest Division title in years, Wembanyama was asked about his candidacy and answered with unusual candor. “I have thought about it,” he said. “I think right now there is a debate. There should be, even though I think I should lead the race.”

2. Luka Doncic is the Player VanVleet is Backing

VanVleet did not choose Luka by accident. He chose the one player whose recent production makes the MVP conversation feel unstable. Doncic’s March was not merely excellent; it was the kind of month that normally hijacks the league. He scored 600 points, broke Kobe Bryant’s Lakers record for points in March, topped 40 points repeatedly and carried Los Angeles to a 15-2 month that tightened their grip on a top-three seed. The point is the feeling players get when a man is scorching every defense in sight and the larger conversation still refuses to settle around him. To a veteran, that can look less like a race being decided and more like a race being edited. The Lakers’ season context makes Luka an even stronger symbol. Los Angeles is third in the West, a position earned in large part through Doncic’s overwhelming scoring and shot creation. He has not been piling up numbers on a drifting play-in team. He has been doing it for a club trying to secure home-court advantage in a brutal conference, which is exactly the kind of context that usually strengthens an MVP narrative. There is also the cruel timing of the current moment. Doncic’s left hamstring injury has now thrown both the Lakers’ finish and his awards eligibility into uncertainty. He is expected to miss the rest of the regular season after playing only 64 games, one shy of the 65-game rule, though his camp plans to pursue an extraordinary-circumstances challenge. In a race already clouded by messaging and momentum, availability rules may now redraw the ballot again.

3. The NBA’s MVP Identity Crisis

VanVleet has missed the 2025-26 season after suffering a torn ACL in an offseason workout, a loss that could have buried a younger team. Instead, Houston has stayed alive in the West and is now securely in the playoff field. ESPN reported the injury in September, and by early April, the Rockets had clinched a postseason spot for the second straight season. VanVleet is around a locker room trying to sharpen himself for the playoffs. Houston is fifth in the West, riding a late-season surge, and still has room to climb. The Rockets’ current push has been about seeding, health and entering the postseason with rhythm, exactly the kind of environment where players tend to weigh impact in practical terms rather than narrative ones. Every candidate in this race seems to represent a different definition of the award. Wembanyama is the two-way monster lifting a surging contender. Doncic is the offensive supernova whose late-season scoring binge demands attention. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has spent much of the year representing steadiness, control and top-line excellence over the full schedule. When voters say “most valuable,” they are often quietly picking among different philosophies of greatness. That is why the conversation gets so slippery in April. Every 40-point game lands harder. Every winning streak shifts the emotional weather. Fans ask the same question in cleaner language every spring. Is it best player, best season, best story, best finish, best team, or the player whose excellence can still feel freshest on the ballot? The race never admits it is weighing all those things at once, but it usually is.

• Tags:
• Fred VanVleet
• Luka Doncic
• Victor Wembanyama
• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander