NBA betting awards update: Can anyone catch SGA, Jokic for MVP? - ESPN

As the calendar flips to 2025 and the NBA season heat up, so too do the races for the league's biggest awards. The competition is fierce and even slight changes can swing the betting odds dramatically.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic are the favorites for MVP, but is this going to be a two-man race or do others like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama or Jayson Tatum have a chance to sneak into the picture?

Here's the latest on that and every other major NBA award race.

Leader: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (-150)
In the hunt: Nikola Jokic (+130)
Longer shots of interest: Giannis Antetokounmpo (+2000), Jayson Tatum (+4000), Victor Wembanyama (+10,000)

For the first time in a year-and-a-half, Gilgeous-Alexander has surpassed Jokic as the favorite to win MVP. SGA is having an amazing season, flirting with career-highs across the board, good for third in the NBA in both scoring (31.3 PPG) and steals (2.0 SPG) and the lead in some of the composite box score stats like win shares (Basketball-reference; 7.7 win shares, ahead of second place Jokic's 7.1) and Value Over Replacement Player (basketball-reference; 4.3 VORP, tied for first with Jokic).

Gilgeous-Alexander is also on a career-best pace in measured impact; the Thunder are outscoring their opponents by a whopping 17.1 points per 100 possessions with SGA on the court, and the team is 16.3 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court. Both of those marks lead the Thunder by a significant margin, and are among the best in the NBA. In a real sense, these ± stats help measure just how valuable SGA has been, as the clear most valuable player on arguably the best team in the league.

Jokic, though, has been even more valuable with even more impressive stats