NBA: Who will win this season’s MVP award?

• The 2022/23 NBA season is well underway
• The Boston Celtics is on everyone’s lips now
• They’ve amassed 21 wins compared to just five losses

The 2022/23 NBA season is well underway at this point, and in current form, there’s one team on everyone’s lips. The Boston Celtics. The Massachusetts-based outfit has been in scintillating form throughout the season’s early weeks. This term, they’ve amassed 21 wins compared to just five losses.

And if that wasn’t impressive enough, they’ve just thumped the Phoenix Suns on the road – who were leading the Western Conference at tip-off – by a mammoth 27 points. Because of this, NBA bets on this site have made the Celtics the favourites for this year’s NBA Championship. If they make it all the way to the finals next summer, they will have a chance to right the wrongs of last season.

The Celtics made it to the NBA Finals for the first time in 12 years. And after three games, they were leading the series 2-1. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned in recent years, it’s never to write off Steph Curry and his Golden State Warriors.

The Baby-Faced Assassin led his side to three consecutive wins through games four, five, and six, taking the Larry O’Brien Championship back to San Francisco for the first time in four years. It wasn’t Curry who picked up the MVP award for last season; that honor went to Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets. But who are the contenders for the coveted award this season?

Luka Dončić – Dallas Mavericks

Luka Dončić. Photo by Marca

Despite the aforementioned Jokić winning back-to-back MVP awards in the last two seasons, has there really been a better player than the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Dončić? The Slovenian superstar has had a point average within the league’s top ten for the last two and a half years. And the scary thing is, he’s only getting better.++++++++

In the 2020/21 season, Dončić averaged 27.7 points per game. Last season, he upped that figure to 28.4, good enough for third place in the country, below Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. This season, however, he’s increased his point output even further.

After 24 games so far this term, the Mavs star currently tops the point average rankings with a whopping 32.9 point average. And he will be hoping that his increased output will see his Mavericks go one step further than they did last term.

Last season, the Texas-based outfit made it all the way to the Western Conference finals in the postseason, only to run into Steph Curry and his Golden State Warriors. The California-based side won the series 4-1, before going on to defeat the Celtics to win the biggest prize in the sport.

Jayson Tatum – Boston Celtics

Jayson Tatum. Photo by Sky Sports

There are many reasons why the Boston Celtics have returned to prominence in recent years, and one of the main ones happened back in 2017. That was the year when the Celtics drafted in Jayson Tatum as the third overall pick in that year’s draft. And ever since, one of the NBA’s greatest-ever franchises has gone from strength to strength.

Their upward trajectory culminated with last season’s appearance in the NBA Finals. And although their journey throughout the postseason playoffs ended in heartbreak, it certainly seems to have fired them up for the 2022/23 season. And as you’d expect, Tatum has been crucial to his side’s success.

As we alluded to earlier, the TD Garden-based outfit has been head and shoulders above the competition this term, Tatum has been delivering perhaps his greatest-ever performances this season.

He currently sits in fourth place in the point average rankings with an average of 30.5, and very few players in the country can match his three-point average of 3.4. Don’t be surprised to see Tatum take home both an NBA Championship ring and an MVP award at the end of the season.

Steph Curry – Golden State Warriors

Golden states’ Stephen Curry. [Credit/si.com]

With Curry leading the way, the San Francisco side reached five consecutive NBA Finals series’ between 2015 and 2019, winning three of them. To put that into context, that can only be bettered by the Boston Celtics side of the 1950s and 60s. They reached an unheard-of 10 consecutive championship series’ but let’s not forget that their achievement occurred some 60 years ago.

The sport has developed at an unimaginable rate in those six decades, which makes Curry and his Warrior’s achievements all the more impressive.

Golden State took a three-year hiatus from the NBA Finals following their defeat to the Toronto Raptors back in 2019. But last season, they put themselves back where they belong.

And, of course, Curry was front and center to their success. He landed 187 points throughout the six-game series at an average of 31.2 points per game. For his efforts, Curry was awarded the NBA Finals MVP award for the first time in his career, deservedly so.