With the Milwaukee Bucks and most of the NBA halfway through the regular season, who is the MVP so far? Is it Giannis Antetokounmpo?
Way back in early October, before the NBA season had officially begun, Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo was getting a lot of pre-season buzz about being a possible Most Valuable Player (MVP) award candidate.
With Giannis now playing under a new, proven head coach and LeBron James taking his talents West to Los Angeles, there was a king-sized hole in the Eastern Conference that many predicted Antetokounmpo would fill.
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The hype became so prevalent that I decided to write a piece about Giannis and his MVP chances, essentially laying out what I believed it would take for Giannis to take home the NBA’s most prestigious individual player award.
With the Bucks victory over the Rockets in Houston on Wednesday night, the Bucks improved to 29-11 in what was their 40th game of the regular season. They followed that up with a loss, without Antetokounmpo, against the Wizards and are now exactly halfway through the 82-game regular season, which seems as good a time as any to revisit Giannis’ MVP campaign.
So, as a bit of a callback, I’m going to go through what I predicted Giannis must do in order to win MVP and determine if Giannis has met those requirements or is on his way to achieving them, so far.
Why? Well, because it’s fun to look back on what we thought of Giannis and the Bucks in pre-season, and also because I think I made some pretty good points and it’s a good barometer to gauge Giannis’ MVP candidacy.
Now, let’s go step-by-step through what I said Giannis had to do to win MVP.