During the NBA’s All-Star break, we wanted to check in on how the award races are shaping up for MVP and various other individual accolades.
So we reached out to our trusted peers to provide some of their thoughts.
Our panel included 32 writers who cover the NBA in different capacities across USA TODAY. You can see exactly who participated in this exercise at the end of this page, but we have voters from our staff as well as a dozen other publications within USA TODAY’s vast network.
The voting system was exactly the same one the NBA uses, although the league is able to get official ballots from more voters than the group that we surveyed.
MVP calculations were as follows: First-place votes were worth ten points, second-place votes were worth seven points, third-place votes were worth five points, fourth-place votes were four points, and fifth-place votes were one point.
For all other awards, first-place votes received five points while second-place votes received three points and third-place votes received one point. We plan to release another version of this exercise at the end of the season and we can track how things have changed.