Valueable: The only reason the word has ever mattered in sports is because in 1911 the MLB decided to call its best player of the year award the “Most Valuable Player.” Since then debate has raged on about deserved winners, the greatest MVP seasons ever, and the greatest non-MVP winning seasons ever - which I think might be over semanticky, even for this. If there are two front runners for an MVP award, they are almost always separated by at least two things: stats, and supporting cast. Unless it’s baseball, who’s inherent lack of offensive teamwork dumbs down the word to its intended meaning, good for them. Sometimes a third variable enters the debate, but both have to have it to an extent - team success. Nobody knows the exact recipe that makes up value, but that’s by design, value likes keeping people on their toes. Value changes year to year, and team to team.

Despite this, it’s in our nature to give structure to the unknown, so we tried holding some rules high in the courts of MVP voting. Recent developments include quarterbacks always win, and your team has to be good, at least. That one could use some more definition.

Sometimes the player with the lesser stats wins because they just had such a miraculous job working with, for lack of a meaner term, less. The common refrain is doing more with ‘less.’

Here are two examples in back to back seasons that surely have decided on what it means to be ‘most valuable’.

In 2024, Lamar Jackson threw for 41 touchdowns to 4 interceptions. He won the first team all pro quarterback nod, and Josh Allen won MVP.

“The Bills didn’t have an elite defense. The Bills had a very good run game, not a great run game. They didn’t have elite perimeter players in any regard” (Dan Orlovsky, MVP voter).

That might look similar to a tweet from a mere year after, pining for Drake Maye to beat Matthew Stafford in an even more contested race, a race that Maye would not win.

“Drake Maye clearly performed better than Matthew Stafford vs common opponents and top pass defenses - despite a worse OL, receivers, and far worse running game.” — (@Pat_Thorman) on X

It would be unfair to not at least give a footnote to Maye’s comically easy schedule, but he also led the league in completion percentage. There’s a footnote with a qualification.

Not even to say this is a ridiculous outcome. People will often cite the ‘career achievement award’ or ‘voter fatigue,’ opposite sides of the same, sport dominated coin. These are semantics on semantics, but they basically mean that either one player has won it too much (LeBron?) or that a player is ‘due’ (another classic) after their already illustrious career (Stafford, Allen, or Joel Embiid).

If an argument has asked the question “what is value,” then it’s already gone too far, because that implies either it changed since last month (giving it no real meaning at all), or we know deep down what it is when we look at it (which renders any definition useless anyway). My Take: It would be easy to say that the word is doing too much for what’s essentially a ‘player of the year’ award, but I actually think it captures the spirit of sports. Top tier players are always coveted, but in general what’s considered ‘valuable’ for the bulk of the game does actually change as teams adapt to stop what’s working.

LaMelo Ball and Ja Morant were just traded for about 50% of the packages Desmond Bane and Mikal Bridges fetched. I think everyone would agree the quality difference in these players doesn’t quite account for the difference in the trade return. I wonder what omnipresent and hardly quantifiable thing fills in the gap? Bridges’ and Bane’s value to the Magic and Knicks.

Here’s another way to define it, on a completely different but appropriate plane. Not that Josh Allen misses games, but in 2024 the voters were essentially saying that with league average quarterbacks at the helm, the Ravens would have out performed the Bills.

Because I said it was too much earlier, here’s a list of my Top 5 MVP seasons that didn’t win MVP: Lamar in 2024 - 41/4 TD/INT 4172 Yds and 900 rushing Lebron in 2005 - 31.4 / 6.6 / 7 Tom Brady in 2016 and 2021 - 28/2 TD/INT | 43 TDs 5316 Yards 44 Years old Shohei in 2022 - a perfect example of the old adage ‘as long as he plays he’s the most valuable player in the sport’ 34 HRs with a 2.22 ERA 2018 James Harden - 36.1 / 6.6 / 7.1

HM. In 1961-62 Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 and 26, despite his best efforts I don’t care enough to put it on the actual list. Congrats to Bill Russell.