The MVP case for Victor Wembanyama

Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

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Fact or Fiction: There is an easy MVP case for Victor Wembanyama

I wanted to dust off our Points Defended metric, if only to see how well San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama is performing, but why not take it a step further and check if his defensive effort is so superior that it makes him the year’s NBA MVP?

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In other words: Is the difference between Wembanyama’s defense and Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s defense more significant than the difference between Gilgeous-Alexander’s offense and Wembanyama’s offense?

Here we are to answer those questions.

First, I ran Wembanyama through our Points Defended system, along with everyone else in the running for Defensive Player of the Year. That list, according to BetMGM’s odds, includes only Wembanyama (-5000), Chet Holmgren (+1400), Rudy Gobert (+10000), Scottie Barnes (+15000) and Bam Adebayo (+25000). Funny enough, and maybe not coincidentally, that is also the order they finished in Points Defended …

(Reminder: Points Defended estimates how many points a player directly saved over the course of a game. It takes into account steals, blocks, charges drawn, every shot defended, defensive rebounding percentage differential and defensive plus-minus.)

There is some debate about who should finish second in the DPOY race, at least by this metric. Holmgren has defended more points per game, while Gobert, who has played seven more games than his counterpart in OKC, defended more total points.

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But there is no argument about where Wembanyama stands in this race. About as tall as he stands in life. Almost 40% better than his next closest competitor, in fact.

Preventing 10 points per game may not seem so significant, but it is enough to turn a bottom-five defense into a top-five one, and that feels about right for Wembanyama.

But how much more impactful is he on defense than Gilgeous-Alexander? Well, we ran SGA through our Points Defended metric, too, and he returned a 5.07, better than Adebayo, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. Which makes plenty of sense.

While Adebayo is the anchor of the NBA’s 11th-rated defense, Gilgeous-Alexander is a piece of the league’s top-rated outfit (by far). He has more steals and more blocks than Adebayo, and opponents are shooting well below season averages when defended by SGA, both from inside and outside the 3-point line. He is not their primary defender against opposing team’s best players; not often is Adebayo, either.

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Point is: Gilgeous-Alexander is much more impactful defensively than we consider.

And still Wembanyama is almost twice as impactful.

This would be significant if, indeed, defense were 50% of the game. Some argue it is, and technically they are right. But the name of the game is putting a ball in a basket, and players have full control over doing that on offense; they do not have full control over preventing it on defense, even if Wembanyama feels like five defenders at once.

Even if Wembanyama is roaming free, altering more shots than he blocks, forcing attempts from less advantageous locations on the floor, he is not directly impacting as many points as Gilgeous-Alexander creates, because we can quantify that, too.

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Between points scored and points assisted, we can also calculate how many Points Created a certain player has amassed on offense per game, which is what we did for each of the top MVP candidates, including Gilgeous-Alexander and Wembanyama.

Would you look at that: Gilgeous-Alexander is about 50% more impactful on offense than Wembanyama, by this math. Meanwhile, Jokić and Dončić are even more impactful offensively than Gilgeous-Alexander, which raises an interesting question.

Is offense so much more valuable than defense that Jokić and Dončić actually warrant more serious consideration for this season’s MVP award? Points Impacted — or, Points Created plus Points Defended — would suggest that, indeed, they do.

What this metric posits, however, is that, if you are considering offense more valuable than defense in your MVP argument between Gilgeous-Alexander and Wembanyama, then how significantly are you weighing offense? So much so, in fact, that you should then consider voting for Jokić or Dončić over Gilgeous-Alexander.

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If, on the other hand, you weigh defense equally with offense, then you must consider this: Wembanyama is almost twice as impactful as Gilgeous-Alexander on defense, while SGA is only 50% more impactful than Wembanyama on offense.

In other words: If you think defense is 50% of the game, then obviously Wemby is the MVP. If you think offense is a meaningful majority of the game, then Gilgeous-Alexander may not even be the MVP; Jokić or Dončić might have even better cases.

That is both an argument for Wembanyama and one against Gilgeous-Alexander, which is what you are looking for if you are a fan of those second-place Spurs.

Now, neither Points Defended nor Points Impacted is the end of an MVP debate. We can argue in circles about intangibles, such as leadership, and those are real things that are reflected in the standings, where SGA’s Thunder are the league’s best team.

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But if your argument is based on statistics, you must answer a popular question among NBA intelligentsia at this point: Is defense really 50% of the game? And if you answer in the affirmative, your MVP argument for Wembanyama is an easy one. If you answer in the negative, though, your case for Gilgeous-Alexander is not as clear.

What we’re saying: Be careful which argument you make, for it may not be the one you intend. There are cases to be made for each of the top candidates — Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama, Jokić or Dončić — no matter what a straw poll might say.

Determination: Fact. There is an easy MVP case for Wembanyama, just as there is an easy one for Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić or Dončić. Just depends on how you make it.