Is Cade Cunningham the Most Valuable Player in the NBA?

Cade Cunningham MVP talks have been a dominant discussion point among major sports media outlets and social media over the past few days. This is, in large part, due to his 42-point, 13-assist performance in Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, giving the Pistons a 3-0 record against the Knicks this season. As addressed in prior posts, I'm biased toward Cade and the Pistons, because I watch nearly every single one of Detroit's games, but he deserves every bit of the recognition he's receiving. To put it simply, he's undoubtedly the most valuable player on a team that currently has the best record in the NBA. But once a player enters these kinds of talks, a narrative develops, and opinions about the player often become incredibly polarizing.

The main opposing argument I see once a player enters these types of discussions is often centered around how well their team performs without them. In Cade's case, the Pistons are 5-1 without him, which is a very good record. Two of those wins came against the Pacers and Pelicans, who are currently 14th and 15th in their conference standings, respectively. Additionally, two came against the Bulls, who currently sit at 12 in the Eastern Conference. They beat the Sixers and lost to the Clippers without him. I reference all of this purely in response to that argument, because I think there's so much more to consider when it comes to a team's performance without their best player, especially when it's someone who captains an offense.

The front runners for the MVP this year are Shai Gilegeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic (barring disqualification due to missed games). And they fully deserve to be the top two candidates, in my opinion. The Nuggets have a 10-6 record without Jokic this season and the Thunder have a 4-3 record without SGA; two of those three losses came against the Spurs and Rockets, who are 2nd and 4th in the Western Conference, respectively. I'm not saying the Thunder would've also lost those games if Shai was healthy, but those would've been very challenging games to win. Moreover, I'm of the belief that it takes a talented roster to consistently win in the NBA (obviously), but it also takes a talented player to elevate and build confidence in the rest of his team so that, if they're out due to injury or illness, the groundwork is laid for the team to have the confidence to go out and win without them. And I don't want to dig myself a hole by saying that a quality of an MVP-caliber player should be a team's performance without them, but to completely disregard the impact that Shai, Jokic, or Cade have on each of their respective teams, even when they're out, isn't something I generally agree with.

On the other hand, voter fatigue has always been an issue when it comes to season awards. Inevitably, voters and fans, in general, get tired of seeing the same players at the top of the MVP race every year, so when a player like Cade comes along, averaging 26 and 10 on a young, great team that was recently terrible, and drops 40 on primetime in a historically difficult arena to do so, national sports media outlets decide to go all in on him, stating opinions that, as mentioned earlier, are so polarizing that they force fans to pick the extremes of both sides. Do I think Cade deserves to win MVP? Not over SGA. It looks like Jokic and Victor Wembanyama won't be eligible for postseason awards, so I think it's going to be a very interesting race for the second spot between Cade, Luka Doncic, and Jaylen Brown. I'm very excited to see how things unfold.