It's Victor Wembanyama vs. Time (Among Others) for the NBA MVP

The biggest limiting factor in Big Vic's attempt to bring an MVP to San Antonio is his minutes load. The other contenders are big issues, too, though. Here's our preseason MVP longlist.

Good morning. Let's basketball.

Five out of 100 voters picked Victor Wembanyama as their MVP last season. That, plus plenty of second- and third-place votes landed Big Vic No. 3 in the final voting, behind the incredible Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (back-to-back MVPs, 83 first-place votes) and the supernatural Nikola Jokic (10 first-place votes, a sixth straight top-2 finish). Wembanyama wasn't exactly a revelation in 2025-26 – there was rampant evidence he was changing the sport and his team's fortunes from Day 1 of his rookie season – but there was an acceleration to his potential dominance of the league. This was capped by a tremendous Game 7 victory over Shai's Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, and then only slightly undercut by the Knicks' dramatic defeat of the Spurs in five in the Finals.

The biggest knock on Wembanyama from an MVP voting perspective is that he has and is expected to play fewer minutes than other candidates. To wit, last season he was the only player among the eight to receive MVP votes who averaged fewer than 30 minutes per game. He finished the season with 400 fewer minutes than Shai or Jokic, the latter despite Joker playing only one more game than Wembanyama. If this pattern holds, with the Spurs among the best teams in the league and the impacts broadly being seen as equivalent among them, then Victor Wembanyama is literally in a battle against time as to whether he will win MVP. It's a question of how heavy-handed the Spurs will be in resting him, or being cautious with any minor injury, and it's a question of whether Mitch Johnson will let him get to 32, 34, 36 minutes when necessary before the playoffs. (Wembanyama averaged 34 minutes per game in the playoffs.) You want Victor healthy in the playoffs, because the Spurs can win it all, and that's the goal, not individual hardware. But the individual hardware is nice.

It's not time alone, though: Shai won the 2025-26 MVP outright. He didn't get it because Wembanyama played 400 fewer minutes: Shai was incredible, possibly better than he'd been a year prior when he won the 2024-25 MVP outright. Jokic has experienced this as well: he would win an MVP, then go and have an even better season. He's now two seasons removed from his last MVP, having won three in four years (with the lost one going to rival Joel Embiid in a decision many non-voters [but not me] continue to question).

Wembanyama is fighting playing time limits for MVP consideration. He's also fighting one of the best scorers of the modern era in Shai, and perhaps the greatest and weirdest offensive engine of the modern era in Jokic.

And he's fighting a bunch more rivals, any of whom could enter the conversation for MVP, though they'll all have uphill battles against these three. Here is your 2026-27 NBA MVP preseason longlist.