Manalytics: Predicting NBA titles with MVPs
Introducing a new metric for NBA predictions, and what to expect in the 2023-24 season
Stars matter in basketball more than any other major sport — especially when it comes time for the playoffs. And while we have lots of analytics to try to assess the value of basketball players (WAR, BPM, etc.), it is not evident that existing analytics help us understand which players in the league have the ability to propel their teams to a title.
As media personality Colin Cowherd likes to say, sometimes in sports you have to rely on Manalytics as much as analytics.
In this post, I introduce the Manalytics Score: an indicator of whether an NBA team’s best player is good enough to carry his team to the NBA championship.
Introducing the Manalytics Score
The NBA is filled with stars. Among these stars, some shine, others flicker. The objective of the Manalytics Score is to assess whether a team’s star has enough shine to carry them to an NBA title.
To achieve that, the metric awards teams points based on MVP voting for the last three years. Each team gets points for their highest-vote getting player. Winning the MVP is worth 10 points, coming in second is worth 9, third is worth 8, and so on; with all vote-getting players earning their teams at least 1 point.
Additionally, the MVP winner from four years prior is worth 10 points for their team.
For example, the current champion Denver Nuggets entered the season with a Manalytics Score of 22. Nikola Jokic was the MVP in 2022 and 2021, earning them 10 points each, and he came in 9th in 2020, earning them another 2 points. In 2019 Jokic finished 4th in MVP voting, worth 0 points; only the MVP winner gets points for four seasons prior.
The Manalytics Score has some significant benefits, namely its simplicity, comprehensiveness, and flexibility. The Manalytics Score is simple because anyone can quickly calculate its value for any given team, presuming they have access to the MVP voting history and current team rosters. The Score is comprehensive because MVP voters account for the holistic impact of each player, including aspects of gameplay that could not easily be quantified besides the eye test. And the Score is flexible because it readily adapts to changes in roster composition.
Looking back with Manalytics Score
Looking back over the past six seasons, the Manalytics Score was a near-perfect predictor of which team would emerge from the NBA’s semifinal round. The lone exception being the 2019 NBA finals, when a severely depleted Warriors team, missing 2014 MVP Kevin Durant and splash-brother Klay Thompson, fell to the Kawhi Leonard led Raptors.
Additionally, in each year, the winning team had a score above 10. Meaning that the team had a player who was widely considered to be one of the best five players in the league, in each of the past three seasons. This 10-point threshold is a useful marker for whether a team has enough star power to win a title, as we will see in analysis below.
And also importantly, the Manalytics Score can help us describe what we saw in many of these finals.
For example:
The Heat didn’t have enough star power last year to compete with the Nuggets, but acquiring Damian Lillard—who had a score of 10 when Portland made the semifinals in 2019—would add more star power.
The 21-22 Celtics weren’t ready for the Curry-led warriors. But Jayson Tatum will give the Celtics a Manalytics Score of 12 next year and could be ready to push the Cs over the top.
And the Bubble Lakers score of 17 disguises just how much better they were than their peers that year at the top of the roster. Either one of first-time teammates LeBron and Anthony Davis would have gotten the L.A. over 10 points. The tandem finished 2 and 3 in MVP voting the previous season.
Champions and Manalytics - from Jordan to now.
Ultimately, the metric is intended to be a barometer of whether or not a team can be an NBA champion—not necessarily to differentiate between qualifying teams. Low scores should rule a team out; sufficient scores (10+) should rule a team in as a potential victor. So how has the Manalytics Score fared at ruling-in past champions?
Of the past 28 NBA champions, from the 2023 Denver Nuggets to the 1996 Chicago Bulls, all but 2 (93%) have had a Manalytics Score above 10.
Of champions with Manalytics Scores lower than 10, only the 2004 Detroit Pistons are a true exception. The 2015 Warriors featured surging MVP Steph Curry’s take over of the league. Curry would go on to win the MVP that season and the following season, before allying with Durant to win two more NBA titles.
The Pistons, on the other hand, acquired their lowly 4 Manalytics Score on the back of Ben Wallace’s stout defensive efforts. Their coalition of talent proved to be enough to overthrow a dominant, but disintegrating, Lakers team forced to transition from the Shaq Era to the Kobe Era.
Other scores under 15 include:
The 1997 Bulls (11) - Jordan’s time away from basketball and MVP voters well-documented “Jordan Fatigue” likely artificially lowered this number.
The 2000 Lakers (14) - The coming out year for Kobe Bryant, who would finish top 5 in MVP voting in all but one of the subsequent seasons, until winning the title in 2009.
The 2008 Celtics (12) - The Celtics Big Three season. Garnet would return to form and come in 3rd in MVP voting that year. Pierce, Allen, and Rondo—Garnet’s supporting cast—would ultimately total 9 MVP vote-getting seasons.
The 2014 Spurs (14) - Like the ‘08 Celtics, the Spurs roster was full of MVP vote-getters: including Tim Duncan (MVP in ‘02, ‘03), Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, and emerging star Kawhi Leonard.
The 2022 Warriors (14) - two-time MVP Steph Curry (‘15, ‘16) shoots the lights out of young, starless Boston Celtics team.
Manalytics and Forecasting the ‘24 Championship
Which brings us to the present day. What does the Manalytics Score tell us about the upcoming NBA season? Using 10 points as our threshold, there are six teams we should believe have a shot at an NBA title: Milwaukee (33), Denver (29), Philly (28), Dallas (14), Golden State (13), and Boston (12).
Milwaukee has won the title in the past with a similar roster and ‘19, ‘20 MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo can be the best player in an NBA playoff series. Denver is the reigning NBA champ, led by ‘21, ‘22 MVP Nikola Jokic and looked neigh-invincible on their way to victory this year, dropping only one game in the final two series against the Lakers and Heat. ‘23 MVP Joel Embiid’s team has to figure out the James Harden situation, but the 76ers could be dangerous if Philly can get pieces back in return.
Dallas, Golden State, and Boston are all threatening, with clear paths to a title. All three have added talent (Kyrie Irving, Chris Paul, Kristaps Porzingis) to supplement their stars. And all three will need to hope their leader—Doncic, Curry, Tatum—can get to another level to push them over the top.
Always tell me the odds…
Based on the latest odds at Fan Duel, you can get those 6 teams to win the finals at approximately -200. A $100 bet spread across those six teams will win $50 if any of them hit.