The 2025-26 NBA campaign has been one of the most exciting early starts to a season in a long time. There are historically great starts, new contenders emerging, real parity in both conferences and brand-new superstars budding in real time. On top of all that, the MVP race might be as compelling as it has been in recent memory. The overall level of talent in the NBA is clearly at an all-time high, but the talent at the very top can stand next to almost any era.

As of now, there are a few different MVP tiers. The clear top tier is made up of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic, three players who already feel like generational talents. Sitting just behind them, or maybe straddling the line between that top tier and the next one, is Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has the résumé and production to belong in that group but does not yet have the team success this season to match it. He also may not reach the 65-game threshold to be eligible.

Jokic is making a case not only as possibly the most skilled center ever but also as one of the best offensive players the league has ever seen. He is averaging a triple-double comprised of roughly 29 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists per game on outrageous efficiency, leading the league in both rebounds and assists as a center, which is absurd even in this era. He is arguably the best offensive engine the league has ever seen in the frontcourt.

The differentiator for Jokic has always been simple. Denver wins his minutes by a massive margin. That has basically been the Nuggets’ story for years. When Jokic is on the floor, Denver looks like a dominant team that quite literally does not lose many stretches of basketball. When he sits, the team often just tries to survive until he checks back in. It almost does not matter which four you put around him, the Jokic minutes are going to win. The non-Jokic minutes are where Denver can crumble. 

So his value is not just the box score, it’s that everything about the Nuggets’ identity collapses without him. For the vast majority of the last half-decade, he has lived in the top two or three of the MVP conversation, and this year is no different.

But the player he lost the MVP to last season has also leveled up. 

Gilgeous-Alexander is coming off a historic campaign where he won regular season MVP, then backed it up with an NBA Championship and Finals MVP. Now he has somehow taken another step forward. Through the first quarter of this season, he is averaging over 30 points per game with strong assist and rebound numbers on efficiency that flirts with 50-40-90 while still carrying true primary-creator usage. The Thunder is 24-1 with a massive net rating, sitting in the same statistical neighborhood as some of the best regular-season teams in league history and already being talked about as a realistic threat to win 70-plus games.

That case looks even stronger the more you zoom in. Gilgeous-Alexander is near the top of the league in scoring, lives at the free throw line and has turned his 3-point shot from a nitpick into a real weapon by knocking down more than 45% of his triples on respectable volume. He takes incredible care of the ball – historically good, in fact – drives an elite offense without gaudy assist totals and still completely controls games. In the clutch, he leads the league in total clutch points despite the fact that he is resting nearly half of the team’s fourth quarters because the Thunder is blowing its opponents out.

Then there is Doncic.

He’s the player many assumed would already have an MVP on the shelf at this stage in his career, but simply doesn’t. Now, Doncic is in a spot where the narrative and the numbers finally line up. There is always some level of story that sneaks into any NBA award. Voters are human. They love a good arc.

For Doncic, that arc is pretty incredible. He was the centerpiece of one of the wildest star trades in recent memory, he is now in his first full season with the Lakers and he has essentially taken the torch from LeBron James in real time. The Lakers have been, for most of this early stretch, the clear second-best team in the Western Conference behind the Thunder, and Doncic is leading the league in scoring while producing in the ballpark of a 35-9-9 line.

Like the other two, he is not perfect. The criticism tends to live on the defensive end, where he can still be targeted. But offensively, he is the definition of a walking mismatch. He can punish switches in the post, hit deep threes off the dribble, snake pick-and-rolls, create late-clock looks out of nothing and get to the free-throw line at will. Drawing fouls is somehow talked about as a negative in modern discourse, but if you are getting to the line and living in the bonus, that is a huge positive for your offense. His shot profile is advanced, the efficiency is strong and he is doing it all while integrating new teammates and adjusting James into more of a connector role.

There is a very real path where, if the Lakers stay near the top of the West and his production holds, this is finally the year where he gets his first MVP.

But then there’s also Antetokounmpo, who enters the conversation quietly as the wild card in this current three-man race.

On pure production and track record, Antetokounmpo belongs right next to Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Doncic. He is a former MVP, a former champion and is once again putting up the kind of numbers that would headline the race in many seasons. The problem is simple with his current case. The Bucks are not winning enough. Historically, being on a middling or outright losing team is a non-starter in the MVP conversation, no matter how spectacular the individual stats are. He’s also out with an injury and may not end up being eligible for the award, given how many games he could miss.

Regardless, Antetokounmpo feels like he is teetering between that top tier and the tier below. The box score case is there. The talent case is obvious. The résumé is undeniable. What is missing right now is a win profile that can stand next to Oklahoma City, Denver or Los Angeles. That is why his candidacy is so interesting. If Milwaukee suddenly turns its season around and rips off a sustained run, Antetokounmpo will vault back into that top-tier conversation in a hurry.

The other twist is the possibility, however remote or messy, that he is traded. There have been plenty of reports and rumors about his long-term status with the Bucks. If Antetokounmpo were to land on a team that is winning at a higher level than Milwaukee is today, the ripple effect on this race would be enormous. Drop that exact statistical profile onto a roster that is tracking toward 55 or 60 wins and suddenly this turns from a three-man race into a four-man one.

It would be fairly unprecedented for a player to win MVP in a season in which he is traded and plays for two different teams, but again, the award is driven as much by narrative as anything else. Antetokounmpo changing teams, entering a bigger spotlight or a more stable situation, and immediately driving high-end winning would be an almost irresistible story for voters. When you start thinking about this race in those terms, his name keeps floating back into that top tier even if the current Bucks record pulls him down a half-step.

Behind that group of MVP frontrunners, another tier is crowded with players who probably will not win the award this season, but whose production at least deserves to be mentioned in the conversation and makes this MVP conversation even more exciting.

Cade Cunningham has taken the leap everyone was waiting for, and then some. Detroit sits at the top of the East, and Cunningham has already stacked the kind of month-long stretch that gets you on MVP radars, with high-20s scoring, elite playmaking and strong efficiency during a long Pistons win streak. He is near the top of the league in assists and already sits high on the clutch scoring leaderboard. That is the classic heliocentric guard on a surprise No. 1 seed type of profile that typically wins MVP in other years.

Tyrese Maxey is in a similar boat in terms of breaking into a new star tier. Philadelphia has been inconsistent again, which hurts his case, but from a pure production standpoint, he is over 30 points and around seven assists per game, near the very top of the scoring leaderboard while shooting well from the field and from deep. He has clearly taken over as the number one option and is having the kind of breakout season that would get a lot more attention in a different MVP environment.

Victor Wembanyama belongs in the discussion too, even if the 65-game rule might ultimately knock him out of the actual race as well. Before his recent calf injury, Wembanyama was putting up massive scoring and rebounding numbers with elite shot blocking, anchoring one of the most disruptive defenses in the league and lifting San Antonio into relevance in the Western Conference. On a per-minute basis, his impact absolutely belongs in the same conversation as the top three MVP names. 

His problem is availability. If he cannot clear the games-played threshold, both his MVP and Defensive Player of the Year cases will be defined more by “what if” than anything else.

You can go even deeper. Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell and others are having seasons that, in a normal year, would at least get you a cameo in the MVP chatter depending on how the standings shake out. 

Only one player can win the award, so there has to be some level of tiering. But when you stack it all together, this is shaping up to be the most competitive MVP race in recent history. There are three generational stars in Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Doncic fighting it out at the very top, along with Antetokounmpo lurking just behind them with a résumé that could easily push him into that group. Then there’s a handful of rising stars nipping at their heels who are not that far away from forcing their way into that tier in the next year or two.

Luckily for basketball fans, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious runaway favorite for MVP in the first half of the season. It feels like the league is watching several all-time careers intersect in their primes, with the rest of the next generation not far behind.