Russell Westbrook will be winning the NBA MVP trophy over James Harden at 99.9% odds thanks to the genius and much appreciated work of Matt Croes.
SB Nation’s crowd-sourcing and canvassing has found 62 of the NBA’s 100 first place votes for 2017 MVP. They use this considerable sample size to estimate the MVP race, after 62 first place votes, to be at:
Russell Westbrook: 522
James Harden: 456
View their comprehensive spreadsheet of votes and their methodology here
With all the data they’d managed to accumulate they asked an associate professor of statistics at Wheelock College, Dr. Samuel Cook, to provide odds.
With 59 total first place votes counted, Dr. Cook projects if the remaining 41 first and second place votes only go to Harden and Westbrook, and each voter puts Harden in 1st with probability 50%, then in 10,000 simulations Westbrook wins 99.9% of the time.
This probability drops minimally to 98.9% if you assume Westbrook will get more 3rd place votes than Harden at the current trend.
Matt continues
“At odds like that, even if we’ve made three or four mistakes in our canvassing, crowd-sourcing or estimations it’s not enough to derail this prediction.”
No matter the result of the Rockets-Thunder series Russell Westbrook has won the MVP award.
Still not convinced? Read the entire article and look at the numbers for yourself.
The question will be now, does Westbrook deserve the MVP award? He will be the first player in NBA history to win an MVP as a 6 seed.