--1956 was the first year that the MVP award existed. Johnston did not receive any MVP votes at all, but the voting system used in 1956 and 1957 appears to have been very different from that used in almost every year since then, which it makes it hard to draw a good comparison to later years. In 1956 and 1957, voters simply chose one player, rather than voting for first/second/third place etc. In 1956, only eight players received votes, and Johnston was not one of them. But in modern terms, Johnston essentially didn't get any first-place votes. It's interesting that no one voted for him, but it's impossible to say where he would have finished under a modern-style voting system. I suspect he wouldn't have gone completely voteless.

--Between 1965-66 and 1971-72, the MVP voting records on this web site only list the top five, even though the voting system in use during that era almost certainly resulted in more than five players getting votes. (I'm not sure if the top five is all that the NBA publicly released back in that era, or if somewhere along the line someone compiled the top five for some reference source and that's all that is readily available today.) As a result, all that we can really say about Wilt in '69 is that he wasn't in the Top 5. He probably did receive some votes.

Based on the factors that voters seem to place the most weight on, 1969 has both one of the most unlikely winners and one of the most overlooked predicted winners. It must have been a strange MVP race; I'm guessing that there were just no obvious candidates.

Another year that jumps out at me is 1975. You often hear that Rick Barry should have won that year, but was denied due to his unpopularity. According to this methodology, it looks like McAdoo was a more likely choice than Barry, and Dave Cowens even more likely than either of them. Golden State's relatively unimpressive regular-season record (48 wins) is probably pulling Barry down. The same principle also likely explains why Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1976 and Moses Malone in 1982 are among the most unlikely MVPs. Both put up monster seasons playing for teams that were on the playoff bubble down to the wire (the '82 Rockets just barely squeaked in; the '76 Lakers missed the postseason, though that was due as much to a quirk in the seeding rules in use in '70s as to anything else, as they had a better record than two of the five Western Conference teams that qualified).

IINM, the voting was done by players up until around 1980, then changed to members of the media. From the table above, it doesn't look like this change had much of an effect on the predicted results. Rick Barry and Steve Nash aside, the pre-1980 and post-1980 portions of the chart don't really look much different.

one suggestion might be that you limit it no more than two people per team to more
otherwise i think the top ten gets a little crowded with people from the same high win squad
having carmello on there makes sense
chauncey, not as much, but maybe
kenyon? no way

same with boston

i think this would more accurately reflect the mvp race cause 99 times out of 100 it is going to go to a team's top dog (scorer) maybe not, if they are balanced, other guy is very strong in other areas, but i think it would be really very rare for it to go to the third guy down the line, even on teams with a "big three'

anyway nice work!

I will forever argue that Nash did not deserve either of those awards (I would have given it to him in 2007 though as he deserved it that season). I thought Shaq should have won in 2005 and Kobe in 2006.

Neil, could you list the modeled results for the top 5 from 2005, 2006, and 2007?

I think it is obsurd that Nash will finish with two MVP's while never getting to the finals, let alone winning a ring, while Kobe and Shaq, who were more dominant at their peaks and over a longer time span, won at least 4 titles each, and made six finals appearances, will each only be a one-time winner.

Sorry for the generic response, but it's just the facts.

This is a pretty cool feature. Looks like Wins is the highest-weighted factor.