NBA futures: Jayson Tatum for MVP at odds of +5000 may be a worthy wager

Media members who vote for NBA postseason awards like to reward winning. And no team is winning quite like the Boston Celtics. 

They lead the Eastern Conference by 9 1/2 games, they have a five-game winning streak, and they have home games Monday against Detroit (easy win) and a home game Wednesday against Milwaukee (with Giannis Antetokounmpo coming off a DNP last night), and then they head out on a six-game road trip wit only one tough opponent — New Orleans. 

If they win those next eight games, they will be 61-14.

And although Tatum has a terrific supporting cast, he is the best player on the best team, and awards voters are going to have a difficult time leaving any Celtics off their ballots.

There is currently only one member of the Celtics with relatively low odds. According to ESPN BET, Coach Joe Mazzulla is +650 to win Coach of the Year, but Mark Daigneault is the heavy favorite with a line of -450. In fact, there are minus lines for Defensive Player of the Year (Rudy Gobert; -800), Rookie of the Year (Victor Wembanyana: -5000), Most Improved Player (Tyrese Maxey -175), Sixth Man of the Year (Malik Monk: -350) and Clutch Player (DeMar DeRozan -190).

That leaves one and only one award contest that has the possibility of being close, and right now Nikola Jokic (-275), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+380) and Luka Doncic (+650) are the three favorites for obvious reasons. 

Tatum is +5000.

Doncic leads the NBA in scoring for a Mavs team that has won five of six to move into a virtual tie for sixth place in the West, Gilgeous-Alexander is second in scoring for the Western Conference-leading Thunder, and Jokic has 21 triple-doubles for a Denver Nuggets team that is just a half-game behind the Thunder (OKC owns the tiebreaker from having won the season series 3-1).  

So, let's look at the past 10 MVPs and what won them the award:

• 2023: Joel Embiid led the league in scoring (33.1), and there was a hesitancy among voters to make Jokic the first player to win three MVPs in a row since Larry Bird from 1984-86. 
• 2022: Jokic picked up his second straight MVP because he came within 0.6 assists of averaging a triple-double.
• 2021: Jokic garnered 91 of 101 first-place votes and played 72 games, 21 more than second-place finisher Embiid. The league's best record belonged to the Utah Jazz.
• 2020: Giannis Antetokoumpo was the choice of 85 voters and LeBron James got 16 first-place votes as the Greek Freak shot .553 and grabbed 5.8 more rebounds than James. The Bucks had a leagu-best 56-17 record.
• 2019: The Bucks had the best record in the league, 60-22, and Giannis outpolled LeBron 85-16. James Harden, wo led the league in scoring at 34.3 points per game, did not get any first place votes.
• 2018: James Harden averaged 30.4 points for a Houston Rockets team that finished 65-17, giving them six more victories than any other team. LeBron James got 15 first-place votes for the third consecutive year.
• 2017: Russell Westbrook became the first player since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double, led the league in scoring (31.0) and garnered 69 first-place votes to Harden's 22.
• 2016: Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors became the first unanimous winner of the award after his team posted an incredible 72-9 record.
• 2015: Curry received 100 fist-place votes to Harden's 25, mostly because the Warriors won the West by 11 games over Harden's Rockets. 

The common denominators for those 10 years were finishing with the league's best record, or finishing with a statistical abnormality. Tatum will likely check one of those boxes because Boston had six fewer losses than Oklahoma City. They teams play each other once more, on April 3, and OKC won the first meeting back on Jan. 2 when Gilgeous-Alexander outscored Tatum 36-30.

We would be remiss to fail to mention that +5000 MVP odds on the best player on the best team is curious, to say the least.