There are star players who will try to add to their MVP counts in the 2025-26 campaign. Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Milwaukee Bucks big man Giannis Antetokounmpo stand out as players who have already won the award and have realistic chances to capture it again.
However, there are also some stars around the league who are still searching for the award for the first time and will hope to beat out some former winners for the hardware in the upcoming season.
Heading into the new campaign, Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards and San Antonio Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama may be the stars with the best chances of becoming a first-time MVP at the NBA level.
Let’s rank these three young stars in order based on the likelihood that they will be named the MVP of the league in the 2025-26 campaign.
3. Victor Wembanyama
Now recovered from his blood clot scare that shortened his 2024-25 campaign, Wembanyama may be ready to make his biggest statement yet in his third NBA season.
Wembanyama has made an enormous all-around impact ever since he stepped foot in the league (he’s averaging 22.5 points per game for his career and has led the league in blocks twice already), and all signs point to him doing the same in the 2025-26 season.
Simply put, there might not be a player in the league who brings more of a two-way impact to the table than Wembanyama.
Offensively, he’s a gifted scorer who can put the ball through the net both inside and outside the 3-point line, and as a sophomore, he showed a level of willingness to shoot the ball from deep that is uncommon among players of his stature. He attempted a whopping 8.8 3s per game and made them at a respectable rate of 35.2 percent.
Meanwhile, he’s already cemented himself as an elite defender, and it should be a scary thought for the rest of the league to imagine how many blocks per game he will be able to average when he’s at the height of his powers. He averaged 3.6 per game as a rookie and 3.8 per game as a sophomore.
But Wembanyama is ranked last on this list because it’s unclear if the Spurs will be able to enjoy enough collective success in the 2025-26 season for him to win MVP. San Antonio isn’t lacking in talent, but many of the team’s best players are young guys who might not be ready to win at a high level in the league just yet.
2. Anthony Edwards
Unlike Wembanyama, Edwards has been in the running for MVP already, but he has never finished better than seventh in voting for the award. Hopefully, with the Timberwolves looking to remain heavyweights in an improved Western Conference compared to a season ago, an extra-motivated Edwards will change his MVP fortunes soon.
Edwards is one of the premier scorers in all of basketball. In a game that’s about buckets, Edwards is as difficult a cover as any player in the league, and an especially big scoring season from him could give him a compelling case for MVP. He has never averaged 30-plus points per game in an NBA season, but he seemingly has the skill set needed to hit that benchmark.
There’s a possibility that Edwards has a 2025-26 campaign similar to Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP season in the sense that he ends up among the league’s leading scorers and leads the Timberwolves to one of the top records in the Western Conference. Last season, Edwards averaged 27.6 points per game, and Minnesota fell just shy of 50 wins.
Moving forward, Edwards has the supporting cast around him necessary to stack up plenty of wins in the regular season. He has big men Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert playing alongside him and strong role players to complement Minnesota’s stars.
1. Luka Doncic
Doncic is easily the most accomplished player on this list. He’s a five-time All-Star, five-time All-NBA selectee and the only one of the three players mentioned to play in an NBA Finals. The Slovenian has also come the closest to winning an MVP award out of the trio, as he finished with the third-most votes in the 2023-24 season, when he took home the league’s scoring crown.
The 26-year-old is the NBA star with the best chance of winning his first MVP award in the coming season for multiple reasons. For one, he has a unique knack for stuffing the stat sheet that Wembanyama and Edwards don’t possess. Wembanyama and Edwards certainly aren’t one-trick ponies, but Doncic gives the term “jack of all trades” a new meaning.
Yes, Wembanyama is a double-double threat who also regularly rejects several shots per game, and yes, Edwards is capable of racking up points, rebounds and assists, but Doncic is a player who can put up a 30-point triple-double like it’s nothing.
Not only that, but the former Dallas Mavericks star has also had a big offseason as he’s worked to get his body to a championship level. That should only help him moving forward.
Meanwhile, the Lakers are improved on paper compared to the squad that won 50 games and secured the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference a season ago. Los Angeles has a definitive starting center now (Deandre Ayton) as well as a defensive ace to help cover for Doncic on that end of the floor (Marcus Smart).
With the Lakers looking formidable on paper, an impressive 2025-26 regular season looks very possible for the storied franchise, and it’s difficult to believe Doncic wouldn’t receive heavy consideration for the MVP hardware in such a scenario when combined with his penchant for acting as a Swiss Army knife on the floor.
