NBA Finals MVP rankings: Karl-Anthony Towns, Jalen Brunson make it a two-man race

With the New York Knicks leading the San Antonio Spurs 2-0, now’s a good time to take a look at where the Finals MVP race stands. It’s early, sure, but it could get late quick. If the Spurs lose on Monday, the series is basically over, at which point the only question will be which Knick takes home the Bill Russell trophy. Right now, it’s a two-man race. If the Spurs can pull off a Game 3 win, Victor Wembanyama becomes more realistic. But for now, let’s look at our options:

1. Karl-Anthony Towns

• Game 1: 18 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block
• Game 2: 21 points, 13 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block, 1 steal

Towns entered the series as a massive underdog to take home Finals MVP. He’s not the oddsmakers’ favorite just yet, but his odds have jumped to +165 (via FanDuel). For good reason, too. All things considered, he’s been the best player in this series. With 37 points on 27 shots, KAT has been more efficient than Jalen Brunson, a beast on the glass, and his defense against Victor Wembanyama has been a revelation. 

Towns isn’t doing anything flashy defensively. It’s been a hard-hat effort to, first of all, force Wemby to catch the ball farther from the basket than he wants to start from. From there, Towns has moved his feet when Wemby has tried to attack downhill and stonewalled his drives with great physicality. It has forced Wemby into a lot of fadeaways and jump shots in general, which is exactly what the Knicks want. 

Through two games, Wembanyama has taken more shots outside of the paint (22) than inside the paint (20) and is shooting 40.5% from the field, down from 51% over the first three rounds of the playoffs. That’s not all Towns, but he deserves the lion’s share of the credit. 

Meanwhile, he has attacked Wembanyama on offense from the outset of this series in a way that just about every other player has avoided. The Spurs are obviously concerned with Towns’ shooting (and they should be; he was 3 for 5 from 3 in Game 2) because Wemby has been aggressively pressing up on him, and Towns has used that tight pressure to his advantage to put the ball on the floor and beat Wemby to the basket multiple times. 

Towns has been outstanding throughout the playoffs. His +8.0 estimated plus-minus trails only Wemby for the postseason’s top mark, per Dunks and Threes. In real numbers, the Knicks are +25 through the first two games of this series with KAT on the floor. That’s the best mark on the team. Small-sample point differentials do not always tell an accurate story, but in this case they do. Towns has been the Knicks’ most impactful player, and right now, Finals MVP is his award to lose. 

2. Jalen Brunson

• Game 1: 30 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists
• Game 2: 20 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, 5 steals

Brunson hasn’t had an efficient series against a San Antonio defense that is pressuring him all over with wing defenders ready to pinch down on his drives and with Wemby constantly hovering. In Game 1, he missed 13 of his first 18 shots and needed 31 attempts for his 30 points. 

No matter. When it was time to play hero, Brunson hit five of nine shots for 13 fourth-quarter points, including what was probably the biggest shot of the game to give New York the lead with under two minutes to play. 

This pump-fake, step-through rainbow over Devin Vassell was a piece of footwork art and pretty much sealed the win. 

In Game 2, Brunson was again inefficient on 7-of-25 shooting. And again it didn’t matter as he made the money plays with two huge fourth-quarter buckets and what proved to be the game-winning steal (one of his five) and free throw. This high-arcing one-legged fallaway to tie the game with under 40 seconds to play looked like Dirk Nowitzki had inhabited the body of a 6-foot-2 left-handed point guard. 

Less than 20 seconds later, Brunson came up with the steal heard ’round the world, got fouled, and hit the free throw that gave New York the 105-104 win. 

Everyone is going to remember his play as Wembanyama’s Chris Webber moment, but look at the positioning of Brunson. He has just missed the shot that could’ve put New York ahead, and instead of hanging his head, he has his eyes up and alert. Even if Wemby completes this pass to Stephon Castle, Brunson is in perfect position to take a charge along the sideline. 

This guy is such a winner. Nobody cares about his “inefficient” box scores. Brunson is getting mauled by San Antonio’s defenders and playing right through it, forcing multiple guys to account for him, opening everything else up, and he hasn’t taken his foot off the gas for one second in this series. 

Again, Towns deserves to be the Finals MVP leader with his defensive work being the separator, but Brunson, contrary to his reputation, has had a great defensive series as well. In Game 1, the Spurs shot just 1 of 14 with him as the primary defender, but he did his best work with hard show-and-recovers to avoid getting isolated and, as mentioned, he had five steals in Game 2. 

Towns and Brunson are neck and neck for this award. Given his clutch performances and the recency bias that most voters employ, if Brunson has a couple of big, efficient scoring games to close out this series and KAT has a pedestrian one, he is probably still going to walk away with Finals MVP. 

3. Victor Wembanyama

• Game 1: 26 points, 12 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, 1 steal
• Game 2: 29 points, 9 rebounds, 4 blocks, 2 assists, 2 steals

Wembanyama has not played well in this series overall, and yet he’s putting up monster numbers and the Spurs have still won his total minutes. That’s how good he is. His 55 points have come on 42 shots. He’s missed 11 of his 15 3-pointers, has been forced to take more shots outside the paint (22) than inside (20), and his struggles in the clutch have also been glaring. 

Still, the traditional numbers bear repeating. If the Spurs come back to win this thing (which isn’t impossible; the Bucks lost the first two Finals games in 2021 and came back to win the next four), the guy averaging 27.5 points and 10.5 rebounds while being the most destructive defensive player in the floor is going to win MVP, especially when you consider that the Spurs definitely aren’t coming back to win this series unless Wemby plays huge the rest of the way. 

The Spurs are hoping his second-half surge in Game 2, when he scored 22 of his 29 points and was finally able to get back to asserting himself around the rim the way he did early in the game, will continue. Towns has been bodying his drives with great effectiveness, bumping Wembanyama off his line if not standing him up in his tracks, but the patience Wembanyama exhibited on this big bucket, gathering himself after Towns has stoned his initial foray and using his long reach and stellar footwork to spin back left, was tremendous. 

And any time he can catch in transition with a head of steam and nobody directly in front of him, it’s going to be tough to stop him. He has to look to do more of this moving forward, if not in transition then just attacking quickly in the half court instead of sizing up defenders. Because all he needs is one step of leverage downhill. From there, his length is nearly impossible to defend. 

For a second, that looked like it was going to be the game-winning play. It didn’t turn out that way, but the Spurs have to hope the momentum Wembanyama created down the stretch of Game 2 carries over as the series shifts to New York for Game 3 on Monday in what is obviously a must-win situation. No team in history has recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series, let alone the Finals. It’s not happening against a team that hasn’t lost a single playoff game in six weeks. 

Two long shots

OG Anunoby: He’s had an efficient 17 points in both games. He was huge with 12 points in the fourth quarter of Game 1. He’s made five 3s at a 42% clip and has six stocks (three steals and three blocks). It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Towns or Brunson winning MVP if the Knicks win, but if they were to totally fall off, and the 2-0 lead proves to be a big enough cushion for the Knicks to hold on despite that star decline, and if Anunoby were to get red hot the way we know he can to pick up the slack, hey, crazier things have happened. 

Dylan Harper: Harper has played well in both games. The Spurs are +7 over his 60 total minutes. When he has left the court in this series, the offense has cratered by 8.4 points per 100 possessions, while the defense has doubled that decline from a downright suffocating 96.9 rating with Harper on the court to 113.3 with him off. In Game 2, the Spurs outscored the Knicks by 12 points with Harper on and lost by 13 with him off. There’s your one-point win for the Knicks. Harper is averaging 15.5 points and seven assists on 55% shooting. His downhill force has been one of the few reliable sources of creation for the Spurs, and if they are going to pull this off, he needs to be huge over the final four or five games.