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This is not intended for consumption as an NBA MVP primer. Production prior to the 2017-18 campaign is entirely irrelevant, as is potential these players could tap into during future go-rounds. All that matters is what's come to pass during the present season.

That applies to narratives, too.

Kudos to LeBron James for playing at such a high level during his age-33 season, but his advanced age doesn't have any bearing on this particular competition. The quest for triple-doubles and rounded-off numbers is an argument best saved for another time. Ditto for team success—at least the portion of team success that isn't directly impacted by the players in question. Only individual production is relevant.

To objectively determine how this year's premier players stack up, we're turning to a modified version of the formula for Player Score used in previous articles.

For all 313 players who have logged at least 500 minutes this season, we pulled their scores in four different overarching metrics: NBA Math's total points added (TPA), ESPN.com's real plus/minus wins (RPM Wins), player efficiency rating (PER) and win shares (WS). The first two look at volume/efficiency combinations, while the third focuses on per-possession effectiveness and favors offensive production. The last element is a new addition, meant to reward those whose individual merits lead to more victories. Volume and time on the court matter more than they might in other evaluations.

To standardize between four metrics that operate on drastically different scales, we found the z-scores in each category and summed them to find a player's total score. Those cumulative z-scores are all that matter for this countdown.