Compares Finals MVP and regular season MVP by scope, voters, and historical weight.
One is a marathon, the other the final hundred metres. The gap in sample size is why the two cannot be converted into a single scale of difficulty.
| Regular-season MVP | Finals MVP | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Entire regular season | Finals series only |
| Voters | A much larger media panel | About 11 media members |
| Timing | After the regular season | Immediately after the final game |
| Team success | Strongly weighted | Almost always the champion |
FMVP uses a small panel voting under time pressure. Two things follow: every single ballot carries enormous weight, and memorable clutch moments are amplified. That is how you get counter-intuitive results like Jerry West winning from the losing side in 1969, or Andre Iguodala winning as a bench player in 2015.
Strictly speaking they are not comparable, because they measure different abilities:
A player can easily win one without the other. In 2024, for example, Nikola Jokić won regular-season MVP while Jaylen Brown of the Celtics took Finals MVP — not even on the same team.
Since the Finals MVP was created in 1969, the same player has swept both awards in a single season 16 times, which shows how rare it is:
In the last decade the two awards have usually gone to different players — evidence that "best over a season" and "best in the Finals" increasingly land on different people.
Use the related hubs above to browse the all-time Finals MVP list, the voting rules and the 2026 winner.
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