Who is the most surprising regular season MVP recipient of all-time?

Honestly in terms of precedent, it’s 1976 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I mean of course there is an MVP case for him – that being that he was the best player in the league and averaging 28/17/5/1/4 – typical 70s prime Kareem stats are always insane like that.

So it’s not about his production, it’s the fact that his team missed the playoffs.

To this day, there is no other MVP I can think of that got the award and their team misses the playoffs. Heck it’s rare to even find an MVP on a team that doesn’t have a top 3 record in the NBA. That’s why 2017 Russell Westbrook is commonly cited as an anomaly – he averaged a 30 point triple double which hadn’t been done since the 60s – even though his team was only 6th seed.

But missing the playoffs..? I’ve never seen another player be awarded MVP yet his team only had 40 wins and miss the playoffs. That’s 1976 Kareem. MVP was voted on by players back then so it’s a bit different – but still it’s a huge anomaly when it comes to regular season MVPs. You can look up 1969 Unseld, 1973 Cowens, 1975 McAdoo, 2006 Nash, 2011 Rose etc all these guys people think are ‘weaker’ MVP candidates.. at least their team record backs up their wins. 1976 Kareem just breaks the mold. 40 win team and didn’t even make the playoffs is unheard of for a modern MVP candidate.