Do the Utah Jazz have any MVP caliber players on their roster currently?

Nikola Jokic is the best player in the NBA today. He's now a three-time Most Valuable Player Award winner and a man who many believe should have won the award four straight times. He's currently locked in a fierce second-round series with the Minnesota Timberwolves, with the hopes of repeating as NBA Champion.

Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were the three top finalists for the award this year, and all three seem to have something in common; they're all multi-faceted players who can score, rebound, and pass the ball. Looking at the No. 4 guy, Giannis Antetokounmpo, you see more of the same thing.

That seems to be the model for MVP's in the NBA, at least for right now. If you can't contribute in every aspect of the game to some degree, you're not going to be an MVP candidate. Now, some guys, like Jayson Tatum, and Anthony Edwards, who don't seem like they're the conventional point player on their team the way Jokic, Doncic, Gilgeous-Alexander, or Antetokounmpo are, do in fact average close to the 20+ points, 5+ rebounds, 5+ assists mark that the top four guys usually do.

So if you want to succeed as an MVP candidate, you have to hit those marks of 20+ points, 5+ rebounds, and 5+ assists per game, while having a high-efficiency rate on offense, being a solid-t-great defender, and being on a winning team. So as much as it pains us to say it, that doesn't describe anyone on the current roster for the Utah Jazz.

Lauri Markkanen is your best bet, and while he's super efficient, a decent enough defender, a 20+ points scorer, and a 5+ rebound kind of guy, he doesn't facilitate the offense the same way as the others who cracked the Top 10 of MVP voting. He's someone more akin to that of Kevin Durant, though without the accolades.

He'll shoot a lot, be hard to play against when he's on defense, and fight for rebounds, but he doesn't provide that next-level element to get him over the hump. He would need to average around 30-35 points per night just to qualify for the award and if he wasn't facilitating far more of the offense than he is already, it's unlikely he'd win it even with that level of point output.

And honestly, we're not sure that's a bad thing. The best players in the NBA should be able to affect the game on multiple levels, and those players should qualify for the MVP above all others. If Markkanen wants to get to that level, he has to up his game.