What It Means:

ESPN's Tom Haberstroh and Titus Smith found, in a statistical deep-dive, that Leonard is the most qualified player to win this year's award. Based on the fact that Leonard checks eight of nine possible boxes, or qualifications, the two agree with Vegas that the Spurs' star is the preseason favorite (+375). But our numbers see Leonard improving in an unlikely way.

To this point,Leonard's career has been built upon his elite defense and seemingly effortless ability to score. After all, in the last two years he's averaged 21.2 and 25.5 points per game, respectively. However, we like him to improve his efficiency from the field (49.3%) while adding 5.0 assists per game to his stat line. In 2016-17, he averaged just 3.5 a contest, but if Leonard can fulfill our projection he'd not only be an MVP candidate but he would finish the year as a top-3 fantasy option.