Minuk's Musings and NBA's MVPs teaching us about investing

Richard Minuk - May 23, 2025

You can be proud that Toronto-born (Hamilton raised) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was just awarded NBA’s MVP for the season.

 

Source: Theathletic.com

 

Source: Theathletic.com

 

Now here’s a surprising (and somewhat random) statistic. In a league where tattoos are very prevalent amongst players, this season marks the 9th consecutive year that the NBA MVP has zero tattoos.

 

  • 2024-2025: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
  • 2023-2024: Nikola Jokic
  • 2022-2023: Joel Embiid
  • 2021-2022: Nikola Jokic
  • 2020-2021: Nikola Jokic
  • 2019-2020: Giannis Antetokounmpo
  • 2018-2019: Giannis Antetokounmpo
  • 2017-2018: James Harden
  • 2016-2017: Russell Westbrook
  • 2015-2016: Steph Curry (last MVP with tattoos)

 

Couple of caveats:

  1. This is based on no visible tattoos, so an MVP from the last nine seasons may have tattoos in places that I’m unaware of.
  2. This does not imply that having zero tattoos will fast track players to winning MVP.

 

 

Now of course this isn’t to say that tattoos are bad (some of the greatest ever to play the game were covered in them) but it is interesting and maybe not a complete coincidence.

 

MVP awards aren’t always won by the “coolest” people. They are won by doing the boring stuff brilliantly – footwork, passing, defense, shot selection.

 

In investing, it is the same story.

 

The most successful MVP investors often aren’t the coolest or flashiest people – Warren Buffet for example still lives in the same old house he bought in 1958 in Omaha.

 

 

MVP investors do not chase stocks because of the headlines, moonshot projects or splashy acquisitions. Instead, great investors are building portfolios full of (often boring) companies that obsess over the core ingredients to success - long-term consistent revenue growth, stable and increasing dividend and intelligent capital allocation.

 

For hockey fans, let’s be cheering for the Oilers as the last remaining Canadian team.

 

For basketball fans like me, let’s be cheering for Shai and the Oklahoma City Thunder who just took a 2-0 lead in their Western Conference Finals series.

 

Have a nice weekend,

 

Rich

Investment Advisor