i think if advanced and traditional stats between two MVP candidates are comparable — jokic and embiid have nearly identical PIE as of this post — the tiebreaker should be how much worse the team would be without that player, using some kind of wins-over-replacement-like stat. to me the definition of "most valuable" is lifting a team that would normally have a 30% win rate up to a middle or high seed in the playoffs. i think this is the case with DEN and jokic this year. and for the record, 1/3 of the NBA is at or just above .500. right now the nuggets are in the playoffs. without jokic they would be like 2-14

but what do i know? i'm one of the dummies that thought harden should have won over yawnis cantshootafreethrow in 18-19 because harden had to overcome more during that season. eurostep bully won it because he had to overcome more in life. the beard and the freak's advanced and traditional stats were almost identical that year. giannis got the award because his narrative (humble beginnings, loves his GF, warm, kind of dumb, and goofy) was more pleasing than harden's (less humble beginnings, strip clubs and gyms, comparatively cold and distant)

to your question, DEN's record is worse because they lost all their best defenders in grant, plumlee, and craig. DEN's biggest problem over the last couple of years has been how inconsistent everyone but jokic is on offense. previously they had a decent D to cover that up but now they're really exposed. they're at least close in most of the losses. they've also been missing a lot of offense with murray struggling to find his rhythm and battling minor injuries and MPJ being out for weeks being a covid denying dumbass