Basketball-Reference.com) and his nERD scores from the two most recent seasons compared to the rest of the top 10. nERD is our metric for measuring a player's overall efficiency, and a nERD score indicates how many wins above or below .500 an otherwise average team could expect to finish with that player as a starter.
| Player | 13-14 nERD | 14-15 nERD | Change | 13-14 WS | 14-15 WS | Change | MIP Vote Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jimmy Butler | 4.4 | 12.7 | 8.3 | 7.1 | 11.2 | 4.1 | 535 |
| Draymond Green | 1.6 | 7.6 | 6.0 | 4.5 | 8.5 | 4.0 | 200 |
| Rudy Gobert | -0.9 | 9.6 | 10.5 | 0.4 | 9.3 | 8.9 | 189 |
| Hassan Whiteside | - | 6.1 | - | - | 5.3 | - | 88 |
| Klay Thompson | 2.2 | 7.9 | 5.7 | 6.7 | 8.8 | 2.1 | 42 |
| Anthony Davis | 12.0 | 19.1 | 7.1 | 10.4 | 14.0 | 3.6 | 27 |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | -5.2 | 2.5 | 7.7 | 1.2 | 6.2 | 5.0 | 22 |
| Donatas Motiejunas | -1.2 | 0.9 | 2.1 | 1.4 | 4.7 | 3.3 | 7 |
| Dennis Schroder | -4.3 | -1.8 | 2.5 | -0.7 | 2.5 | 3.2 | 6 |
| DeMarre Carroll | 2.3 | 5.8 | 3.5 | 5.8 | 7.0 | 1.2 | 5 |
In terms of nERD, Butler added 8.3 more wins above .500 than he did last year, which actually trailed Rudy Gobert's increase. Of course, nERD is a cumulative number, and Gobert played just more than 400 minutes last year before hitting 2,100 minutes this year (Butler hit the 2,500-minute mark in each of the two seasons). Still, it's possible that Gobert would have continued the negative trend if he had received more minutes.
Butler also narrowly edged Giannis Antetokounmpo in nERD change, and Antetokounmpo actually saw a bigger jump in Win Shares than did Butler, too. Still, Gobert's Win Share change was the biggest of all.
(As an aside, Anthony Davis, as scary as it sounds, probably should have received more votes.)
Of course, voters don't concern themselves only with empirical increases, and Butler played a significant role on a Bulls team that managed to secure the 3 seed in the Eastern conference despite his own and Derrick Rose's absences -- Butler and Rose combined for just 113 games this year.
In the grander scheme of things, giving Butler, an incredible all-around player, an award for getting better is fitting and makes sense. It's not as though he didn't improve, but his landslide victory doesn't really indicate the actual, tangible level of improvement that some of the other players in the leagues made.
If anything, the most logical reason why he wasn't deserving of the award meant for the player who put made the most significant improvement (e.g. Rudy Gobert) is that Butler was already better than eight of the nine players in the top 10 to begin with.