Nearly three months into the 2012-13 NBA season, the MVP race
remains as close as ever.  A few realities about the race have
emerged, however. At this point, it's boiling down to a four-man
race between LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Carmelo
Anthony, with a handful of fringe candidates lurking.  Barring a
major surprise or injury in the second half of the season, it
appears that either James, Durant, Paul or Anthony will be
walking home with the hardware.  Choosing an MVP favorite among
those four is proving to be a volatile exercise, though.  To
illustrate, I've embedded a few charts from Basketball
Reference's fantastic Player Comparison Finder tool, with the
leader of each category in bold. All statistics are current
through games played on Jan. 9.   Carmelo Anthony 36.8 .466 .428
.821 1.6 4.5 6.1 2.3 1.0 0.5 2.5 3.1 29.0 Kevin Durant 39.4 .519
.417 .904 0.6 7.2 7.8 4.2 1.6 1.3 3.3 1.8 28.1 LeBron James 38.5
.543 .417 .729 1.3 7.0 8.3 6.8 1.5 0.9 2.9 1.4 26.4 Chris Paul
33.4 .484 .347 .901 0.6