Ramona Shelburnemay 5, 2025, 08:00 at
espn.comspent Closed Author Los Angeles Daily News for Seven Years
There are few situations where Nikola Jokic is uncomfortable in basketball. But it’s central to the annual debate about who the league’s most valuable player is.
His face is visible distortion when three letters are even uttered close to him. He deflects questions about the award as quickly as he redirects one of his quick touch passes in court. Six of the six of the past seven seasons have appeared in the top five MVP races. Three of them were he won. But this year he did something completely unexpected.
He actually insisted on himself to win the award.
“I think I’m playing the best basketball of my life, so if that’s enough, that’s enough,” Jokic said on March 10 after the Denver Nuggets’ 140-127 defeated his main challenger at this year’s awards, Shy Gilgauss-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“If not, [Gilgeous-Alexander] It deserves it. He’s really amazing. ”
Nowhere in that statement said Jokic wanted to win his fourth MVP award. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has six, while Michael Jordan and Bill Russell have five.
He personally meant a lot to him, nowhere else he said.
Jokic outlined it was simple. He never played the same way he did this year. If he agrees to that premise, he’s gotten even better this season than his three MVP campaigns.
And with almost every metric, he’s right.
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In addition to averaging 33 triple-doubles this season, Jokic ranked in the top three in scoring (29.6), rebounds (12.7), assists (10.2) and steel (1.8), and was one of the top 20 players in a 3-point percentage (41.7%). No one ever did it. He continues to rewrite his record books.
However, this year there is one much bigger difference than the last three years, otherwise there is an open and shut case hole.
Gilgeous-Alexander also led the league with points (32.7 points per game) with age season, playing the All-NBA-Caliber defense while leading the league’s youngest team to 68 wins (plus-12.9 PPG) with the largest average margin in NBA history (plus-12.9 PPG) and posted a record by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers.
It’s your classic Best Player on the Best Team and Best Static Season MVP Race.
It appears that discussion has taken the central stage and less, as it appears to have been less, when Nuggets and Thunder split the matches on March 9th and 10th.
Gilgeous-Alexander claimed with 40 points, eight assists and three steals in his March 9 victory. He then said, “I love MVPs, I love All-Stars.
Jokic made his point the following night with 35 points, 18 rebounds and eight assists as the Nuggets won a much fewer published game.
On a day or two, all television and radio shows discussed who should win. Teammates on both sides campaigned for the man. And voters were left for a month to sort it all out before they voted. Since then, both men have been in the way to complement others due to the hell of the season.
But whatever was there gave way to the playoff drama that was about to occur.
This second matchup between Thunder and The Nuggets begins with Game 1 in Oklahoma City on Monday night, bringing it all back to focus. The MVP will be announced during Live TNT broadcasts during the playoffs of this round.
This means that Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic (and also Giannis Antetokounmpo) are asked to participate in the live stream, awaiting the announcement of basketball’s most important individual awards.
“That’s the last thing in both of our minds,” Jokic said Saturday night after the Nuggets finished the LA Clippers in Game 7 of their fierce battle.
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Aaron Gordon and Christian Brown combine the 43 to help ensure a close-out game at home in Denver.
The vote has been cast for a long time. Also, winning the MVP has not correlated with winning an NBA title since Stephen Curry went in 2015. In fact, none of the nine previous MVP winners had surpassed the conference finals.
However, when asked about Gilgas Alexander as a player, Jokic tended to talk a lot more.
“He’s a very different player,” Jokic said. “As a scorer, he plays at so many levels in speed, speed. Everything seems so easy to him. ‘Oh, that’s a good defense.’ It’s so easy for him, and he’s amazing with his speed change, ball handling.
Gilgeous-Alexander takes a different approach to how they handled the attention that comes with MVP races. He admitted how much it means to him and that he wants to win. But every time he does so, he repeats that the only goal that really matters to him is that lightning wins.
This left the campaign work. Former Denver coach Michael Malone has historically been the man of Jokic’s hype. However, after he was suddenly fired for only three games left in the season, Nugget swingman Christian Brown took over.
From the play-in tournament to the NBA finals, ESPN covers the entire playoffs.
• Game-by-game analysis: conf. Semi-finals
•Pain: What the title says for each playoff team
Herring: first round playoff MVP
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“I think Nicola was the best season ever,” Brown said Saturday night. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a player do something again in one singular regular season. Both were great. The Thunder is a great team. Shy is a great player.
In December, Thunder Centre’s Chetholmglen simply tweeted, “DPOY and MVP or Lu dort for dpoy and shai for our riots.”
An interesting subplot for this series is that both frontmen do their best to ignore them.
Brown asked if he thought Jokic was concerned about whether he would win.
Thunder coach Mark Dean agreed.
“I know that Shay is much better than Jokic,” Dean said Sunday afternoon. “But I think I know neither of them will be distracted by it. They both will be fully invested in the series. That’s a supplement to the series. But it’s really, it’s not part of the series at all.”
