(Photo courtesy of the NBA) “Nikola Jokic is a strong contender for NBA MVP.”
James Guiry
Connector Staff
The race for NBA MVP is coming to a close, and the race couldn’t be tighter. The most prestigious award in basketball does not get awarded without some doubters. This year, however, with the NBA regular season ending, it seems that there was a clear, obvious choice for MVP. But that player was not the betting favorite.
At the end of the 2022-2023 regular season, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid walked away with the highly coveted award garnering 91.5% of votes. Beating out Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum, who came in second, third and fourth respectively.
Embiid averaged 33.1 points per game during his MVP season, shooting almost 55% from field goal range. Two more points than Antetokounmpo, who was closest to Embiid that season.
Embiid was ahead of the second, third and fourth place finishers in points and blocks only. Antetokounmpo and Jokic both averaged 11.8 rebounds per game to Embiid’s 10.2. Tatum averaged 4.6 assists per game along with 1.1 steals while Embiid averaged 4.2 APG and 1.0 SPG. These stats may not seem like huge differences. But when the Most Valuable Players only great attribute is scoring, how valuable are they?
Some fans believe that the fact Embiid had never won an MVP, while Jokic already had two, played into the fact that Embiid won the award over him and Antetokounmpo, who has also won the award twice in 2018-19 and 2019-20. This led to many fans referring to it as the “Pity MVP.”
The finalists for the award this year were Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
We are seeing a similar, yet more egregious, snub in favor of an MVP first timer this season. When players dominate for so long, there becomes “voter fatigue,” when awards voters are tired of voting for the same person. Jokic, being a three-time MVP and Giannis, being a two-time MVP, are both victims of voter fatigue.
SGA is one of the best basketball players in the world, there is no doubting that. He is leading the league in points (32.7 ppg) on a young Oklahoma City Thunder team that finished the regular season with a record of 68-14 and 39-13 in a conference that can only be described as the “Wild West,” where four games separate the two seed from the eight seed as they head into the NBA Playoffs.
Those are really the only stats you can point to, though.
Jokic is ahead of Shai in every category except for points (32.7 to 29.6), three-points made (2.1 on 5.7 attempts to 2.0 on 4.7 attempts), blocks (1.0 to 0.6), free throws made (7.9 on 8.8 to 5.2 on 6.4) and Shai has a lower turnover percentage (3.3 to 2.4).
The Thunder are a good all-around team, whose future only looks brighter and brighter. Meanwhile, the Nuggets fired their championship-winning head coach right before the playoffs and would most likely be in the race for Cooper Flagg and the number one pick instead of the four seed going into the playoffs.
Jokic has become the third player in NBA history, after Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook (4x), to average a triple-double for an entire season (29.6 PPG, 12.7 RPG, and 10.2 APG). He is also top three in four different major statistical categories (points, rebounds, assists, and steals).
The NBA MVP is the most valuable player in the league, a player who can turn a lottery team into a playoff team, not the player who scores the most points. That player is Nikola Jokic.
