I fully understand all the drawbacks of giving Nikola Jokic three straight MVP awards. He has not had significant playoff success, he is a lackluster defender, and it seems unfair to give Joel Embiid a second place award for the third straight year. On top of all of that, I do agree to an extent with the assertion that he has gotten favorable media treatment due to his race (Markieff Morris incident). However, none of those narratives change the meaning of the award — the player who was most valuable over the course of the regular season. Lack of playoff success, voters getting bored of voting for the same guy, and pity for another great player should not affect who gets the award, although it unfortunately has in the past and will likely happen again this year.
This doesn’t change the fact that Jokic is the deserving winner of the award in my eyes. For starters, he’s the best player on the best team in his conference, which while I believe is a lazy way to evaluate candidates, doesn’t exactly hurt his case. However, his strongest case lies in his stats. There are no advanced stats necessary to explain how good Jokic has been this year; he’s averaging 24.9 PPG, 11.9 RPG, 9.9 APG, all on a ridiculous true shooting of 70.4% (league average true shooting is at 58% this year).
These are not empty stats either; as stated, he’s led the Nuggets to the top seed in the Western Conference, and that’s without an All-Star caliber player on his squad. For comparison, the other serious MVP candidates, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antentokounmpo, both have had the privilege of playing alongside an All-Star sidekick this year in James Harden and Jrue Holiday, respectively. Jokic has not enjoyed this same privilege, with his second best player this year being Aaron Gordon. This is not intended to be a slight at Gordon; he’s about as good as a player can get without being considered a real star, and any team in the NBA would kill to have him on their squad, but he’s not on the same caliber as a guy like James Harden, who is still one of the best offensive players in the game and averaging 20 points and 10 assists a night, or Jrue Holiday, a near 20 PPG scorer, great playmaker, and touted by many players as the toughest defender in the NBA. I’m not arguing that Jokic has no help, because Denver has done a great job at reinforcing the team this past offseason, but the simple fact is that he’s been able to win as much as the other MVP candidates without a star sidekick.
I don’t think the voters will give Jokic his third straight MVP, but I firmly believe that if any other player in the NBA had the outrageous stats that Jokic has while leading his team to the top of their conference, they’d have already secured the MVP. However, because people are tired of giving it to the same guy, the award may not go to the Most Valuable Player this year.
Floor General 