MVP makes it three for Jokic
Canada’s Gilgeous-Alexander second in voting, no Americans crack top four
Nikola Jokic did it all again. And the MVP trophy is his again.
Jokic, the Denver Nuggets star, was announced Wednesday night as the NBA’s most valuable player, topping Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the voting.
It was the third time Jokic has won in the past four seasons, a feat that just six other players have accomplished.
He averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and nine assists. Others averaged more in each category — and Jokic has had better years in each — but he was the only player to rank in the top 10 in all three this season.
Hamilton’s Gilgeous-Alexander finished ahead of Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks. Both made the top three for the first time. With Jokic from Serbia, Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada and Doncic from Slovenia, it marked the third consecutive season that three players born outside the United States finished atop the balloting.
Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is from Greece, was fourth in the vote — making this the first time in the award’s 69-year history that international players filled the top four. It’s also the sixth consecutive year that a player born outside the U.S. won.
New York’s Jalen Brunson finished fifth.
“Some people say it’s the best player on the best team,” Jokic said, when asked to define an MVP. “To me, it’s the guy who’s the most valuable, the team couldn’t play without him.”
Jokic got 79 of 99 first-place votes from the panel of reporters and broadcasters who cast ballots when the regular season ended. Fifteen voters picked Gilgeous-Alexander first, while four chose Doncic and one picked Antetokounmpo.
“It’s got to start with your teammates,” Jokic said on TNT where the award was announced. “Without them, I’m nothing. Without them, I cannot do nothing. Coaches, players, organization, medical staff, development coaches ... I cannot be whoever I am without them.”
It likely was not a coincidence that Jokic appeared on television for the announcement wearing a T-shirt commemorating the life of one of his mentors, former Golden State assistant coach Dejan Milojevic , who died earlier this year after a heart attack on a road trip.
Jokic is now the ninth player to win the MVP award at least three times. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won it six times, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan each won five, Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James won four, and Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are the other three-time winners.
Gilgeous-Alexander supplied perhaps the best feel-good story of the season, helping Oklahoma City to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference by averaging 30.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists. The Thunder won 57 games, 17 more than last season and 33 more than two years ago, coinciding with Gilgeous-Alexander’s emergence as one of the game’s elite players.
“There is not a night when I don’t feel like we have the best player on the floor … There’s no one I’d rather have on our team than him,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said last month.
But in the end, stood above all others — and the vote wasn’t that close.
“I think he’s stated his case pretty well,” Nuggets teammate Jamal Murray said. “He does it every night. It’s hard to do what he does and face the kind of pressure that he does each and every game. He does it with a smile on his face. He makes everybody around us better.”