There are no two without three, at least for Nikola Jokic. The Serbian has once again been proclaimed the best player of the regular season and wins his third MVP, equaling Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Moses Malone. After falling short last year, with Joel Embiid taking the award, Jokic regains the crown after leading the Nuggets to the second-best record in the Western Conference, at 57-25. Jokic has finished with 26.4 points (#10 in the NBA), 12.4 rebounds (#4) and 9 assists (#3), in addition to 1.4 steals (#13) and 0.9 blocks per game, and takes the award ahead of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic, in that order. And he has not been equaled.
Jokic took 79 votes for the MVP as first place, and the other 20 placed him on the podium. In total he took 926 points, almost 300 points ahead of the second. Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, next with 640 points, were the only two players who got the 99 votes from the press, with at least one journalist not voting for the rest of those classified, including Luka Doncic (566). Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jalen Brunson closed the top-5 with Jayson Tatum, leader of the best team by far, sixth. For the third year in a row, all three finalists are international players, with Steph Curry in 2021 being the last top-3 born in the United States. The last six winners are also non-American players.
In addition to simple statistics, Jokic led the league in PER, win-shares, box plus/minus or VORP, the main advanced statistics. Second player with the most double-doubles (68) and triple-doubles (25), only behind Domantas Sabonis and he slipped into the top-10 in field goal percentage. A season that takes him to the Olympus of the NBA. The third MVP puts him on par with some of the greatest in basketball history and is only behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with six awards, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan, with five each, and Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James with four. He accumulates more trophies than 20 NBA franchises, some of them historic like the Detroit Pistons or the Hawks. And he is still 29 years old.
But he now faces the MVP curse. The last player to win the ring after being crowned player of the season was Steph Curry in 2015. Each year Nikola Jokic won the award, Denver was eliminated before reaching the conference finals. And this year the situation is similar, with Minnesota up 2-0 in the series before the series moves to the Timberwolves’ court. He will now have the most complicated mission of his career: turn around the tie to try to win the Larry O’Brien again. And only a three-time MVP is up to the task of achieving something so special, and if Rudy Gobert and the Wolves defense allow it.
