Skip to main content

Nuggets' Nikola Jokic wins NBA MVP award for second straight season


 


Nikola Jokic has won the 2021-22 NBA MVP award, taking the league's top individual honor for the second consecutive year, the league announced Wednesday night. Jokic received 65 of a possible 100 first-place votes and received a total of 875 points, topping Joel Embiid's 706 total points and Giannis Antetokounmpo's 595 total points. Jokic's back-to-back MVP awards match the feat accomplished by fellow finalist Giannis Antetokounmpo during the 2018-19 and '19-20 seasons. The third finalist, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid, has never won the award.


Aside from assists, Jokic managed to improve upon his per-game averages in every major statistical category in the regular season. He finished with career highs in points (27.1), rebounds (13.8), blocks (0.9) and steals (1.5) per game. He also made a career-high 58.3 percent of his field goals, and while he did not match his career high in free throw or 3-point percentage, he did set highs in total free throws (379) and 3-pointers (97) made.


The race between Jokic, Embiid and Antetokounmpo was a fierce one. Embiid won the scoring title by averaging 30.6 points. Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks finished with the highest seed of the three, finishing third in the Eastern Conference with a 51-31 record. Embiid's 76ers had the same record but finished fourth due to tiebreakers. Jokic's Nuggets were a No. 6 seed in the West despite winning only three fewer games and were ousted in the first round by the Golden State Warriors.


All three MVP finalists had to overcome meaningful adversity to get their teams where they did. Embiid played the first half of the season without Ben Simmons, who was sitting out due to a trade request, and Antetokounmpo had to play out of position at center due to an injury suffered by Brook Lopez. But Lopez eventually returned, and the 76ers traded Simmons for James Harden. Jokic got no such relief. Star teammate Jamal Murray did not play a single game this season, and No. 3 option Michael Porter Jr. played only nine games. Jokic's team might have had a worse record than the other two, but his ability to keep the Nuggets afloat without their second- and third-best players likely won him this trophy. 


Jokic is the 15th player to win multiple MVP awards, joining Bob Pettit, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Tim Duncan, Steve Nash, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Antetokounmpo. He is the only Nugget to win an NBA MVP award, though Spencer Haywood won an ABA MVP award when the team was still known as the Denver Rockets.


With Murray and Porter injured, Denver never had a realistic chance at a championship this season, but Jokic managed to carry them into the playoffs in ways no other player likely could have. He's not a traditional MVP in style or the standings, but the voters have spoken, and they have determined that he was the most valuable player of the 2021-22 NBA season.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Video Of How 'Fake Klay Thompson' Got Past The Warriors Security And Gets Shots On The Court

  The Golden State Warriors ended up winning Game 5 of the 2022 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics and took a 3-2 lead in the series. It feels certain that the Dubs will win this series and win their fourth NBA Championship in the last eight years. While winning the finals will mean a lot for every player on the Dubs' roster, it will certainly mean more for Klay Thompson. Klay was sidelined due to injuries over the last two seasons and made a comeback this season. Finishing off the season with a ring will certainly be the cherry on top for him. Speaking of Klay Thompson, an incident took place around a certain lookalike of the Warriors' sharpshooter. We are sure you must remember the 'Fake Klay Thompson' who got famous a few years ago. Prior to Game 5 of the series, Fake Klay snuck into the Chase Center and got shots up before the matchup began. NBA fans found this hilarious, but it seems like the Warriors organization didn't. He was handed a lifetime ban from th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dennis Rodman Once Said He, Michael Jordan, And Scottie Pippen Could Lock Up LeBron James: "LeBron Is So Easy To Play. He’s So F**king Easy To Play. He Doesn’t Have Any Moves."

  If there is something that will never end it is the comparison between players from different eras. Even in that niche, most comparisons revolve around the legendary players from the Chicago Bulls. Yes, we are talking about the likes of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman. A perfect example of that was seen by fans back in a 2019 interview featuring Dennis Rodman. The Worm was asked about his thoughts on guarding none other than LeBron James. Rodman replied: (starts at 6:06) "You know who could lock up LeBron? Me, Mike, and Scottie could. F*ck yeah. I would have locked his a** up. LeBron is so easy to play. He’s so f*cking easy to play, he don’t have any moves. Only move he has is streak down the line. He ain’t got no moves. Where he going?? Where is he going that’s quick? That’ll be sh*t, you can stop that. Scottie Pippen would have shut his f*cking a** down quick before I get to him. His game is too simple, he’s just big. I’m 260 and 6’8” and 6’9”, that’s the onl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chris Paul blows fifth 2-0 series lead of career, an NBA record, and the legacy birds are going to be singing

  The Phoenix Suns were gutted by Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks in Game 7 on Sunday, trailing by as many as 46 points in a 123-90 beating that somehow wasn't even as close as a 33-point margin would indicate. Chris Paul didn't make his first basket until the Suns were down by 40 at the 7:26 mark of the third quarter. He had one point at halftime. Finished with a completely useless 10 and a minus-39 for the game, the worst single-game point differential of his career.  I don't want to make this about Paul's legacy. The Suns didn't lose because of Paul, though he surely didn't do anything to help them win. He was one of the five best point guards to ever play before this game tipped, and no, one game didn't change that. Paul's late-career surge has been a masterful chapter in a Hall of Fame career, and many of the playoff collapses to which he's been connected have been, at least to a degree, a product of some of the cruelest injury luck imagina...
Post a Comment
Read more