With it looking increasingly like that Nikola Jokic, despite his extraordinary feats, won’t win a third consecutive NBA MVP, Emmet Ryan writes about how the Serbia and Denver Nuggets big man should consider that motivation more than anything else
Let’s start with some years and players, I’m pretty certain you’ll get my point right away.
1956 – Bob Petitt
1960 – Wilt Chamberlain
1966 – Wilt Chamberlain
1988 – Michael Jordan
1995 – David Robinson
2007 – Dirk Nowitzki
2008 – LeBron James
2009 – Le Bron James
2014 – Kevin Durant
2019 – Giannis Antetokounmpo
2020 – Giannis Antetokounmpo
2021 – Nikola Jokic
2022 – Nikola Jokic
All of these are the NBA Most Valuable Players for the years cited. You probably also worked out that neither in nor before those years did those players win the NBA championship. They are far from the only players to have won the MVP award before winning the championship but Jokic is the only one I’ve listed here that has won MVP and is yet to get a ring.
A notable similarity
The Nuggets are top seeds in the West and seem to get the type of view that Giannis and the Bucks got before they scaled the mountain top in 2021. They have one big man putting up ungodly numbers who is also clearly more than a stat machine and does things we just aren’t used to seeing.
Jokic and Giannis are very different players but they have stories that aren’t all too different in terms of the progression of the perception of them and their teams in the league. The Bucks had won a championship but that was back with Kareem when he was going by Lew Alcindor. In the decades since, they hadn’t exactly been seen as an organisation that people talked about as building towards a championship.
The Nuggets, save for a bit of the Melo era, have always been chronically viewed as just the Nuggets by casual observers. They and the Bucks, considering some of the seasons and consistent runs of season both had, have fanbases that understandably felt disrespected.
Both have ended up with extraordinary stars who change the war we think about how the sport is played. This has brought them up the pecking order, no doubt, but the Bucks didn’t get seen as more than Giannis and his pals by the average observer until they got that chip.
The Nuggets are far more than Jokic, anyone who pays even passing attention to their games or even their box scores can see that, but without a ring they aren’t getting that respect.
Good
Seriously. If I’m in the Nuggets locker room, organisation, or even fandom, I want this disrespect, I feed off this disrespect. Jokic not winning MVP is bulletin board material on the face of it but using it is about more than just Jokic not winning. It’s about the rest showing that the whole narrative around how he won MVP, by being the guy with a bunch of guys, is wrong.
He won MVP, twice, because he got was required for him to work at his best around a roster that is under rated in terms of talent. He already has two MVP trophies, the only MVP trophy he really wants now is the Finals MVP one because that would mean, like Giannis, he’d delivered the real reward that the Nuggets…that he…so desperately wants and needs.
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Let’s go with 2 other names and 4 more numbers
1997 – Karl Malone
1999 – Karl Malone
2005 – Steve Nash
2006 – Steve Nash
You can, once again, get the obvious point I’m making. Malone and Nash are the only other players with two MVP awards and no rings. Sure, both were extraordinary players but Jokic does not want his name to be remembered alongside them. He wants to be a winner and he wants to be that winner in Denver.
So what does that mean?
Look, I get that fans in Denver* and back in Serbia* will be annoyed that Jokic probably won’t hear his name called as the MVP when the awards are given out. I also know that if he leads Denver to a championship that both sets of fans will be overjoyed and the MVP slight, if you can even call it one, won’t matter to them because they’ve got what they want.
*I am aware Jokic has fans in far more than one country and one city but y’all have the most reason to get worked up and I’m supportive of ye in that respect.
Think about the stuff that isn’t voted on that Jokic and the Nuggets have done. They’ve secured the top seed and, for all the chatter about what team is getting hot, that’s the most important aspect of the regular season. Home court through the whole of the Western Conference playoffs. The route to the Finals runs through Denver. Jokic has done his part to put his team in the most advantageous position possible to get to the NBA Finals. Take that, work with that, and go from there.
It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got the ring.
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