Is the NBA’s MVP award up for grabs?

Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

Last week: The NBA’s response is enough to curb its tanking epidemic

Fact or Fiction: The NBA’s MVP award is up for grabs

In my opinion, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić is the best basketball player in the world, and he probably deserves the NBA’s MVP award for a fourth time in six seasons.

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He probably deserved it last season, too. He is leading the league in rebounds and assists per game, while ranking among the league’s leaders in scoring. This is unprecedented. And his injury-riddled team is still holding on to a home playoff seed in the Western Conference.

This is not meant to take anything away from the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who brought home the MVP honor last season, before guiding his team to the NBA championship and adding a Finals MVP trophy to his collection. A scoring machine and the clear-cut leader of a defending champion, he is a deserving candidate once again.

The two betting favorites for the award meet on Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Except, if Jokić misses just two more games this season, he will be ineligible for the MVP, because of a rule requiring players to participate in at least 65 games to qualify for the award. Likewise, SGA just missed nine straight games with an abdomen strain, and he, too, is a re-aggravation away from missing out on the chance to win consecutive MVP honors.

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And if that’s the case, then San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama, who serves as the game’s best defensive player and one heck of an offensive player, too, for a team that is nipping at the heels of Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder, is not so bad a choice, either.

Then again, he has missed 14 games as well. Now, we could rage against the 65-game rule, which was implemented to encourage players to participate in 80% of a regular season, or we could accept it, and appreciate that it is steering us in ways we may not normally…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/is-the-nbas-mvp-award-up-for-grabs-154358800.html

Author : Ben Rohrbach

Publish date : 2026-02-27 15:43:00

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