NBA award season predictions: Will Nikola Jokic seal the deal for MVP?

NBA Award Season Most Valuable Player: Nikola Jokic

The Most Valuable Player award is the most important award for the regular season, therefore we see people lose their minds about it on Twitter and TV.

The seven candidates this season were: LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Chris Paul, Kawhi Leonard, Nikola Jokic and Stephen Curry.

Starting with King James himself, he was a leading candidate for MVP right until his ankle injury, which kept him out for 20 straight games. And that is too many games to have missed to win MVP – but he might make an All-NBA team anyway so #washedking or something.

Antetokounmpo, Leonard and Paul are all candidates for the same reason, great individual seasons leading their teams to top seeds in each conference. Paul has received the most MVP hype but that has died down in recent, and it might have just been a topic to talk about as someone else is clearly winning MVP?

The last three candidates have all just had truly, dominant seasons. And they have all done it in such different ways, it should remind us why we all love basketball.

Steph Curry has been on fire all season, he’s like a 6’3” Olympic torch running off back screens and launching triples like it’s normal to do what he’s doing.

It’s hard to put into words what he is doing, it’s arguably comparable to his 2015-2016 MVP season individually. He’s scoring close to 32 points per game and is doing it on a 57/42/91 spilt. The team record is what holds Curry back as the Warriors will need to fight through the play-in to make the playoffs but man, do not that this man for granted, special.

Second is Joel Embiid, who seemingly has put all of it together (besides health). Embiid has significantly grown with his shooting (especially mid-range), drawing fouls (up 2.3 attempts per game from 19-20), and his overall dominance on both ends.

Embiid is the closest thing we have to a ‘90s center, sweaty, terrifying to try to score against or defend, and he will maul the opposing center.

Embiid has missed enough games for it to be significant enough to be a factor when nitpicking candidates. His two-way impact all season has been spectacular but, someone has played more games and has been even better this him.

Who would have thought?, who would have thought that the doughy 6’11” center from Serbia drafted 41st overall would become the greatest passing center (and will be a top 20 passer All-Time) would be the freakin’ MVP?

Jokic has played every single game this season, averaging 26.4 points, 10.9 rebounds per game and 8.4 assists per game with shooting splits of 60/39/86.

There isn’t much to say about Big Honey that hasn’t been said already, he can do practically anything offensively and has kept the Nuggets dominate even without Jamal Murray.

The HoopsHabit vote had an 80 percent vote for Jokic being MVP with 16 first-place votes. With Antetokounmpo and Curry getting one vote each, and Embiid receiving two votes. After a spectacular season, Jokic has earned an MVP and hopefully can make a couple of series interesting without his partner in crime in Murray.

Jokic might not generate the most TV ratings, he’s definitely not the most photogenic player, but he is by far the MVP this season.