Sports Time Radio

The NBA has been handing out their awards for the regular season and yesterday they hand out the biggest award they give; Most Valuable Player. There where some interesting candidates, but after looking at the voting results there was one clear winner along with a couple of surprising votes cast.

Your MVP for the 2020-21 NBA season is Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. Jokic received 91 1st place votes, 8 2nd place votes and 1 3rd place vote. No player received more than 5 1st place votes. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors was that player who received 5 1st place votes.

Even though Curry received the second most 1st place votes he finished 3rd in the voting overall. Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers ended up finishing 2nd in the MVP voting. Embiid only received 1 1st place vote, but had the most 2nd place votes with 62. Embiid also picked up 23 3rd place votes, 8 4th place votes and 3 5th place votes.

Rounding out the Top 5 in MVP voting was Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks who won the MVP award the past two seasons finished in 4th place this season and Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns ended up in 5th place.

Now the Top 5 received every 1st place vote, but one and it was quite a surprise who that 1st place vote went to. Believe it or not Derrick Rose who’s now with the New York Knicks received a 1st place vote. You might not remember this because Rose’s turn took a down turn after some injury issues, but he actually did win the MVP award following the 2010-11 season. Coincidently Rose was playing for Tom Thibodeau who is now Rose head coach with the Knicks.

Now there were some well known players that picked up just one MVP vote this season Russell Westbrook of the Washington Wizards received 1 3rd place vote. While Embiid’s teammate Ben Simmons received 1 4th place vote. James Harden of the Brooklyn Nets, Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers and LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers each managed to get 1 5th place MVP vote.

Now Embiid and Simmons weren’t the only teammates to receive MVP votes Rose’s Knicks teammate Julius Randle picked up a number of votes. Randle received 12 total MVP votes; 1 3rd place vote, 2 4th place votes and 9 5th place votes. Randle actually finished one spot ahead of Rose in the MVP voting as Rose only received that 1 1st place vote.

By getting that one lone vote James kept a pretty impressive streak alive. James has received at least one vote for MVP since his rookie year back in 2003-04. That means James has found a way to get at least one vote for MVP in 18 straight NBA seasons. I’m not sure if will ever see anyone do that again. There’s also a good chance the streak will continue as long as James decides he wants to keep playing.

Don’t forget that during the first half of this NBA season there where a lot of people who had James winning the MVP award. Injuries ended up slowing him down in the second half of the season as he played in just 45 of the Lakers 72 regular season games.

James suffered a high ankle sprain and played in just four games over the final seven weeks of the NBA’s regular season. With James injured the Lakers slipped into the NBA’s play-in tournament and while they did advance into the actual 1st round of the NBA playoffs they where knocked out in six games by the Suns.

As you know I’m not a big fan of the NBA, but from what I’ve seen, heard and read it sounds like they got this award right. I’d like to know what you think. Did the voters choose the right player as MVP? If you disagree let me know who you think should’ve won the award.

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