DENVER (KDVR) — Ahead of the 2025-26 NBA season, plenty of media members and basketball analysts have made their preseason guesses for league awards that will be decided after 82 games are played.
Some fan bases are excited to learn that one of their players is in the conversation for the first time, while others may just assume that their star player is going to be among the top names, because, well, they always are.
The Denver Nuggets fanbase is the latter half.
Superstar center Nikola Jokić is tipped to be the NBA’s MVP, according to analysts at ESPN, who voted in preseason polls.
The top candidates include:
| Rank | Player | Team | Points |
| 1. | Nikola Jokić | Denver Nuggets | 83 points |
| 2. | Luka Doncic | Los Angeles Lakers | 62 points |
| 3. | Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | Oklahoma City Thunder | 46 points |
| T-4. | Giannis Antetokounmpo | Milwaukee Bucks | 9 points |
| T-4. | Anthony Edwards | Minnesota Timberwolves | 9 points |
| 5. | Kevin Durant | Houston Rockets | 8 points |
Jokić finds himself pitted against two former and one reigning MVP: Durant, Antetokounmpo, a two-time winner and current holder, Gilgeous-Alexander.
Edwards has been a rising name in the league and is beloved for his explosive game and his off-court antics. Doncic is a player everyone looks at and questions how he hasn’t already picked up his first MVP.
Meanwhile, Jokić is seeking his fourth.
If a player is a three-time MVP, just throw them in the Hall of Fame already. Jokić has all but locked down that decision, but people feel like he is still overlooked, which is a crazy thing to say about a player who has three MVPs to his name.
Jokić has an extremely strong case to be a five-time MVP, and with him receiving plenty of preseason praise once more, it begs the question of what he has to do to win it after pulling out all the stops over the last half-decade.
The MVP race can feel like the goalposts are being moved constantly. Some years it’s the best statistics, others it’s the best player on the best team or the player that is the most valuable to their team, meaning how well a team would do without them.
The problem is, Jokić has had these things year after year, but failed to win in two of them.
In each of the last five seasons, the Nuggets have gone from historic highs with Jokić on the court to historic lows when he isn’t, according to Statmuse. Whereas last season, when Gilgeous-Alexander missed a game, the Thunder’s play barely dropped off, and they still performed like an elite team.
Gilgeous-Alexander also saw the award given to him because of his team’s dominant season, where they went 68-14 and topped the NBA. Many argue that this shouldn’t factor in for an individual award.
The best player on the best team angle does prove to be right most of the time, but how do you justify seasons like 2016-17 when Russell Westbrook won, but his team finished as the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference? Another instance involves Jokić himself when he won in 2020-21 despite being the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.
Another former MVP, Antetokounmpo, saw this rule used by Jokić and Joel Embiid to overtake him in the vote.
Embiid won the award in 2022-23, after finishing as the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference. The Nuggets finished atop the Western Conference, but were one win off Embiid’s Philadelphia 76ers, and Jokić ended as the runner-up, with many media members stating he was robbed of the award.
If it were truly the best player on the best team, Antetokounmpo should have won it over both of them because the Bucks finished with the best record, and Antetokounmpo was a contender with crazy stats, but being a two-time winner already — voter fatigue might have stepped in.
The last reason an MVP candidate is chosen, is statistics.
Players obviously have to put up huge numbers to be considered. The 2016-17 MVP was given to Westbrook because he became the first person to average a triple-double in decades, despite a poor record with his team.
So, last season, when Jokić had the greatest statistical season in NBA history, breaking records and becoming the first center to average a triple-double, he should have won MVP, right? He did not, and his team finished higher than Westbrook’s during his MVP season, which saw a Golden State Warriors team featuring two MVP candidates, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, go 67-15.
That’s only one win less than the Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder when he won the award.
The truth is, there is no consistent way to win MVP. Candidates don’t get handed a rubric at the beginning of the season for certain metrics they are supposed to hit. Each year, narratives take hold of the wheel and impact the decision.
One could argue that Jokić had his two best seasons in the years he didn’t win the MVP.
It hurts to know he was so close, but let’s take a step back and realize that Jokić is a three-time winner and two-time runner-up in the last five years, while being the frontrunner this year — Nuggets fans should be feeling incredibly grateful that they have such a world-beating player leading the team.
If he had won the last five years and also won the MVP for the upcoming season, people might get bored, and the prestige of the award would be diminished, even if he truly deserves it every year.
Jokić is still in the middle of his prime and is showing no signs of slowing down after his best season so far. There’s a chance he has a few MVPs left for his trophy case.
If he gets them, the NBA might have to consider renaming the award in his honor.
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