Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets’ star from Serbia, was announced Wednesday night as the NBA’s Most Valuable Player — his third time winning the award in the past four seasons, a feat that just six other players in league history have accomplished.
He averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists. Others averaged more in each category — and Jokic has had better years in each of those categories — but he was the only player to rank in the NBA’s top 10 in points, rebounds and assists per game this season.
Jokic got 79 of a possible 99 first-place votes from the panel of reporters and broadcasters who cast ballots on awards when the regular season ended.
Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was second and Dallas’ Luka Doncic was third, both getting into the top three of MVP voting for the first time.
With Jokic from Serbia, Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada and Doncic from Slovenia, it marked the third consecutive season that three players born outside the U.S. finished 1-2-3 in the MVP balloting.
This time, the foreign dominance atop the NBA was even more pronounced: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is from Greece, was fourth — so this became the first time in the award’s 69-year history that international players went 1-2-3-4 in the voting. It also became the sixth consecutive year that an player born outside the U.S. won the award.
Jokic is now the ninth player to win the MVP award at least three times. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won it six times, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan each won five, Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James won four, and Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are the other three-time winners.
Jokic’s surprise rise to superstardom has been chronicled time and again over the years: He was the 41st overall pick in the 2014 draft, didn’t even think he had a realistic chance at playing in the NBA when his career was beginning and now has a Hall of Fame resume at 29.
The other players with three MVP trophies in a four-year span are James, Johnson, Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain and Russell. And Jokic becomes the fifth player to be first or second in the MVP voting in four consecutive years — joining Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Russell and Tim Duncan.
Gilgeous-Alexander had perhaps the best feel-good story in the NBA this season, helping Oklahoma City to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference by averaging 30.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists. The Thunder won 57 games, 17 more than they did last season and 33 more than they did two years ago, their rise coinciding with Gilgeous-Alexander’s emergence as one of the game’s elite players.
Doncic made a case for the MVP award by posting the first season in NBA history in which a player averaged 34 points, nine rebounds and nine assists per game. There had been 14 instances before this year in which a player averaged that many points and rebounds in a season — of those, five had resulted in MVP wins, including last season when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid averaged 33 points and 10 rebounds.
And this was the second time ever that a player averaged at least 33 points and nine assists per game. The other was in 1972-73, when Kansas City’s Tiny Archibald averaged 34 points and 11 assists. He finished third in that season’s MVP voting, just like Doncic did this season.
MAVERICKS-THUNDER: As Oklahoma City prepared to host the Dallas Mavericks in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, Thunder Coach Mark Daigneault was asked how his team would brace for Luka Doncic’s physical style.
Daigneault quipped that he just needed lockdown defender Lu Dort to show up on time for the game.
Dort did more than just arrive on time. He was the defensive catalyst as the Thunder held Doncic, the league’s regular-season scoring leader, to 19 points on 6-for-19 shooting in Oklahoma City’s 117-95 victory on Tuesday night.
Doncic has been nursing a knee injury since the first round of the playoffs. It could be affecting him, though he refused to make excuses after Game 1.
That doesn’t mean Oklahoma City is off the hook, though — Kyrie Irving is fully capable of scoring more. He often defers to Doncic, but he might not do that so much if his teammate struggles early in Game 2 on Thursday in Oklahoma City.
Daigneault said he’s prepared if Irving chooses to shoulder more of the offensive load. Irving is averaging 25.6 points per game on 51.2% shooting in the playoffs. He scored 20 in the opener against the Thunder.
“We’re expecting that pitch in Game 2 and Game 3 and so on and so forth,” Daigneault said.
Irving, who won a championship with Cleveland in 2016, didn’t make much of the opening loss.
“We just have to adjust to the team we’re playing against,” Irving said. “I think that’s the most important thing. This Game 1 is done. We didn’t play as well as we would have liked. We failed on a lot of our coverages. And we didn’t come in with the attitude that was necessary.”
Daigneault expects a difficult Game 2.
“We know they’re going to come out aggressively, confidently,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of experience under their belt. They’re not going to be rattled by one playoff loss. And so we’ve got to rise to that.”
BUCKS: Indianapolis police announced they’ve opened an investigation into an “NBA player and citizen” altercation that happened at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on the night Bucks guard Patrick Beverley threw a ball at a fan in the final minutes of a season-ending loss to the Pacers.
Police said in a news release the case has been forwarded to detectives, “who are currently investigating this situation and take all accusations seriously.”
Detectives will present the case to the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office at the conclusion of the investigation, the release stated.
Cameras showed Beverley sitting on the bench and tossing a ball into the stands, hitting a fan in the head with about 2 1/2 minutes left in the game on May 2. After a different fan threw the ball back to Beverley, who was holding his arm out for it, the Bucks’ guard fired it back at that spectator.
Beverley spoke about his behavior on an episode of “The Pat Bev Podcast” that was released Wednesday. He said he was called a word that he’d never been called before, but added that his own actions were “still inexcusable.”
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