The Denver Nuggets managed to finish with the top record in the West for the first time in franchise history, but it wasn’t the prettiest finish for them down the stretch of the regular season.
In the second half of the season, Denver was playing like a .500 team, and the team’s GM says the drop-off has to do with the MVP debate more than anything else.
“We had to deal with some adversity with the whole MVP dialogue discourse nationally,” said Calvin Booth on the Denver NBA Show. “In the middle of the season around AS break we hit a lil bit of a lull bc the MVP dialogue rolling around Joker and some of it took a nasty turn.”
Nikola Jokic was the leading MVP candidate for most of this season and was well on his way to securing his third straight before Joel Embiid entered the conversation. Thanks partially to Denver’s slide, and voter fatigue for Jokic, the 76ers star surpassed The Joker and is likely to be named as the winner within the next few weeks.
This year, however, the debate became especially heated as the community struggled to come to an agreement on who deserved MVP honors the most. It’s nos secret that the Nuggets (and Jokic himself) and how it all went down, but is it really the reason for their underwhelming finish this season?
Did The MVP Race Get Out Of Hand This Year?
While Jokic was statistically great this season, many fans questioned his total value on the court, given his shortcomings on defense. Compared to a guy like Joel Embiid, the Joker doesn’t have the same kind of edge on that end of the floor.
In response, Jokic has been pretending to be ‘turned off’ completely by the MVP race, but Embiid knows how important it truly is.
“One thing I’ll say is that if people tell you they don’t care about it, they’re lying,” Embiid told Rachel Nichols recently. “That’s the best award you can get as a basketball player, it means a lot. But if I were to win it, it would validate all the work that I put in, that’s why I cared about it, because you put in so much work and if you get that recognition, it just validates that you didn’t waste your time.”
So while Jokic may have fallen short of becoming a 3x MVP winner, this season is an opportunity for him to validate his career so far by making a run in the postseason and proving his game is just as valuable when there are stakes on the line.
We sincerely appreciate and respect you as a reader of our site. It would help us a lot if you follow us on Google News because of the latest update.
Thanks for following us. We really appreciate your support.
