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ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski was doing Woj things on Monday, when he reported that the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award will go for the second straight season to Denver’s Nikola Jokic. I assume the league eventually will catch up with Woj’s reporting (which may wind up being several days ahead of the official announcement) and make an acknowledgement of its own. In the meantime, the story break gave NBA types plenty of time to debate whether the 76ers’ Joel Embiid got hosed.
Philadelphia weighed in, FYI:
And it went like that for most of Monday, with some people helpfully pointing out that you can’t watch this year’s MVP because Jokic’s team already got eliminated from the playoffs. Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo — those guys you can still watch.
But there is something greater at work here. If we flip the results and Embiid is the MVP, with Jokic second and Antetokounmpo third, we’d still be tiptoeing around the better story: It is, once again, entirely possible to be the biggest kid in your classroom and still dominate the NBA.
Jokic’s win makes it four seasons in a row that the MVP has gone to a bona fide large-body, and that’s quite a reversal from recent history. If we all can agree that LeBron James is not a big man in any classical sense, the past 15 years or so of MVP results were mostly paeans to smaller guys: Harden, Westbrook, Curry, LBJ, Derrick Rose, Steve Nash.
This is a magical wave, though. If Dirk Nowitzki made it possible for us to see that a 7-footer could essentially turn the game inside out when that was needed, players like Giannis and Embiid and Jokic take that notion to the highest levels. While none has Dirk’s touch from outside, each is a credible threat to beat an opponent in multiple, multiple ways, including via the dribble or pass. (Jokic’s 7.9 assists per game were seventh in the league.) It’s a far cry from the days of Shaquille O’Neal, who before Embiid this season was the last true big to win the NBA scoring title.
Embiid and Antetokounmpo finished 1-2 in the scoring race this year, with Jokic sixth. Kevin Durant, another 7-footer (he prefers to be listed at 6-11), would’ve finished third, but he was limited to 55 games because of an MCL injury. Durant also lacks the bulk of these other guys. NBA teams for years moved away from the sort of large-frame post player of Shaq’s time, but both that thinking and that kind of one-dimensional threat are gone. These are giants with insane skills, and they are adding layers to those skills in succeeding seasons.
It’s inspiring. As much fun as it is to watch Curry or Trae Young light up opponents with shots from another time zone, the teams with mobile bigs are the teams with deep options. If Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson stayed healthy, we might even be looking at an era — the mobile post era, maybe.
As it is, Jokic got Denver to a sixth seed with Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. essentially on the shelf, and Embiid powered the Sixers through a season of roster bewilderment and the Ben Simmons imbroglio. Giannis led the defending NBA champion Bucks to a No. 3 seed, and, if they can power past a tough Boston team, he’ll land them in the Eastern Conference finals again, a stunning resurgence in Milwaukee.
It’s not the only way to win, having a center who can downshift to small forward 10 times a game. But it’s a gear that a number of competing engines don’t feature. You can’t order players like these on Amazon, so there’s no assurance that we’ll see more and more of them. We can wish, though.
Hear, hear!