It’s only been seven weeks since the start of this NBA season, with the Dallas Mavericks phenomenon Luka Doncic, installed as a betting favorite to win MVP honors.
But like almost everything else in this shortened pandemic season, nothing went as planned.
Doncic’s Mavericks are ranked 14th in the Western Conference, opening the race for the most valuable player to a wide field of candidates and probably paving the way for LeBron James to win a fifth historic trophy with the most valuable player .
After finishing second a season ahead of Giannis Antetokounmpo, who became the 12th player in NBA history to win consecutive MVP trophies, James returns to the top in the first ESPN poll of the 2020 MVP campaign. .-Twenty-one.
To assess where the race is at this time of the season, ESPN asked 100 members of the media to participate in the informal poll that mimics voting for post-season awards. To make the vote as realistic as possible, there are at least two voters in each of the league’s 28 markets, as well as a representative sample of national and international reporters.
As with the official NBA vote at the end of the season, voters were asked to cast a five-player vote, and the results were tabulated using the league’s scoring system: 10 points for each first-place vote, followed by seven points for the second; five points for the third; three points for the fourth; and a point for the fifth.
While James currently has the early lead in the fifth MVP trophy, which he hopes will go hand in hand with a fifth championship in the summer, getting 54 out of 100 possible votes, the race so far this season is as competitive as anyone lately, with a pair of crosses – Joel Embiid, star of the Philadelphia 76ers and Nikola Jokic, star of the Denver Nuggets – on heels.
In his 18th season, 36-year-old James remains remarkably consistent, playing in each of the Lakers’ 25 games so far and averaging more than 25 points, seven rebounds. and seven assists for the fifth straight season. James scores 41% of 3 points, the best of his career. It is the first time since 2013, the year he won his last MVP award, that James recorded more than 40% of 3. shot below 37% of 3 points in each of the last six seasons.
James was named on 99 out of 100 ballots and finished with a total of 760 points, leading Embiid (23 votes in first place) with only 95 points. The last MVP vote to have such a small final margin was in 2004-05, when Steve Nash outscored Shaquille O’Neal by 34 points. Jokic was third, getting 18 votes in first place and a total of 596 points.
That puts the difference between James in first place and Jokic in third at 164 points. By comparison, Antetokounmpo led James in second place with 152 points in the original version of last year’s poll. No final MVP vote saw such a small margin between first and third place in the 1998-99 season shortened by the blockade, when Alonzo Mourning and Tim Duncan finished 100 points behind MVP winner Karl Malone.
2:04
The Bucks defeated the Nuggets 125-112 in what could be an early final.
Embiid has the best season of his career, averaging 29.3 points per game, the highest in his career, while accumulating the best figures in his career in shooting percentages, including field (55.3%), at 3 points (39%)) and the free throw line (85%) for Philadelphia, which has the best record in the Eastern Conference and has an amazing average of 15.2 points per 100 possessions when Embiid is on the floor , compared to when he sits.
Philadelphia is also 16-3 in the games Embiid is playing this season and 1-4 in the games he is not.
Jokic is currently the only NBA player in the top 10 points (27.6), rebounds (11.5) and assists (8.6) per game and has briefly led the league in assists, which no center has done on during a full season at Wilt Chamberlain in 1968. He and Embiid aspire to be the first center to win the 2000 NBA MVP from O’Neal.
The depth of the race is reflected in more than just the competition at the top of the ballot. Seven players received at least one vote in first place, more than in any previous edition of this poll. Beyond James, Embiid and Jokic, Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant won three first-place votes, while LA Clippers teammates Kawhi Leonard and Paul George each received a first-place vote. Stephen Curry, star of the Golden State Warriors.
Durant, after missing the entire Achilles tendon last season, finished fourth in the vote with 272 points and appeared in 75 ballots, while Leonard (153 points, 64 ballots) finished on fifth place.
Antetokounmpo, the current two-time MVP, was sixth away, garnering a handful of votes and seems unlikely to win for the third time in a row. Doncic, the pre-season favorite, received only two votes on the third place, as his brilliant statistical CV was easily surpassed by the disappointing record of the Mavericks.
A total of 15 different players received at least one vote, including three players from the same team who obtained at least one vote for the first time in any iteration of this poll.
Rudy Gobert Center and goalkeepers Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley led the Utah Jazz to the best record in the NBA, but received only a handful of votes (four for Gobert, two for Mitchell and one for Conley), talking about the nature of the team’s success in overall this season. The last team to have three players receiving MVP votes in the same season was the Suns 2004-05 (Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Shawn Marion).