It’s only been seven weeks since this NBA season started, with Dallas Mavericks phenomenon Luka Doncic installed as the betting favorite to win MVP accolades.
But, like almost everything else in this pandemic-shortened 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 large number of candidates and potentially paving the way for LeBron James to win a historic fifth Most Valuable Player trophy .
After finishing second a season ago against Giannis Antetokounmpo, who became the 12th player in NBA history to win consecutive MVP trophies, James returns to the top in ESPN’s first poll of the 2020 MVP campaign. twenty one.
To gauge where the race is at this point in the season, ESPN asked 100 members of the media to participate in the informal poll that mimics voting for postseason awards. To make the vote as realistic as possible, there are at least two voters from each of the competition’s 28 markets, as well as a representative sample of national and international reporters.
As with the official NBA end-of-season voting, voters were asked to submit a five-player ballot, and the results were tabulated using the league’s scoring system: 10 points for each vote for first place, followed by seven points for second; five points for the third; three points for the fourth; and one point for the fifth.
While James is currently in the early lead in his pursuit of a fifth MVP trophy, which he hopes will go hand-in-hand with a fifth championship in the summer, he will get 54 out of 100 possible votes, but the race to this point in season is just as good. competitive like everyone else lately, with a few crosses – Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid and Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic – on her heels.
Now in his 18th season, James, 36, remains remarkably consistent, having played in each of the Lakers’ 25 games to date, averaging over 25 points, seven rebounds and seven assists for the fifth consecutive season. James shoots 41 percent from 3 points, the best of his career. This is the first time since 2013, the year he won his last MVP award, that James has shot more than 40 percent since 3. That was also the only season in his career that he reached that point; shot below 37% from 3 points in each of the past six seasons.
James was named on 99 of the 100 ballots, finishing with a total of 760 points, leading Embiid (23 votes for first place) by just 95 points. The last MVP vote by such a narrow final margin was in 2004-2005, when Steve Nash surpassed Shaquille O’Neal by 34 points. Jokic came in third, receiving 18 votes for the first place and a total of 596 points.
That brings the difference between James in first place and Jokic in third place to 164 points. In comparison, Antetokounmpo led James to second place with 152 points in the first draft of last year’s poll. No final MVP vote has seen such a narrow margin between first and third since the 1998-99 season was cut short by the lockout, when Alonzo Mourning and Tim Duncan finished 100 points behind MVP winner Karl Malone.
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The Bucks beat 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 of his career, while also collecting the best marks of his career in shooting rates, including from the field (55.3%), from 3 points (39%)) and the free throw line (85%) for Philadelphia, which has the best record in the Eastern Conference and averages a whopping 15.2 points per 100 possessions when Embiid is on the ground, compared to when he sits.
Philadelphia is also 16-3 in games Embiid plays this season and 1-4 in games he doesn’t play.
Jokic is currently the only NBA player in the top 10 in points (27.6), rebounds (11.5) and assists (8.6) per game, and he led the league briefly in assists, something no center has done over the course of a full season. since Wilt Chamberlain in 1968. He and Embiid aim to be the first center to win the NBA MVP award since O’Neal in 2000.
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 first vote, more than in any previous edition of this poll. In addition to James, Embiid and Jokic, Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant got three votes for first place, while LA Clippers teammates Kawhi Leonard and Paul George each got one vote for first place, as did Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry.
Durant finished fourth in the vote last season with a torn Achilles tendon with 272 points and appeared on 75 votes, while Leonard (153 points, 64 votes) finished fifth.
Antetokounmpo, the current two-time MVP, was a distant sixth with a handful of votes and looks highly unlikely to win for the third time in a row. Preseason favorite Doncic only got two votes for third, as his brilliant statistical resume was easily surpassed by the Mavericks’ disappointing record.
A total of 15 different players received at least one vote, including three players from the same team who first received at least one vote in an iteration of this poll.
Center Rudy Gobert and guards Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley led the Utah Jazz to the best record in the NBA, but got only a handful of votes (four for Gobert, two for Mitchell and one for Conley), speaking of the nature of the team’s success as a whole this season. The last three-player team to receive MVP votes in the same season was the 2004-05 Suns (Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Shawn Marion).