NBA MVP straw poll: 100 league insiders make their final votes
In mid-February, the second of ESPN’s three NBA most valuable player straw polls showed Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with a comfortable — if not ironclad — lead over Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic.
Six weeks later, the race is virtually unchanged.
If the results from our final straw poll are accurate — for each of the past five seasons, they have been — Gilgeous-Alexander will claim his first MVP award. And in a poll that mirrors the league’s official voting and was conducted over a 24-hour period Sunday and Monday, Gilgeous-Alexander claimed 77 of 100 first-place votes.
He finished second on the remaining 23 ballots for 931 total points, while Jokic finished with 769. After the two stars received all but one first- and second-place vote in the second round of polling back in February, this edition was a clean sweep — something that hadn’t happened across the 19 previous straw polls conducted since the start of the 2016-17 season.
That dominance atop the ballot goes hand-in-hand with what both players have shown on the court.
Gilgeous-Alexander is on pace to win his first scoring title at 32.9 points per game for a Thunder team that enters Wednesday night’s game against the Detroit Pistons (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) with a 63-12 record. OKC needs to win out to join the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls and the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors as the only teams in NBA history to win 70 or more games in a regular season.
Jokic, meanwhile, is attempting to make history by becoming the third player to win four MVPs in a five-year span, joining LeBron James in 2008-12 and Bill Russell in 1961-65.
Despite Gilgeous-Alexander’s lead, Jokic is presenting perhaps his best MVP case.
» Jump to the full NBA MVP straw poll results
Behind career highs in points (29.3), assists (10.2) and 3-point percentage (41.2) with 12.8 rebounds, Jokic has lifted a Nuggets roster beset by injuries to the West’s No. 3 seed. Jokic seems certain to finish inside the top two in MVP voting for a fifth straight season, which hasn’t been done since Larry Bird’s six consecutive seasons from 1981 to 1986.
Two different scouts who spoke to ESPN said they would vote for Jokic, but that they didn’t have a great deal of conviction about their choice — like many of the straw-poll voters we talked to this week.
“I’d go Jokic,” one scout said. “[For] keeping that team afloat with the injuries and their depth. The Thunder are great everywhere. There’s a reason they are going to win 70 games.
“[Jokic] is putting up a statistical anomaly in NBA history. It’s Wilt Chamberlain-esque.”
“Jokic,” another scout said. “It’s hard, just because OKC is playing so well, and Shai is great. But Jokic just continues to elevate his game.”
There was a similar level of uncertainty among media members we polled, with multiple cautioning they could still change their mind — and noting there was still time for something spectacular to swing the race toward the three-time MVP big man.
Similar separation for third and fourth
The top of the ballot has remained remarkably static this season. Not only have Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic been in the top two spots in all three polls, but Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum have occupied Nos. 3 and 4 as well.
When the midseason poll was conducted, Antetokounmpo’s status on end-of-season ballots was threatened by a lingering calf injury. But Antetokounmpo has now played in 62 games — just three shy of the league’s threshold for awards consideration.
Antetokounmpo, who is averaging 30.2 points, 11.9 rebounds and 5.9 assists, remains the only player to have received a vote in each of the 19 straw polls that have been conducted over the past nine seasons, and he has been inside the top five in 13 consecutive polls. Even among those 13, he has been remarkably consistent, finishing second once, fourth once, and third the other 11 times.
Tatum has a similar history, as he has remained near the top of the second tier in the voting over the past few seasons. But outside of being in first place in the opening poll of the 2022-23 season, he has never been higher than fourth and has vacillated between fourth and sixth. That mirrors his finishes in the official awards vote (sixth in 2022 and 2024, and fourth in 2023).
Mitchell solidifies his hold on fifth
In the second straw poll, Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell was fifth but only narrowly ahead of New York Knicks stars Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson.
After March 7-8, and with Brunson sitting out the past few weeks because of an ankle sprain, virtually all of his votes shifted to Mitchell, who appears to have locked up what would be the first top-five finish in MVP voting of his career.
Brunson, meanwhile, went from being neck-and-neck with Mitchell for fifth to getting only two fifth-place votes this time. Towns dropped down the list, as well, after the Knicks have struggled in recent weeks, particularly against high-caliber competition.
Mitchell and the Cavaliers have maintained their wire-to-wire lead atop the Eastern Conference behind not only his play, but that of forward Evan Mobley, who also received a handful of fifth-place votes in his second consecutive straw poll appearance.
Respect for Cunningham and the Pistons …
Eyebrows were raised last summer when the Detroit Pistons bestowed a full max rookie contract extension on Cade Cunningham, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA draft.
Cunningham had yet to make an All-Star team, had dealt with injuries and the Pistons were coming off a 14-win season that included a 28-game losing streak. Fast-forward to today, and Cunningham is an All-Star, a near lock to make his first All-NBA team — with it comes a hefty extra chunk of cash by becoming eligible for the Rose Rule provision and getting 30% of the salary cap — and also probably will receive some MVP consideration after making it onto eight ballots and finishing seventh in the voting.
Cunningham, who is averaging 25.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 9.2 assists this season, has been the engine behind a remarkable season in for the Pistons, who have already tripled their win total from last season and still have a chance to finish as high as fourth in the East and host a playoff series.
“I’m genuinely excited to see what he, and they, can do,” a West executive said. “They just have to go through it and see what your talent looks like on that stage. …
“Let’s see how he does against game planning for him over a seven-game series. There’s a lot of things you don’t know until you go through it.”
Not only will Cunningham be in contention for MVP and All-NBA honors, but he also should receive consideration for the league’s Most Improved Player award, and Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff also will be a strong contender for the league’s Coach of the Year award in his first season with Detroit.
… And the game’s oldest player
It’s remarkable we are having a discussion about the oldest player in the NBA getting a single MVP vote. And yet, 40-year-old LeBron James finished sixth after picking up a third-place vote, two-fourth place votes and 10 fifth-place votes in the straw poll.
This is the first time James has received double-digit votes in four years, since he finished fifth in the final poll of the 2021 season. Since then, he has only received votes in four of the 12 polls that have been conducted — though that now includes each of the past two.
James getting this many votes is a credit not only to his play, but to the way his Los Angeles Lakers have surged up the standings after acquiring Luka Doncic and giving themselves a chance at true home-court advantage in the first round — their 2020 title run was in the Orlando bubble — for the first time in 13 seasons.
Source: espn.com