It was no secret this would be the result long before the news was leaked earlier on Tuesday:
Nikola Jokic has won the NBA Most Valuable Player award.
Nikola Jokic thanks his team after becoming the first #KiaMVP in @nuggets history 🙏 pic.twitter.com/jTzXoOlB0n
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) June 8, 2021
Jokic is the lowest pick ever to win MVP — No. 41 — and the first Denver Nugget ever.
As expected, Jokic ran away with MVP, garnering 91 of the 100 first-place votes cast by selected media members; he finished second on eight more ballots and third on one.
The more tightly contested race was for second, which Joel Embiid won — meaning centers finished 1-2 in the voting — followed by Stephen Curry in third. Embiid finished second despite missing 21 games this season. Curry had more first-place votes than Embiid — five to one — but Embiid had 62 second-place votes to Curry’s 23, and that was the difference.
Fourth place went to Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Bucks, followed by Chris Paul of the Suns in fifth. Luka Doncic was sixth, Damian Lillard finished seventh.
The one outlier vote that turned heads: Derrick Rose got one first-place MVP vote. While Rose had a nice season, especially after being traded to New York, he was not at an MVP level. So who voted for him? Well, you did readers — Rose got the cumulative fan vote for MVP.
Here is the full voting breakdown:
(If you want to know what media members voted for whom, all the ballots for each voter will be posted at PR.NBA.com after the announcement of all end-of-season awards.)