For the seventh-straight year, the NBA MVP won’t make the Finals
Most Valuable Player is a regular-season award. But it may curse the winner’s playoff performance.
Joel Embiid became the fourth straight MVP to lose before the conference finals as Boston demolished Philadelphia in the second half on their way to a 112-88 win.
Embiid came back from a knee injury in Game 2 of the series, and scored 30+ points in three straight games as the 76ers took a 3-2 lead.
But he only had 15 in Game 7, along with eight rebounds and four turnovers. It’s his third straight second-round exit, and his fifth in the last six years.
Last year, MVP Nikola Jokic lost in five games to the Warriors in the first round. The previous year, the Joker got ejected from the final game of Phoenix’s second-round sweep of the Nuggets.
In 2020, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Miami Heat in the first round of the “Bubble playoffs” in Orlando, with the Greek Freak sidelined by a sprained ankle in Game 4 of the Heat’s 4-1 series win.
Antetokounmpo did reach the conference finals in 2019, but no MVP has made the NBA Finals since Stephen Curry in 2016, and no MVP has won it all since Curry in 2015.
Why has the MVP struggled so much in the playoffs? It may be that playing long and hard enough to win MVP leaves the star improperly rested for the postseason.
Jokic noticeably eased up down the stretch, sitting out many games, and he’s been dominant so far.
But the real difference is that voters have changed their standards for MVP. From 1983-2016, there were only two MVPs who weren’t on a top-2 team in their conference.
That was Steve Nash in 2006 on the division-winning No. 3 seed Phoenix Suns, and Michael Jordan on the No. 3 Chicago Bulls in 1988. Jordan didn’t win his division, but he did win the scoring title and Defensive Player of the Year.
But since Russell Westbrook won in 2017 for the No. 6 Oklahoma City Thunder, an MVP no longer needs his team to be dominant. Jokic’s Nuggets were tied for third in the West when he first won in 2021, and finished sixth when he repeated in 2022. This year’s 76ers finished third.
So it may not have to do with the MVP being tired, or not bringing, or missing some intangible playoff quality. It may simply be that these players have elevated teams that weren’t that great.
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