The first game in National Basketball Association (NBA) history occurred on November 1, 1946 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada. The Philadelphia Warriors defeated the Chicago Stags in the NBA Finals that season to become the league’s first-ever champions. Joe Fulks, Ernie Calverley, Max Zaslofsky, and Bones McKinney were among the best players in the league that year, but the NBA didn’t begin awarding the Most Valuable Player (MVP) until the 1955-56 season.
Bob Pettit of the St. Louis Hawks was the inaugural winner of the MVP award and is now one of 14 players to have won the award multiple times. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the all-time leader with six MVP awards, while Michael Jordan and Bill Russell won the award five times. LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain are both four-time winners. Below is a look at the five most recent NBA MVPs.
Nikola Jokic (2021)
Nikola Jokic is among the most unlikely MVPs in NBA history. Selected in the second round, 41st overall, by the Denver Nuggets in the 2014 NBA Draft, Jokic is the lowest-drafted player to ever win the MVP. He’s also the first player on the Nuggets to win the award. Jokic averaged 10 points, 7 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game during his rookie season in 2015-16 and has been on a steady progression up until his MVP-winning season.
The 26-year-old native of Sombor, Serbia averaged 26.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 8.3 assists per game in 2020-21 and was an All-Star for the third consecutive season. He received 91 of a possible 101 first-place votes for the MVP. Joel Embiid and Steph Curry finished second and third, respectively, in voting.
The sixth player born outside the United States to win the award, Jokic never had NBA aspirations while playing youth basketball in Serbia. He was actually asleep when the Nuggets selected him in 2014.
“To be honest, I didn’t even think about being in the NBA,” he said in an interview after winning the award. “My goal when I started to play basketball back home was to play in the EuroLeague because that was the closest top league to my country. I could play in some big clubs in Serbia and grind my way up. But then the Denver Nuggets drafted me, and it was an opportunity for me to become an NBA player.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo (2020)
Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of five players to win the NBA MVP in back-to-back years since the start of the 21st century. Tim Duncan, Steve Nash, Steph Curry, and LeBron James have also accomplished the feat. James did so twice by winning the award in 2009 and 2010 and again in 2012 and 2013.
Antetokounmpo received 85 of the 101 first-place votes, while James finished second and garnered the other 16 first-place votes. Antetokounmpo was also named the Defensive Player of the Year, becoming the first player to win both awards in a single season since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994.
A five-time All-Star, Antetokounmpo averaged a career-best 29.5 points and 13.6 rebounds per game in the 2019-20 season. He also averaged 5.6 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block per game. He received the award remotely while back in his home country of Greece after his Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Miami Heat in the second round of the playoffs. Antetokounmpo led Milwaukee to a championship the following season and was named 2021 NBA Finals MVP.
Giannis Antetokounmpo (2019)
Antetokounmpo averaged 27.7 points, 12.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.5 blocks, and 1.3 steals per game in 2018-19 to win his first MVP award. He received 78 first-place votes, while second-place finisher James Harden received the other 23 first-place votes. Harden averaged a league-best 36.1 points per game, which was the highest mark since Jordan averaged 37 per game in the 1986-87 season. Paul George of the Oklahoma City Thunder finished third in voting.
James Harden (2018)
Harden, a native of Los Angeles, California, won the NBA MVP in 2017-18 after averaging 30.4 points, 8.8 assists, and 5.4 rebounds per game. It was the first of three seasons in which he led the league in scoring and the sixth consecutive year in which he was an All-Star. Harden received 86 first-place votes, while James received the other 15. Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, and Russell Westbrook rounded out the top five in voting.
Russell Westbrook (2017)
A nine-time All-Star, Westbrook won his first and only MVP in 2016-17 after averaging 31.6 points, 10.7 rebounds, and 10.4 assists per game. He led the league in scoring that year for the second time in three seasons and produced a record-breaking 42 triple-doubles. Moreover, he became only the second player in league history to average a triple-double over the course of an entire season.
Westbrook led the Oklahoma City Thunder to 47 victories and a sixth-place finish in the difficult Western Conference, despite the team losing superstar Kevin Durant in the prior offseason.
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