Shai vs. Jokic MVP playoff matchup doesn't happen as often as you'd think
This is only 14th time over last 50 years that NBA MVP winner and runner-up have faced off
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Right now basketball fans are being treated to a bit of a rarity.
Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are facing off in a playoff series — a potentially epic one, if Monday’s two-point win by Jokic’s Denver Nuggets over the league-best Oklahoma City Thunder was any indication.
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Jokic, who had 42 points and 22 rebounds Monday, was last year’s NBA MVP award winner, while Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 33 points and 10 rebounds, finished second.
It’s expected they’ll be 1-2 again in some order once the votes are tallied, with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo a distant third. Oddsmakers believe Gilgeous-Alexander, who hails from Hamilton, Ont., will be the likely winner, joining Steve Nash as a Canadian MVP.
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The two best players in a given season, in terms of MVP votes, don’t actually match up all that often in the playoffs. When it has happened, the meetings have not surprisingly involved some of the biggest names in NBA History.
We’re talking Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dr. J, Julius Erving.
The Jokic/Gilgeous-Alexander matchup is just the 14th meeting of the two premier players of a single season in the playoffs in the past 50 years and the first since 2016-17, when MVP runner-up James Harden and the Houston Rockets took out winner Russell Westbrook of Oklahoma City.
Westbrook now comes off the bench for Denver and is trying to knock out the Thunder franchise he’s so closely tied to. Gilgeous-Alexander has replaced him as the favoured son in Oklahoma City.
The most notable meetings, of course, happened in the NBA Finals. Michael Jordan and his dynastic Chicago Bulls twice beat Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz for titles (in 1997 and 1998), Jordan triumphed over MVP runner-up Clyde Drexler and the Portland Trail Blazers in 1992 and over runner-up Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers a year earlier, for Jordan’s first championship not long after Magic, Bird and Erving had dominated the annual MVP races.
In 1985, runner-up Johnson beat winner Bird and Boston (with Bird earlier beating No. 3 Moses Malone and Philadelphia in the conference final).
Five years earlier, league MVP Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers beat runner-up Erving and the Sixers to win it all.
More recently, in 2012 James took home his first title with Miami, beating second-place finisher Kevin Durant’s Thunder.
The other 1 vs. 2 MVP playoff battles include three conference final matchups: Stephen Curry and Golden State over Harden and Houston in 2015; winner Erving losing to Bird in 1981 and Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers falling to runner-up Bill Walton and Portland in 1977.
MVP Bird also beat runner-up Dominique Wilkins and the Atlanta Hawks in Round 2 in 1986 and did the same to Bernard King and the New York Knicks in 1984 (before also beating No. 3 finisher Magic in the NBA Finals).
There also have been several meetings of MVP winners and third-place finishers, or the two runner-ups over the years, including other Magic vs. Bird battles, Jordan vs. Charles Barkley, Shaq taking on San Antonio’s Tim Duncan or Kobe Bryant facing names like Nash or Kevin Garnett. Just a year ago Gilgeous-Alexander lost to Dallas and Luka Doncic, who finished third in voting.
Individual superstars can swing basketball series more than in any other sport, so it’s not surprising that the winners of the classic series tend to also win championships. That could be the case again this year.
The Thunder is a young group, but just won 68 games — the fifth-most ever in a season — and can overwhelm opponents defensively. Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was in the regular season, but still has averaged 28.8 points a game.
He has a lot more help than Jokic, who is so good that a team that shockingly fired longtime head coach Michael Malone and its general manager just days before the playoffs has been rolling since and took out a stacked Los Angeles Clippers team.
Jokic is assisted by Canadian Jamal Murray, who once again is raising his game significantly in the playoffs, and by Aaron Gordon, who hit a game-winning three-pointer Monday after earlier sinking the Clippers with a buzzer-beating dunk.
It’s a series that basketball fans should savour because this type of marquee matchup within doesn’t happen as frequently as you’d think.
@WolstatSun
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