#3 Nikola Jokic – Denver Nuggets
Many were not picking Nikola Jokic to win the league-MVP award during the 2020-21 NBA season, but that will not be the case this year!
The Serbian big man put together one of the best all-around seasons by a center in NBA history last year and at 26-years-old, he is only going to get better. Not to mention, Jamal Murray is out to begin the season, so even more weight could fall on the shoulders of Jokic.
Maybe this is a bad thing for his MVP chances, as there will be a higher chance of him being fatigued or getting injured, but at the same time, this could result in him always having the ball in his hands and improving his numbers from this past year!
He may not be the “bruiser-like” center like Shaquille O’Neal and Karl Malone were, but Nikola Jokic still puts up video game-like numbers and puts himself in the same category as these guys. The NBA’s pace of play is a lot faster now than it was back in the day, but Jokic seems to play at his own speed, which worked last year that’s for sure.
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Only 12 players in NBA history have ever won back-to-back MVP awards, some doing it multiple times over the span of their careers, so could Nikola Jokic wind up being the lucky 13th guy to do so? Time will tell if Jokic can make history for the Nuggets, but the reigning league-MVP should definitely once again assert himself as one of the top-tier talents in the NBa during the 2021-22 season.
