2025-26 Kia MVP Finalists: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic.
Source: https://pr.nba.com
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Better luck next year, Luka Dončić.
Luka never winning MVP damn
At this rate he gotta be the 1 seed to really have a shot
Is that not one of the main requirements to win MVP 99% of the time? Be a one or two seed, something he hasn’t ever done
There was a player a few years back, had the best record in the NBA and the East, his second option was hurt most of the year, and he averaged like 31/11/6 on over 60% from the field. He finished a distant third lol
2 reasons, Giannis already won multiple MVPs so there was a little bias against him already, even though you could say the same about Jokic who finished 2nd which leads to the 2nd reason
Embiid and Jokic were just flat out better than him that year, just like how SGA, Jokic, and Wemby (debatable with Wemby) were just a little bit better than Luka this year
They weren’t flat out better than him imo, all 3 played at an MVP level, I personally think he deserved it. MVPs are run on narratives that come to fruition throughout the season, Embiid had one and Jokic is loved by a portion of the voters clearly, Giannis didn’t have one in the media despite checking all the necessary steps of an mvp. If a player plays at an mvp level, has the best record in the NBA, has his second option hurt, they usually get the mvp
Wemby SGA and Jokic haven’t been flat out better than Luka, I don’t accept that after watching him average damn near 40 before he got hurt with the worst roster out of all of those guys. I am not gonna normalise the level that guy is playing at, 34/8/8 is a hell of a season and you could argue is the best individual season of the lot based on what he has to work with compared to the others
Jokic was 3rd, 6th and 2nd when he won his MVPs. Not top 3 in MVP. Actual MVP.
Embiid was 3rd seed when he won MVP too
Yeah but apparently 99% of the time you are the 1 or 2 seed.
Jokic won it as a 6th seed because his team was hurt, he played at a high level and got them to the playoffs
But Luka couldn’t win MVP and was a distant 3rd in voting when he took an injured Mavs to the 5th seed averaging 34/9/10 👍 The narratives for this award just aren’t consistent at all it makes no sense
He needs to be above 50% and less turn overs he would be there.
jokic is the 1% it seems
6th seed mvp is ridiculous. Same for Russ. But stats or whatever.
Who deserved MVP that year over him? It was a weaker year. Jokic absolutely was the MVP
that was an absolute farce. but apparently there is a league wide conspiracy against Jokic now to keep him at 3 MVPs when the media couldn’t wait to start crowning him.
Can’t say he doesn’t deserve being in the 1%, he is probably a top 3 offensive player of all time
They were a 6th seed. He didn’t “deserve” anything
MVP isn’t a team award moron
Most valuable. It’s literally a team award and always has been. It’s certainly not a best individual player award.
How does a player become more valuable the better his team is? If anything it is harder to be good on a bad team.
What a dipshit response lol
what does the P stand for?
By this logic, you’d give a player on a 9 seed with ridiculous stats the mvp. Which is stupid.
Jokic was pretty clear of the competition. In this case there were 3 other worthy candidates, and two were on the 1 and 2 seeds. Had to justify an MVP to a guy on the lower seed when the other options have had anywhere from nearly as good to a little better of an individual season.
I mean, that kinda makes sense. Jokic and Luka are a wash defensively, and Jokic is a clear tier above Luka offensively. Plus Jokic has won a title.
Luka is a better scorer and arguably a better playmaker (creates the highest value assists of anyone in the league).
And he’s a tier above Jokic defensively, he’s been pretty good on that end this season.
Lol
Lmao even
Hes gonna need to have an argument for being the most valuable player to have a shot.
1-seed next year over a western conference with Wemby/SGA/Jokic would seal it for him yeah
You mean like Shai’s been?
Maybe playing some defense would help too
Hes not getting the 1 seed. His lack of 82 game conditioning + no defense + heliocentric play limits his teammates and rosters, it won’t be conducive enough to be the 1 seed. Thats why he always hovers around 4 5 seed.
To those who say he just doesn’t have good enough teammates, Dallas gave him Porzingis and he’s made to be a corner 3 pt shooter for Luka playing his worst basketball at Dallas. Jalen Brunsn was also made to be a bench spark when playing with Luka.
Would be nice if he ever had a chance to get competent and consistent roster construction that allows for winning from start to finish for a whole season like Shai and Jokic have, and Wemby will get to have.
I know Denver has had some downturns in terms of their team but ultimately Jokic has been with the core of Jamal and AG for like 6 years now.
Shai and now Wemby getting a 5-8+ year runway with multiple other top picks next to them and a clearly defined window goes without saying.
In the time since OKC drafted J Dub and Chet Luka has gone from Brunson to nobody to Kyrie and Lively to two months with PJ/Gafford and then had his entire life uprooted to go play with Austin and Bron and now just one year later he’s looking at potentially having both of those two changed out again this offseason and sitting through an on the fly soft tear down and rebuild at age 28
In Luka’s entire career the one singular season where you could look at his team in October and have realistic expectations for them to a be a deep playoff threat was the one he ended up getting traded. Any ounce of success he’s had came from willing his team to late season turnarounds and overcoming expectations in the playoffs.
Brunson was a roleplayer on the Mavs until basically the last 3 months of his contract, he’s has the worst roster consistency of any top player.
For years his starting center was Dwight Powell
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They added an all star guard, another top 4 pick, and center depth behind Wemby… he 100% deserves to be in MVP finalist discussions, but you don’t have to act like the Spurs didn’t get better and like they don’t have a much stronger long term vision than anything Luka has dealt with in the past 4-5 years.
the team Luka went to the Finals with was pretty good. Now tell us how long the Kyrie/DJJ/PJ/Lively/Gafford core was around for
Yeah the context is wild. That finals team really only came together after the trade deadline. And once they did they were among the top teams in the league. Had you extrapolated that to the entire season he might actually won it
That’s just the core of the whole thing I’m complaining about. Someone wants to say Shai Jokic and Wemby are all better players than Luka I see that. But I just want to see Luka have a single team that can consistently win games from October to April. Hasn’t happened in eight seasons except the Klay/Grimes post-Finals squad he got traded from. It’s always been banking on him going nuclear for a few months to win games while playing with Tim Hardaway Jr and Josh Green or Rui and Jake LaRavia and then forcing late tunarounds in Feb and March.
Wemby will get to have. They had 2 consecutive top 4 picks after Wemby, both of whom look great
He had a solid roster AFTER the all star break. Didnt get enough credit for keeping the team afloat.
Yep. I know what I sat there watching for years. Having to drop 73 to barely beat the shittiest Hawks team of all time, had to average a 37 point triple double for two straight months to barely stay afloat with his best option on any given night being Grant Williams or THJ while Kyrie and Lively missed like half the season without PJ or Gafford yet. Having to drop 60/20/10 to barely beat the pre-contending Knicks because Nico and Cuban let Brunson walk for nothing and left him out there with Reggie Bullock Dwight Powell and Spencer Dinwiddie. Gotta laugh at people here trying to throw recognizable names (Brunson and Lebron) in your face as if context doesn’t apply at all
He’ll never win one over a healthy prime shai jokic wemby
Ironically I think Flagg might get there one day
Makes sense, by the time Flagg is in his prime Jokic and Giannis will have aged out, and Shai and Luka will be at the tail end of their own primes. His only competition would be Wemby, but Wemby’s not going to win MVP every single year lol
Flagg is easier to build around and I believe will get either an MVP or chip. I don’t think Luka gets either.
He’s gonna be the Drew Brees of the NBA.
I wish I could dig out the post I made about my $1000 bet for Wemby to get a MVP before Luka during Wemby’s rookie year.
Posted here and got crazy downvote all saying theres 0% chance, ‘have you seen how great Luka is already?’. Lol.
About to get ma $25000, next season.
Who do you think Luka should have displaced out of the 3 MVP finalists?
among MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL he’s gotta be the GOAT among non-MVP winners at this point?
Might get a life time achievement MVP over someone like Kobe did despite not being the best player of any single year.
You have to actually play defense to win this award
5⁄9 MVPs were worse than 25-25 Luka on defense, that’s obviously not a criteria.
Expected
Deserved.
Melo in complete denial of Jokic’s legacy lmao
Ya’ll js wanna hate man, 36 y/o jokic isn’t gonna be an mvp front runner. They friends man
The only 36+ year old to finish top 5 was Karl Malone in 2000 and Kareem in 1984-1986 finishing 4th all 3 years. And Lebron finished 6th last year at 40
5th place isn’t frontrunner
Never said it was
Least obvious example of a white boy trying to sound black on Reddit.
Not at all. If Jokic is still in the top 3 of MVP voting when he’s 36, he’d be in the very inner circle of the GOAT conversation. The last year Lebron was top-3 for MVP, he was 35. Jordan won MVP at 34 then retired. Kareem was 33. Steph was 32. Bill Russell was 32. Kobe was 31. Larry Bird was 31. Magic was 31 and retired due to HIV. Tim Duncan was 27. The rest of the studio crew just didn’t do the mental math quickly enough.
We know why lol
Melos always been a Digimon guy it all makes sense now…
Insane stuff because I never got the impression that melo cared about anything other than his stats and now he’s crying about his legacy
Yep, there’s only one #15 bring retired and it doesn’t say Anthony on the back…
what did he say?
Tmac said these 3 would be the finalists for MVP for the next 5 yrs and Melo said Jokic isn’t. Imo it isn’t a crazy statement considering Jokic is gonna be 36 in 5 yrs but it comes off as salty cuz of Melo and the Nuggets history
Ya fairs. Would be crazy if Jokic was because that would be 12 straight seasons of being an MVP finalist 😭
I don’t see what Jokic does now that he magically wouldn’t be able to do at 36
Only thing that will change is more frequent injuries and longer recovery times
Dirk aged incredibly well and still fell off a good amount by 36.
Stamina. Playing a big takes a toll on the body and it’ll wear him down eventually
Defense gets worse. You loosen up oj scoring and suddenly Luka with a similar no. of assists, 8 rebounds and 32 ppg is a much better candidate.
Don’t let guys like LeBron, Steph, and KD fool you. Players fall off usually.
Only weirdoes would think that’s him being salty, a decade plus of top 2⁄3 MVP finishes in the modern NBA is unprecedented.
The others said SGA/Wemby/Jokic will be the top 3 for MVP 5 years from now as well, and Carmelo disagreed.
Its hilarious because at least 80% of this sub would disagree with T-Mac cause they all have Luka favorites for MVP start of every year for the past 6 years.
Crazy that this might be the field for the next couple years, and that’s not even accounting for Luka.
We might not have an American MVP for a while unless Ant and Flagg breaks out further
I don’t think Ant will ever be on wemby level. Coop might tho
Ant will also never be on SGA or Jokic’s level… I could be wrong but it’s not looking that way
SGA was a relative nobody at Ants age. Let’s see
This sounded good when Ant was 22, but by his age right now, SGA was 5th in MVP, NBA first team and averaging 31.4, 2.6 stocks on 51/34/91 splits, heading into a 2nd place finish the season after
It’s not a ‘lets see’ anymore, it’s ‘hurry up’
Zero chance cooper keeps pace with Wemby. The physical gifts are just too different. The difference between their height is like the difference between the average PG and C.
Cooper could be as good as impactful as Wemby, I say this as an obvious Wemby glazer
The obvious issue is relying on Dallas to build a good team around him any time soon but at his peak Coop’s the kinda guy I feel like will average 35 in the playoffs at his peak while still being one of the best defenders on the floor, if that isn’t on their level what is
Makes me sad. We’re never winning anything. Might as well move them to Seattle unfortunately
don’t say that. Ant is still improving and hasn’t entered his prime yet. You guys do need more depth tho.
This dude had a Memphis flair a week ago. He’s being facetious.
No? I’ve been a wolves fan since I was like 6 or 7.
And with Minnesota sports, until a team proves me wrong, I don’t really think any of them will ever get over the hump. Sometimes it can be genuinely hard to be a fan.
Not ant
The thing is, if you look at the top prospects this decade none of them seem to really be MVP-level outside of Wemby, and pretty much all the best players drafted in the 2020s besides him have been American. Within a few years Jokic and Giannis will be out of their primes and likely no longer be MVP-level players, and Shai and Luka are both in their late 20’s and not too far behind. Given all that, I imagine that the 2030’s won’t be nearly as dominated by international talent as the 2020’s currently are, especially because voters aren’t going to just give Wemby MVP every single year lol.
Pure narrative nonsense. Luka continued disrepect. Man put up historic scoring season, multiple player of the week, multiple player of the month, scoring title, ranked high in rebounds and steals. 3rd in Assists. Disagree with me I don’t care, you’ll never convince me Luka is not top 3. He has played on the worst team amongst all these guys and brought them to 3rd seed before he got injured
Who should he be over
Wemby. Luka was on the court 23% more than him (and was arguably straight up better minute-for-minute).
Most disrespected player in the game. Has 5 1st team all nbas by the age of 26 and got labled fat and lazy by the media
Don’t all the first team selections mean that he’s not disrespected? Like the media keeps voting him as one of the five best players in the sport (deservedly) year after year. Seems pretty respectful
But he didn’t place in the top 3 of an incredibly stacked MVP race against the 2 best players in the world that are a step above him, and the baby goat leading a projected play-in team to a 60+ win 2 seed.
Luka fans have such an insane persecution complex. He’s had a great year, but it’s not disrespect to think other players have had a better season.
As much as I don’t buy into the persecution complex as much as others it is pretty clear the media is not fond of him. Him finishing behind Wemby this year is just absurd.
Frankly Luka isn’t even top 5. He’s a young and promising player but has a long way to go still.
Hell yeah Wemby, top 3 finish in year 3. Next year he’s coming for that mvp
I kinda dont expect him to play 65 games again. feel like he’ll play around 55 each season
Any particular reason?
being that height makes it really hard to stay healthy for a high volume of games. I know that he does everything he can to prevent injury, but it’s just how it is when you have that much length
He’s been decently healthy so far. The blood clot wasn’t something he can control, but for soft tissue injuries, he doing better than his fellow super-tall players
He’s also been on heavy minutes restriction. The Spurs seem worried that with a typical star minutes load he’d get hurt.
they are probably trying to extend a career that’s bound to be shorter due to height
Right, same reason he’ll likely have more seasons in his career where he can’t play 65 games for whatever reason.
He hasn’t been on a minutes restriction this season, except for like 2 weeks coming back from injury. He just didn’t need to play much because they blew out so many teams
He played fewer minutes than 41 year old Bron and his team didn’t finish as the one seed in their conference.
They would have played him more if he could have handled it.
he wasn’t sitting in close games, he was sitting in blowouts. They were 62-20.
it is not the case that he didn’t ever have limited minutes in close games or that he sat in every blowout. The missed minutes came from somewhere.
Wtf are you trying to say? That wemby should keep playing in a blowout and that would have made them the first seed somehow??
The “we were blowing teams out so bad he barely had to play” works for Steph on the 73 win Warriors because there was nothing else to accomplish by playing him more.
They lost plenty of games where other stars would have played more. His minutes were limited compared to typical star players.
yeah I mean certainly not impossible for him to maintain 65 games per season. the odds based on historical data is just not in his favor for someone that tall
But when you’re that abnormally tall, the injuries are mostly going to be things he “can’t control”. Its not his fault, its just the reality of being so tall
Spurs should reduce his minutes every game in the playoffs. That is the way to keep him healthy like they did this year
He has played 65 games in two out of three seasons and was on track in the third until he got a freak blood clot, but you can go off with this weird concern trolling about how he’s gonna miss 30 games a year for the rest of his career.
lol trolling? ok. he might very well stay healthy. who knows. historical precedent just isn’t on his side, that’s all I’ve been saying. and 3 seasons isn’t exactly a large sample size
Damn Luka. Averaging 50 wouldn’t be enough with them narratives
4 seed + least number of games can’t help
Jokic won as a lower seed. Luka clearly has a worse team than every other top candidate, and does every single year. It’s just insane the excuses I read for never taking his candidacy seriously.
they were the 3rd seed when luka got injured and he played like 400 more minutes than wemby lmao
That is true.
Played way more basketball than Wemby though.
And not to mention SGA and Jokic have just been better than him all season lol. SGA has been consistently great all season long. Consistency matters
Maybe I don’t watch enough Spurs games but I simply do not see Wemby on the same level as SGA or Jokic yet. He just isn’t enough of threat offensively to me.
Edit: Everyone keeps bringing up the “defense” argument when defense really does not matter a whole lot. If defense did matter than Jokic wouldn’t have won 3 MVPs.
The main anchor of a 60+ win team in the west is always going get MVP votes.
He’s not but he’s not going to win either so 🤷. I don’t think anyone’s ever remembered who was in 3/4th place in an mvp race
This is 18⁄19 Paul George erasure. Most talked about 3rd place since Oscar and Elgin
They’ll remember the DPOY tho, but yea offensively he’s got to get those numbers up. Only a matter of time
Thats because you don’t watch enough Spurs games.
He’s not on the same level as SGA or Jokic offensively but saying he’s not a threat is pretty silly. The Spurs are generating the most corner 3’s in NBA history and I can tell you it’s not because the Spurs are a shooting team.
His offense just needs to be as good as Jokic’s defense
while you’re mostly right, defense matters when the media “narrative” deems it matters
Isn’t he the leading scorer on the 3rd highest scoring team?
So the Thunder lost to the three times in a row because of whom? Fox?
western conf stays winning
Well deserved but please ship these two other dudes to the East
Will Luka ever win MVP?
I maintain he should’ve won Jokic’s third, but voters are inconsistent 🤷🏽♂️
Depends, will he ever have a popular positive narrative in national media?
Depends, will he ever stop crying to refs, being lazy on the defensive end, and hoarding the vast majority of his team’s FGAs?
They won’t let Jokic win again but at least he’s a finalist I guess
Why wouldn’t he win?
voter fatigue
No Luka?
Best I can hope for is Wemby getting exposed by the trailblazers lol. My hatewatch starts tonight :)
Ah yes, surely the great Donovan Clingan will stop him
I am shocked
Im shocked
Can’t even argue against those 3 finalists, they all deserve to be there.
Jokic beyond any doubt.
Wemby balled out in the final month but he was wildly inconsistent and had some really bad games early on.
Joke. It’s obscene to not have Luka in there.
There’s only 3 slots.
Yes, and Luka deserved one of them. Wemby basically talked himself into the MVP conversation.
Its weird to have extremely strong opinions about the difference between third and fourth in an award.
I have a strong opinion about Luka consistently being shafted in these awards discussions.
You dont think he should win right?
No, I think SGA should win. I think he should have won it 2 seasons ago.
So what are we even doing. Theyre voting in 2026.
Because how he is perceived by the media matters. Like it or not, they have a huge impact on a player’s legacy. And the fact that Luka is routinely underrated by the NBA media means he may never win MVP.
Luka being “underrated” by anyone is a crazy take. I was agreeing with you until you said that
He will always be mvp in your heart.
Really, truly getting sick of you guys just claiming Wemby is height + hype
You mean when he spoke facts that people couldn’t argue
Wemby deserves to be there over Luka.
Who are you replacing? Agree that Luka is MVP caliber but I think all 3 of these guys earned it too.
Wemby. I’m sorry, but minutes played should matter. The huge offensive gap should matter.
I swear this is the first ever year where minutes played is used as an argument. Shit is crazy
Because it’s one of the few times a player who is having his minutes managed is being touted for MVP. It may even be the first time.
He has played hundreds of minutes fewer than his rivals.
If anything, it’s more impressive on wembys part that he’s up here with these guys despite playing significantly less minutes
Agreed
Then the huge defensive gap should matter as well. He averages 25ppg and comically better on the defensive end.
I love Luka, genuinely, he should obviously be in consideration, but there is a reason he keeps not winning this award.
Again, not that any of this matters, we literally already know Shai won, the voting is public. Them putting Luka’s picture up there wouldn’t matter.
The huge defensive gap does matter. But offense simply matters more in the NBA. A lot more.
Also, Wemby is comically better than literally every other MVP candidate on the defensive end.
Yes, neither of them are going to win. But it seems that Luka has to be averaging 40 for a month in order to get any sort of positive coverage.
Because the Lakers were seen as a disappointment. That takes a while to overcome
The Lakers overachieved significantly despite missing Luka’s #2 and #3 for long stretches.
Who says defense isn’t being accounted for? That’s Wemby’s entire case.
luka should be there over wemby. offense matters more than defense in the modern nba
Not when there’s better players than him.
You could shuffle all three in order and it wouldn’t cause much of a problem. Expected outcome
This is the correct three.
Hell nah
you didn’t actually link the source, it’s https://www.nba.com/news/2025-2026-regular-season-awards
Expected. And I mean for years and years
Well this will be an interesting one… Lets go
All from the West
Shai and it’s not even close
Luka should have been there as well. Lakers/Denver were basically equal during the season and Luka carried the Lakers.
I know people are upset about Luka not being there but tbh Shai and Jokic are clearly tier 1, and Luka/Wemby are clearly tier 2. I personally think Luka outplayed Wemby slightly this year but it’s very close, it just depends on what you believe is more important in today’s league, being the clear best defensive player and a top 15 offensive player or being a clear top 3 offensive player and slightly below average defender.
Luka imo has a good chance at going down as one of the best players to never win a MVP. Luka was 1st in ppg and 2.4pp ahead of second while being +3.7rts and 3rd in apg as a good rebounder! That’s an MVP worthy season for sure, the problem is you’ve got someone playing one of the best defensive seasons since 2000 while being a top 15, arguable top 10 offensive player, Jokic leading the league in assists and rebounds per game while being 8th in ppg and fifth in total shooting, and Shai putting up one of the most efficient scoring seasons of all time while also being a good defender and a great playmaker with an absurdly low turnover ratio. Luka may be slightly better than Wemby this year imo, but Jokic and Shai clearly outperformed him.
Lol @ all the casuals and bandwagon Laker fans who think ball hogging and 25 FGAs a night while doing nothing else but sometimes playing the passing lane makes you worthy of MVP
His MVP chances in the next several seasons became slim with the arrival of that 7’4” alien in San Antonio.
Just not in that order: https://readthegame.com/leaderboard
As it should be.