Nuggets center Nikola Jokic gets MVP nod from NBA Veteran, one the league’s best players of the last 25 years

Kevin Garnett knows a thing or two about MVP caliber play

On May 3rd of this year, it will be the 20th anniversary of one of the crowning achievements from one the league’s best players of the last 25 years. Kevin Garnett, then a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves, won the only MVP Award of his career on May 3rd, 2004, capping off a season in which KG averaged 24.2 points, 13.9 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 2.2 blocks and 1.5 steals per game for the top-seeded Wolves.

Twenty years later, there’s another ground-breaking big who resides in the Northwest Division who is rightfully considered the favorite to take him the MVP Award — only this would be the third time he’s won the league’s most prestigious individual award, and he’d likely consider the whole ordeal nothing more than a minor inconvenience. But no matter how disinterested Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic is in accumulating individual awards and accolades, that’s not going to stop very knowledgable people from raving about the season that Jokic is having, which exists within a stretch of basketball that has put The Joker into an unprecedented stratosphere.

The comparisons to Shaquille O’Neal, Wilt Chamberlain and any other dominant center in the history of the NBA may seem premature, but I assure you, each one of them is warranted. What Nikola Jokic does on a nightly basis for the Denver Nuggets offense goes well beyond his numbers, and the numbers are eye-popping. As of Saturday afternoon, the MVP front-runner is averaging 25.8 points, 12.3 rebounds, and 9.2 assists. Those are just the basic numbers. Look at the advanced stats, in which Jokic leads the entire league in most of them, and his impact becomes even more noticeable. The final test is the eye test, and it’s safe to say that that particular exam favors Jokic over the rest of the field.

Whether or not Nikola Jokic wants to be the face of the NBA is irrelevant here, because he has no say in the matter whether or not he wins the MVP at the end of the year. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of worthy challengers. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum are all very much in the mix, and had Joel Embiid not gotten injured, he’d have a rock-solid case to become the third straight back-to-back MVP Award winner. But the way things stand right now, this league and its MVP trophy belong to Nikola Jokic.