The 2020-21 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player award belonged to one man, and the ballot made that plain. Nikola Jokić collected 91 of 101 first-place votes to claim the honour for the first time, a margin that left the league’s other stars far behind.
A landslide no one foresaw a decade ago
When the global panel of sportswriters and broadcasters cast their ballots, Jokić amassed 971 total points. Joel Embiid finished second with 586. The remaining ten first-place votes scattered across five names — Stephen Curry took five, Chris Paul two, and Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Derrick Rose one each. The fan ballot stood alone, going to Rose.
A second-round pick rewrites the record books
The numbers told the story, but the identity of the winner reshaped the league’s history. Jokić became the first Denver Nugget ever to win the MVP. He was the first Serbian-born player to do so, and the first centre since Shaquille O’Neal in 2000.
Selected 41st overall in the 2014 draft, Jokić is the lowest-drafted MVP in NBA history, behind only the undrafted Moses Malone. He had entered the league thinking the EuroLeague was the summit. Now he stood where no Nugget, no Serbian, and no modern centre had been since the turn of the century.
A season built on quiet, relentless presence
He played all 72 games that season, averaging 26.4 points, 10.9 rebounds and 8.4 assists. His 599 total assists made him the league’s best passing big man, and the consistency of his output earned a trust among voters that the ballot reflected. There was no single highlight that delivered the award; there were 72 games of it.
When the announcement came, Jokić deflected the weight of it. “It’s a big accomplishment, but it’s something that like I said to the guys, it’s not just me,” he told reporters afterwards. “I couldn’t do it by myself. It’s an individual award, but it’s the effort of everybody.”
A second MVP would follow a year later, then a third, a Finals MVP, and a championship. But on this June evening in 2021, the quiet big man from Sombor was simply the one name on almost every ballot.
