NBA
Embiid: They’re lying about not being interested in the MVP award
Philadelphia center Joel Embiid said other players, without naming them, are lying about not being interested in the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player award.
This season, candidates for the MVP award in the NBA are Serbian national team player Nikola Jokić, Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Cameroon’s original Joel Embiid. They are the exact same actors in the last year’s MVP race.
NBA:
The Greek Antetokounmpo and Serbian Jokić have repeatedly pointed out that they are not interested in the award for the most useful player in the league and are focused on the whole team’s game.
Joel Embiid on his opponents
While speaking to famous NBA pundit Rachel Nichols, he talked about his disbelief about the subject:
“One thing I’ll say is that if people tell you they don’t care about it, they’re lying. That’s the best award you can get as a basketball player, it means a lot,” he said. “But if I were to win it, it would validate all the work that I put in, that’s why I cared about it, because you put it so much work and if you get that recognition, it just validates that you didn’t waste your time. But like I said, if someone tells you that they don’t care, that’s bulls--t.”
Embiid’s Philadelphia finished third place in the East, and he is the best scorer in the league with an average of 33.1 points. He also has 10.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game.
The preliminary results
Nikola Jokić will most likely not be the NBA MVP for the third season in a row if the early votes of journalists and experts published by Forbes are to be believed.
One hundred journalists will give their vote for the award winner for the most valuable player in the league, and 22 have already confirmed their votes. In the early voting phase, Philadelphia center Joel Embiid leads by a landslide, with 15 votes received. The Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo, the best player of the Milwaukee Bucks, has four votes, and Jokić only three so far.
Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to first place in the East with an average of 31.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, and 5.7 assists in 63 games, while Jokic led the Denver Nuggets to first place in the West with a triple-double average of 24.5 points, 11.8 rebounds, and ten assists.