Most Valuable Player is the regular season award. But she may curse the playoff winner’s performance.
Joel Embiid became the fourth consecutive MVP to lose before the Conference Finals as Boston defeated Philadelphia in the second half on their way to a 112-88 victory.
Embiid returned from a knee injury in Game 2 of the series, scoring 30+ points in three straight games as the 76ers took a 3-2 lead.
But he only had 15 in Game 7, along with eight rebounds and four turnovers. It is his third consecutive second-round exit and his fifth in the past six years.
Last year, the best player in the world, Nikola Jokic, lost in five games to the Warriors in the first round. The previous year, the Jokers were knocked out of the final game in Phoenix in a second round sweep of the Nuggets.
In 2020, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Miami Heat in the first round of the “Playoffs” in Orlando, with Greece sidelining Frick with a sprained ankle in Game 4 of a 4-1 Heat victory.
Antetokounmpo reached the Conference Finals in 2019, but no player has made it to the NBA Finals since Stephen Curry in 2016, and no player has won an all-around since Curry in 2015.
Why did MVP struggle so much in the playoffs? Playing long and hard enough to win the Most Valuable Player award could leave a star improperly rested for the postseason.
Jokic has noticeably eased his stretch, has played several games, and has been in control so far.
But the real difference is that voters have changed their criteria for MVP. From 1983 to 2016, there were only two top players who were not on the second team in their conference.
That was Steve Nash in 2006 on the No. 3-ranked Phoenix Suns, and Michael Jordan on the No. 3 Chicago Bulls in 1988. Jordan didn’t win his division, but he did win scoring and defensive player titles. the year.
But since Russell Westbrook’s 2017 win for the sixth-ranked Oklahoma City Thunder, the MVP no longer needs his team to be dominant. Jokic’s nuggets tied for third in the West when they first won in 2021, and finished sixth when repeated in 2022. This year’s 76 goals ranked third.
So it may not be a matter of the MVP being tired, not bringing in, or losing some intangible quality of the match. It could simply be that these players had elevated teams that weren’t all that great.