MY ACCOUNT
Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant believes Joel Embiid should win this season’s NBA MVP award.
The Philadelphia 76ers center and reigning MVP Nikola Jokic are the clear favourites for this season’s award, with Giannis Antetokounmpo in the running, too.
Durant, who was the MVP in 2014, pointed to Embiid’s scoring when he said he deserved the nod marginally ahead of Denver Nuggets big man Jokic.
“If I had to choose, I would go Joel Embiid,” Durant told reporters.
“He led the league in scoring, double-doubles, his team won 50 games this year. His numbers were incredible. It’s a great year.
“But you can just close your eyes and just pick any one of the guys out of the top six or seven, and you can have a good MVP this year.
“That shows how great our league is right now and how talented our league is from top to bottom, but I would go with Embiid if I had to choose.”
Embiid finished the regular season with the scoring title, averaging 30.6 points per game, along with 11.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists. He also had 46 double-doubles.
Jokic was second in the NBA across the regular season for rebounds, averaging 13.8. The Serbian center also contributed 27.1 points and 7.9 assists, with 66 double-doubles and 19 triple-doubles – two league highs.
The 76ers finished with a 51-31 record to claim fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, while the Nuggets were sixth in the West with a 48-34 record.
Durant was also critical of MVP voting, claiming a player’s narrative or story too often fed into the results.
“It’s unfortunate,” Durant said. “There’s a lot of players that have been controlled by their narrative.
“Some of it has been because of the player, some of it just has been because of the perception of other people about that player.
“In Joel’s case, more people just like Giannis and Jokic. It’s as simple as that. They just prefer them more than Embiid’s personality or his story, I guess.”
Embiid was the runner-up for last season’s MVP behind Jokic, with Stephen Curry in third.
