In 2022, the MVP race is about a lot more than whether you think Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid was the better player.
The MVP race came between Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid to determine the final half of the 2021-22 regular season. In the end, Jokic won his second consecutive MVP, averaging 27.1 points, 13.8 points and 7.9 assists per game for the 48-34 Denver Nuggets. Embiid led the league in scoring, averaging 30.6 points, 11.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists for the Philadelphia 76ers 51-31.
But it wasn’t just about who you thought had the better numbers. It was about the style of play, the combination of aesthetic and production, form and function, and the way each player exercises control over an opponent. Not only were you choosing the MVP, you were choosing a basketball school.
As part of our Fandoms of the Year project, we’re taking this week to celebrate some of the best rivalries of 2022. To get more perspective on Joel Embiid’s rivalry against Nikola Jokic, and what it’s like to be on either side of it in 2022, we’re handing it to the experts.
Joel Embiid’s perspective
The Most Valuable Player award can be a tricky draw in professional sports since the talent disparity tends to be very small among world-class players. Such a conundrum can lead to poor timing eliminating the chances of MVP high-profile players ending their careers without ever receiving the award.
Drew Brees hasn’t won a single MVP title he feels sorry for some in the NFL. It hasn’t been won by Derek Jeter in MLB. And now it seems possible that Joel Embiid can go on without winning it either.
Of course, one season the year he leads the league in scoring (30.6 points per game), it may sound a little silly to suggest his window is completely closed, but time spent by players at the top of the game can be fleeting, and time spent At the top of the league maybe more than that.
In almost any other year, Embiid would be a lock for MVP. In the face of Nikola Jokic last year, the issue was murkier. Jokic won.
Analytics will tell you this was the right call for Jokic to win (Jokic had a league leader 9.8 VORP, Embiid 6.5). An eye test might tell a different story, as Embiid looks pretty unguarded on any given night. These two schools of thought led to heated debates between the two sides as neither could compromise any sense of the validity of the opposition’s argument.
In a sense, the greatness of the historic MVP fight has been overshadowed by such discussions only for the sake of the fight itself. Before Jokic won the award the year before, the center hadn’t won an MVP award since Tim Duncan in 2003. Now, we had two big guys at the same time, a situation so unheard of that fans couldn’t bear to simply let him go as far as he was. on him.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of this rivalry isn’t that it seems completely unappreciated, but the fact that we don’t get to see the two facing each other very often at all. The Sixers and Nuggets only play each other twice a year, and Embiid was inactive for one of those games last season.
But on the Sixers’ side, the 2022 MVP result feels like an unfair score. How long does Embiid need to do to claim the award himself? The professional narrative of Embiid – a man from Cameroon who didn’t even start playing basketball until he was a teenager – feels completely ignored, although such stories are often credited as a reason to vote for LeBron James or Giannis Antetokounmpo by both fans and pundits.
One can only hope for justice this year and another showing of the best player from Embiid.
– Josh WilsonFanSided Newsdesk’s responsible editor
Nikola Jokic’s perspective
It’s always a TV rendezvous when the two best spots in the league go head-to-head. They’re two 7-footers, two absolute monsters of players, two generational talents who dominate a position that looks like the NBA has been trying to crack it for years.
But Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid are very different. One of them is the best passing player in the history of the sport who sees the game as a point guard and uses a combination of strength and dexterity to punish his defenders for the block and create scoring opportunities for others like no one ever plays in his position. . The other is the game’s most dominant player and one-man offensive and defensive pivot who can seemingly hold his team to both ends of the earth single-handedly.
But it’s this split between Jokic and Embiid that makes this rivalry so great. Jokic machine on the basketball court. His computerized brain sees every play before it happens and every turnover the defense makes two or three moves in advance. He learned how NBA defenses react to his every move. It gets on his nerves that his teammates don’t see the future the way he does. Watching him take on the brute force of Embiid who makes no secret of the fact that he tries to score a goal on his own leg on every trip to the floor is an NBA fan’s dream.
Unfortunately, Embiid hasn’t stayed healthy enough to give this rivalry the attention it deserves across the basketball world. Embiid and Jokic have only played each other four times since the 2018-2019 season. Only one of those games, a 114-110 Nuggets win in March 2022, has come in the past three seasons.
Jokic and Embiid are the two best centers in the NBA. They are two of the best centers of all time but they dominate their rivals in their own unique way. Styles make for fights, and Jokic and Embiid are a must-buy-per-view event every time they face off. We are lucky every time we get to watch these two share the field.
– Harrison WindAnd the DNVR
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