This year’s MVP race is one of the most contested battles the NBA has seen in years. If Kevin Durant got his wish, a new star would join him in the elusive club.
Per ESPN’s Nick Friedell, the 2013-14 MVP picked his winner ahead of the Brooklyn Nets’ play-in game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“If I had to choose, I would go Joel Embiid,” Durant said on Tuesday. “He led the league in scoring, double-doubles, his team won 50 games this year. 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.”
KD believes Embiid should be the MVP this year.
He also offered an interesting perspective on the way the MVP race is handled — and voting on — every season.https://t.co/CY5gY7nV0f
— Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) April 12, 2022
The last time Brooklyn played the Philadelphia 76ers, shortly after the teams swapped James Harden and Ben Simmons, Durant and Embiid got into a heated verbal exchange. However, Durant has nothing but respect for the 28-year-old big man.
While KD believes Embiid deserves the honor, he thinks past MVPs Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic are more popular among voters.
“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.”
Yet Durant said the bar should be raised for anyone to win back-to-back MVPs. In his eyes, someone needs to improve upon their first MVP campaign, as he believes former Golden State Warriors teammate Stephen Curry did in 2015-16 to receive it a second time.
He said Embiid’s season was “just as good, if not better” than Jokic, last year’s MVP. Jokic did average more points (27.1) and rebounds (13.8) than in 2020-21.
KD is going with Embiid for MVP 🏆
(via @NickFriedell) pic.twitter.com/6Rzue4sP2E
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 12, 2022
As Durant noted, multiple stars are deservedly in the mix this year. Limited to 55 games because of a knee injury, that leaves him largely out of the running despite averaging 29.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 6.4 rebounds per contest.
Embiid, Jokic, and Antetokounmpo are all especially deserving MVP candidates. It’s still anyone’s guess which superstar will take home the hardware.
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