No joke: MVP voters got it right with Jokic over Embiid, Giannis

When news broke that Nikola Jokic will reportedly win his second straight NBA MVP award, much of basketball Twitter erupted in outrage.

Award debates are not new, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an example of a worthy MVP being lambasted the way Jokic has been this week.

The most cited argument against his win is that Jokic got sent packing in the postseason's opening round, while fellow MVP finalists Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo remain active in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

That's absurd. Jokic averaged 31 points, 13.2 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 1.6 steals, and a block on 64% true shooting during the five-game series, in which his injury-battered Denver Nuggets matched up against a Golden State Warriors team with title aspirations.

Unless you've purposefully avoided Nuggets games over the last few years, those numbers shouldn't be surprising. Jokic has already established himself as a playoff performer, which is why Denver has won four playoff series over the last four years, and why the Nuggets made the conference finals in 2020.

But that's beside the point, because MVP is a regular-season award, and the only reason a Nuggets team missing Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. even made the playoffs - let alone finished with a top-six record in the West - was because of Jokic's brilliance.

The four-time All-Star averaged 27.1 points, 13.8 rebounds, 7.9 assists, 1.5 steals, and just under a block per game to lead the 48-win Nuggets in every statistical category. Jokic became the first player in league history to amass 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 500 assists in a single season, and posted the highest Player Efficiency Rating ever.

The frequent mention of that record-breaking PER, or any all-encompassing stat that shows Jokic to be the NBA's best player, is often countered by the false narrative that the case for Jokic is based solely on advanced stats. According to those who subscribe to this foolish theory, Embiid and Antetokounmpo made a more tangible impact on the court, while The Joker was simply a spreadsheet superstar.

Except Jokic had the most drastic on/off splits in the league, and the Murray-less, Porter-less Nuggets still finished within three games of the Philadelphia 76ers and the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks in the overall standings. Even though Denver's next-best players were Aaron Gordon and Will Barton, the Nuggets performed better with Jokic on the court than Philly did with Embiid on the court or Milwaukee did with Antetokounmpo in the action.

Critics also pointed to the Warriors targeting Jokic's defense in the playoffs as evidence that the big man's in-season improvements at that end were a mirage. But Draymond Green himself touted Jokic's defensive effort and progress earlier this year.

Embiid is obviously the better defender, but he also took his foot off the gas defensively during the regular season, while a Nuggets team that guarded like a bottom-nine defense with Jokic on the bench (113.0 defensive rating) became a top-five unit with the MVP on the court (108.9). The Warriors going at Jokic in the playoffs doesn't change any of those regular-season facts.

Despite the way it plays out among fans and some media members, the MVP debate doesn't have to be an exercise in tearing players down.

Embiid put together an outstanding regular season and deserves to be praised for it as he admirably plays through multiple injuries to keep Philadelphia's title hopes alive. Ditto for two-time MVP Antetokounmpo, who is probably the most talented player alive.

But the Maurice Podoloff Trophy isn't about who's the most talented, who we'd take in a one-game setting, or who reigns supreme come springtime. If it was, Michael Jordan and LeBron James would have more than 20 MVPs between them, and you could pencil in The Greek Freak for the foreseeable future.

The award is supposed to be given to the player who was most valuable to his team during the regular season, and for the second year in a row, that player was Nikola Jokic.

Joseph Casciaro is a senior writer for theScore.