Nikola Jokic still made NBA history despite MVP snub

Nikola Jokic missed out on winning his fourth NBA MVP this season, as the league announced Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the winner of the 2024-25 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player Award on Wednesday. Jokic received just 29 first-place votes while the 6-foot-6 guard from Canada racked up the other 71.

Despite being snubbed for the second time in three years, Jokic still accomplished a feat that hasn’t been seen since Larry Bird was around and healthy.

Nikola Jokic is the first player since Larry Bird to be top two in MVP voting for five consecutive years. pic.twitter.com/J0Tr70Mm5Q

— StatMuse (@statmuse) May 21, 2025

Since the 2020-21 season, Jokic has either won the award or finished in second in all five seasons. Not even LeBron James did that at the peak of his career, as a third-place finish in the 2010-11 season messed up what would’ve been a streak of six consecutive seasons in the top two.

Tim Duncan finished in the top-two in four consecutive years from the 2000-01 season to the 2003-04 season. Michael Jordan’s longest streak was only three, partly due to his brief retirement after his first three-peat with Chicago in the early ’90s. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s longest streak was four.

Bird’s streak should be eight consecutive top-two finishes, but a third-place result in the 1986-87 season cut his streak at six, highlighting his remarkable stretch of dominance throughout the 1980s.

Bill Russell is the only other player in NBA history to reach this mark, as he had six top-two finishes in a row from the 1957-58 season to the 1962-63 season. However, other players in the league did the voting at the time, while the media did it for Jokic and Bird in their respective runs, so there are some slight differences.

This feat is right on par for Jokic, who is having arguably the greatest offensive peak in the history of the NBA, and his name is next to another player in Bird who was doing the same stuff back in the ’80s. Highlighted by creativity and unorthodox plays that resulted in triple doubles and championships, Jokic and Bird were both at the top of the league during their respective runs.

While Jokic and Bird are even on the MVP total with three, Jokic is still chasing Bird for championships and Finals MVPs. Bird finished his career with three rings, winning the Finals MVP in two of those runs (1984 & 1986). However, Bird didn’t play in an era with aprons and money issues like today’s NBA has under the current CBA, and he had a front office that knew how to build a great team around him for more than one year.

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