Honestly, the 2023 NBA MVP voting was a mess. Not a "bad" mess, necessarily, but a loud, chaotic, and deeply divisive one that felt more like a political campaign than a basketball award. For months, you couldn’t turn on a sports talk show without hearing someone yell about PER, "voter fatigue," or the eye test. It was exhausting.
In the end, Joel Embiid took home the Michael Jordan Trophy. He deserved it. He led the league in scoring, dropping 33.1 points per game while basically acting as a one-man defensive wall for the Philadelphia 76ers. But the way we got there? That's the part people still argue about at bars.
2023 NBA MVP Voting: The Final Results
When the league finally pulled the curtain back on May 2, the numbers were a bit more lopsided than many expected given how tight the race felt in March. Out of the 100 media members who cast a ballot, Embiid secured 73 first-place votes.
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Nikola Jokic, the guy trying to become the first person since Larry Bird to win three straight MVPs, finished second with 15 first-place votes. Giannis Antetokounmpo rounded out the "Big Three" in third place with 12 first-place votes.
Here is how the points actually shook out:
- Joel Embiid: 915 total points
- Nikola Jokic: 674 total points
- Giannis Antetokounmpo: 606 total points
- Jayson Tatum: 280 total points (Fourth place, but not really in the same stratosphere as the top three)
It was a landslide. Well, a late-season landslide. For most of the winter, Jokic was the betting favorite. Then, the conversation shifted. Hard.
The Mark Jackson "Mistake"
You can't talk about 2023 NBA MVP voting without mentioning the ballot that launched a thousand tweets. When the individual ballots were made public, fans noticed something insane. 99 out of 100 voters had Nikola Jokic in their top three.
One person left him off the ballot entirely.
That person was Mark Jackson. He didn't just put Jokic third or fourth; he didn't put him in the top five at all. His ballot went Embiid, Giannis, Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Donovan Mitchell. Charles Barkley went on TNT and called the anonymous (at the time) voter a "damn idiot."
Jackson eventually apologized, calling it an "absolute mistake." He claimed he thought he was filling out an All-NBA ballot where you're restricted by position. Since he picked Embiid as his center, he just... forgot Jokic existed for the rest of the ballot? It was a weird excuse, especially since All-NBA ballots have three teams and fifteen spots. Either way, it didn't change the winner, but it definitely added fuel to the "voters are biased" fire.
Why the Tide Turned for Joel Embiid
Basketball is a game of runs, and the MVP race is no different. Embiid’s "run" happened at the perfect time.
In April, right before the season ended, Embiid hung 52 points on the Boston Celtics. It was a masterpiece. Doc Rivers, the Sixers' coach at the time, famously said after the game, "The MVP race is over." He was right. That game served as the exclamation point for a season where Embiid proved he could be the most dominant physical force in the league since Shaquille O'Neal.
The Perkins Effect and the "Narrative" Shift
We have to be real here: the 2023 race got ugly. Kendrick Perkins went on First Take and suggested that NBA voters—who are majority white—had a racial bias in favor of Nikola Jokic. It sparked a firestorm. JJ Redick pushed back hard on air, and for two weeks, nobody was even talking about basketball anymore.
Did it affect the 2023 NBA MVP voting? It’s hard to prove. Some argue it made voters second-guess themselves. Others say Embiid simply outplayed Jokic in the final month while the Nuggets "coasted" to the finish line because they already had the top seed locked up.
The Case for the Other Guys
If you’re a Nuggets fan, you’re still salty. Jokic nearly averaged a triple-double (24.5 PPG, 11.8 RPG, 9.8 APG) on 63% shooting. Those are video game numbers. He was the engine of a team that eventually won the NBA Championship, which ironically made the MVP snub look even weirder a month later.
Then there’s Giannis. The "Greek Freak" led the Bucks to the best record in the NBA. He averaged 31 and 12. In almost any other year, he’s a unanimous winner. But in 2023, he was almost an afterthought in the media's Embiid-vs-Jokic war.
Lessons from the 2023 Race
What did we learn? First, timing is everything. If the season ended in February, Jokic wins. If you want the trophy, you have to dominate the "National TV" games in March and April.
Second, advanced stats have limits. Jokic led in almost every "nerd stat" like VORP and Win Shares, but Embiid won the "narrative." Voters wanted to reward the guy who hadn't won it yet, especially after Embiid finished second two years in a row.
What to Watch for Now
If you're tracking current MVP races, keep these three things in mind based on what happened in 2023:
- The 65-Game Rule: This didn't exist in 2023, but it was born from the frustration of stars missing games. Embiid played 66 games in his MVP year; under current rules, he barely would have qualified.
- Head-to-Head Matchups: The "ducking" narrative started here. When Embiid sat out the game in Denver late in the season, it almost cost him the award. Voters hate when stars miss the big showdowns.
- The "Next" Factor: Once a player wins one, the bar for the second (or third) becomes 10 times higher.
The 2023 NBA MVP voting remains a fascinating case study in how media, statistics, and pure emotion collide to decide who gets the league's biggest individual honor. It wasn't just about points and rebounds; it was about who owned the story of the season.