ESPN analyst and NBA MVP voter Tim Bontemps appeared on a recent episode of “Pod Maverick” with Kirk Henderson to discuss many topics about the Dallas Mavericks, including Luka Doncic’s standing in the award race.
Prompted by a question from the chat, Bontemps went on to explain why he thought Doncic couldn’t catch Nikola Jokic in the MVP race, detailing how the Mavericks’ 38-44 campaign last season failed to qualify for the play-in tournament factors into it.
“I didn’t think Luka was going to win not because of anything to do with Luka, but if he was coming off the run they had two years ago into this season, he would’ve had a lot more momentum early on and he wouldn’t have had to make up quite as much ground,” Bontemps would go on to say. “I don’t necessarily think people per se blamed Luka… the Mavericks had a very disappointing end of last season and that kind of stuff just sort of naturally carries over into these kinds of discussions.”
For Doncic to have a strong outlook to win the MVP next season, Bontemps envisions him needing to either lead the Mavericks to the Western Conference Finals this season, or at least a tightly contested battle with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Semifinals.
“If Dallas makes the conference finals this year or has a great 7-game series with the Thunder, presumably, in the second round, I think Luka’s going to go into next season as the favorite to win MVP,” Bontemps explained.
Bontemps has conducted the MVP Straw Poll for ESPN and the Washington Post since 2016-17, asking 100 media members to vote on the MVP as they would for regular-season awards. He has received some pushback from Mavericks fans over his coverage of Doncic’s possible MVP run.
Doncic averaged a career-high in points and assists this season with 33.9 points and 9.8 assists while adding in 9.2 rebounds for the most combined points, assists, and rebounds per game in a season since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971-72.
Doncic and the Mavs achieved 50 wins and clinched the fifth seed in the Western Conference, marking more wins than the Denver Nuggets in either of Jokic’s first two MVP seasons.
Jokic appears headed to win his third MVP despite some voters like Chris Broussard publically expressing they voted for Doncic. Most of the votes that have been shared publicly so far were in favor of Jokic.