THIRD-YEAR San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama is a first-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) candidate along with Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league announced on Sunday.
The league announced the MVP finalists, along with the finalists for the rest of its 2025-26 season awards, during the broadcast of the opening game of the Orlando Magic versus Detroit Pistons playoff series on NBC.
Wembanyama, who is also a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY), averaged a career-best 25 points and 11.5 rebounds and led the league with 3.1 blocks per game. He would be the youngest MVP in league history at 22 years old, a few months younger than Derrick Rose was in 2010-11.
To do so, he’ll have to beat out the last two league MVPs in Gilgeous-Alexander (31.1 ppg, 6.6 assists per game, 4.3 rpg), who won his first MVP last season, and Jokic (27.7 ppg, 12.9 rpg, 10.7 apg), who won his third in 2023-24.
Detroit’s Ausar Thompson and Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren are the other two finalists for DPOY, which Wembanyama is heavily favored to win.
Three of the first four picks in last year’s draft are the finalists for Rookie of the Year. No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg of Dallas (21 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 4.5 apg, 1.2 steals per game), No. 3 pick VJ Edgecombe of Philadelphia (16 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 4.2 apg, 1.4 spg) and No. 4 pick Kon Knueppel of Charlotte (18.5 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 3.4 apg, league-high 273 made 3-pointers) earned the recognition.
Atlanta’s Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Portland’s Deni Avdija and Detroit’s Jalen Duren are the three finalists for Most Improved Player. In his first season in Atlanta, Alexander-Walker averaged 20.8 points — 9.8 more than in any of his first six seasons. Avdija averaged a career-high 24.2 points, and Duren — like Avdija a first-time All-Star — averaged 19.5 points, far exceeding the 11.8 he averaged last season. — Reuters
