Nuggets' Nikola Jokić Won't Play vs. Pelicans with Calf Injury amid NBA MVP Race

The Denver Nuggets will be without their MVP candidate for Thursday's game against the New Orleans Pelicans.

Mike Singer of the Denver Post reported Nikola Jokić will not be available because of a calf injury.

He was previously listed as questionable with right calf tightness.

There's never an ideal time for an injury, but Jokić is in the middle of a hotly contested MVP race.

ESPN's Tim Bontemps released the latest update to his MVP straw poll Thursday, and Jokić was second behind Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers in total points even though the Nuggets star led in first-place votes with 42.

Embiid received 40 first-place votes, while Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks received the other 18.

Jokić is the back-to-back MVP winner and is trying to join Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird and Moses Malone as three-time winners of the award.

That it is a calf injury is all the more notable because Embiid missed Monday's head-to-head matchup against the Nuggets with his own calf issue.

Racking up numbers against a Pelicans team that is fifth in the league in defensive rating, per NBA.com, wouldn't have been easy, but it is a missed opportunity to further build his case in a nationally televised game on TNT.

For the season, Jokić is averaging 24.9 points, 11.9 rebounds and 9.9 assists per game while shooting 63.4 percent from the field and 39.0 percent from deep.