Nikola Jokić Says It's 'Mean' to Criticize Joel Embiid's MVP: 'He Should Have Won It'

Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić didn't want to relitigate the 2022-23 MVP race after his team booked a spot in the NBA Finals.

Following his team's 113-111 win over the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, he praised Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, who took home the award.

The MVP voting spoke for itself. Embiid collected 73 first-place votes compared to 15 for Jokić. What looked like a dead heat between the two for much of the season became a pretty easy decision by the end.

Embiid led the league in scoring (33.4 points) for the second year in a row and shot 54.8 percent from the field while averaging 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks.

Jokić once again put up monster numbers (24.5 PTS, 11.8 REB and 9.8 AST), and his .701 true shooting percentage, per Basketball Reference, is simply absurd.

The Nuggets center also missed five of the last seven games to close out the regular season, and across his two appearances he had 20 combined points. That probably dealt the decisive blow in the eyes of the MVP voting pool.

Denver's Finals run certainly goes some way toward cementing Jokić as an all-time great, and it silences the skeptics who argued he hadn't won in the playoffs despite reaching the conference finals once already.

However, there's little need to turn this into an argument about Embiid's MVP candidacy.