It’s time to return to NBA Tuesday with the annual regular-season awards piece featuring the league’s MVP and ROTY vote winners—and our separate analysis of both awards. We’ve been doing this for a long time now, and we don’t anticipate stopping any time soon. As we mentioned with the NHL version of this piece on Saturday, it’s just one of our favorite exercises, and it brings us joy even when we see the voters as being way off target. Since 2000, we’ve confirmed only half the voted MVPs, yo.

2026 NBA MVP: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, PG, Oklahoma City (original); Nikola Jokić, C, Denver (revised)

For the second season in a row, Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (15.2 Win Shares; 30.8 Player Efficiency Rating) was voted the MVP. The other player who separated himself from the pack was a usual suspect, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić (14.9 WS, 32.3 PER). They finished 1-2 in these sabermetric categories, and quite often, these votes come down to which player the voters “feel” is more deserving, etc. We try to eliminate “feelings” in our analysis, if possible.

And it’s possible here, for a few specific reasons. First, the Thunder finished 10 games ahead of the Nuggets in the Western Conference hierarchy, so that immediately means the Joker is more valuable to his team—which would have been relegated to play-in status without him. Second, both players had a teammate who joined them in the league’s Top 20 for each of those sabermetric measurements, which is a wash there. And third, the gap in PER is much wider than the gap in WS for comparison.

We know the “numbers” are not equal in that way, but even just percentage wise, Jokić has the statistical edge, head to head, all things considered. What is crazier is that he led the NBA in both rebounds and assists—a double double that hasn’t been achieved since … oh yeah, never. That is stunning, as is the fact the Nuggets superstar averaged a triple double over the full season for the second straight campaign while somehow not winning the MVP vote both times. Come on, people: wake up. We pick Jokić here.

2026 NBA ROTY: Cooper Flagg, SF, Dallas (original); Kon Knueppel, SF, Charlotte (revised)

This vote when to Dallas Mavericks “small forward” Cooper Flagg, who actually played four positions on the court during his rookie campaign. This was a terrible vote, despite the fact Flagg was very good, and there are multiple reasons why: first, his team won 13 fewer games than it did the season before, which has more to do with roster changes than his play, but still … and second, his sabermetric numbers pale in comparison to others in his NBA rookie class, and this is the clearly damning issue as you can see.

Flagg finished fourth among ROTY vote getters in total WS (3.8), and he was also fourth for WS/48 (0.078), as well. Topping both those lists was Charlotte Hornets SF Kon Knueppel (8.0, 0.151). He basically carried twice the sabermetric value, and what’s more is that his team improved 25 wins from the year before (again, not just because of his presence on the roster) to qualify for the Eastern Conference play-in game(s). Thus, it’s an easy award to re-assign as we shake our heads sometimes at the obtuseness.

This really just goes to show what sheep the NBA voters are, in truth: Flagg’s selection by the Mavs was cited by many as a “fixed” dynamic of the always-controversial draft lottery, after the Dallas organization traded away Luka Dončić. What better way to continue assuaging the butthurt in Big D than to give Flagg an award he in no way whatsoever deserved? Nothing should surprise us about the NBA’s shenanigans at this point, yet … it still does. Unreal.