Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic turned in an exceptional 2025-26 season, but his hamstring injury at the end of the regular season likely cost him a shot at winning NBA MVP.
The voting was released on Sunday and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named the league’s MVP for the second straight year. He finished ahead of Nikola Jokic and Victor Wembanyama, who were the other two finalists. Doncic wasn’t named a finalist and ultimately finished fourth in the voting:
A global media panel of 100 voters selected the winner of the 2025-26 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player Award.
The complete voting results ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ki6ZYk5Tq9
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) May 17, 2026
This year’s MVP race was one of the most intriguing in a while as four or five players all had legitimate cases to win the award.
Doncic almost didn’t qualify as he only played 64 games in the regular season, which is one shy of the 65 games it takes to be eligible for NBA awards. He filed an Extraordinary Circumstances appeal after missing a pair of games for the birth of his daughter, however, and that was accepted to make him eligible.
In his 64 games during the 2025-26 season, Doncic was as productive as ever as he led the league in scoring at 33.5 points to go along with 7.7 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.6 steals while shooting 47.6% from the field and 36.6% from 3-point range. He was the only player in the West with multiple Player of the Month honors, including March when he was looking like the MVP favorite while leading the Lakers to a 15-2 record.
Ultimately, this was a deserving award for Gilgeous-Alexander, who again led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the best record in the league. Wembanyama, in particular, had a deserving case as well, and the 22-year-old will likely factor into every MVP race moving forward for at least the next decade.
Team success is extremely important in the MVP voting, so it will be interesting to see what the Lakers do this offseason to give Doncic more help in order to compete with teams like the Thunder and San Antonio Spurs at the top of the Western Conference.
JJ Redick disappointed Luka Doncic was not named MVP finalist
One person who was not happy with Doncic not finishing in the top three of MVP voting was Lakers head coach JJ Redick.
“Disappointed,” Redick said of Doncic not being an MVP finalist. “I think he deserved to be there and I think all three guys that did end up being finalists had strong cases. A lot of this, unfortunately, is media momentum.
“Sometimes a team, I guess we underperformed even though we didn’t have any expectations coming into the year. But I guess we underperformed for a couple months despite him getting Player of the Month one of those months. The media momentum just never got built.”
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