Embiid's Absences Benefits Jokic, SGA in NBA MVP Race

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:05 And with the amount of games that Joel Embiid has missed already,

00:08 he is off the board over on Fandu, which is kind of crazy to think that the best

00:11 player in the NBA is not going to win the MVP.

00:14 And there's certainly a very good chance of that at this point.

00:18 So Nikola Jokic right now is the favorite,

00:21 followed by Shea Gildas-Alexander, who went down from +380 to +300

00:25 over the course of the week.

00:26 Luka has moved up Matt to 5 to 1, and then you have Giannis at 7 to 1.

00:31 If anybody else wins, I think it would be a surprise.

00:33 But Magic Johnson yesterday went on social media and said that he appreciates

00:38 the fact that the new rule is in place, that you have to play a certain amount

00:41 of games.

00:42 And Matt, really the reason why Magic Johnson's comments, I thought,

00:45 made sense, it's really not about the MVP.

00:48 It's about the player going on the road and

00:51 just simply not playing and people paying to see the players play.

00:54 So I get it, I understand it, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.

00:59 >> No, it's a weird one, especially when a guy's actually hurt.

01:04 I think the idea behind it is, well, this will cut down on the sitting out.

01:09 Well, what if the guy's actually hurt?

01:12 And that's where it gets interesting.

01:14 And you have a situation this past week where there was a lot of talk about

01:17 Joel Embiid not playing in that Nuggets game.

01:19 Could he have played?

01:20 Maybe, I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

01:23 And then he goes out there a few nights later and gets hurt, and

01:26 now might be out longer.

01:28 And so it's a very tough situation.

01:30 And I think looking at the MVP race, I think we talked about it last week,

01:36 about how Shea was a really good value bet at that time and now only gets stronger.

01:40 And cuz I don't think Jokic cares about the MVP.

01:44 Maybe he's just so good and the team is so good, he wins it.

01:48 Can't help but win it, even though he doesn't care.

01:50 But I definitely think SGA is, he's not necessarily going for MVP, but

01:55 his team is going for first in the West.

01:58 His team really cares about the regular season, and

02:01 they value these wins and this experience they're getting together.

02:04 And when you put that all together at the end of the year,

02:07 he's gonna be one of the league leaders in scoring.

02:10 He's gonna be the unquestioned leader of possibly the number one team in the West.

02:14 And he's just really gonna stand out.

02:17 So I really like SGA, I like him and his odds.

02:20 And like you said, it's very unfortunate, the Embiid situation and

02:24 then possibly some of the other situations for

02:27 all NBA too that we might get into later in the year.

02:30 But yeah, the NBA sort of painted themselves in this corner.

02:33 You could argue the players painted the NBA in this corner.

02:36 Either way, it's definitely gonna cause some controversy.

02:38 [MUSIC]

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