Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James didn’t hide his frustration after receiving only 16 1st place votes for the 2019-20 MVP award, finishing 2nd in the voting to Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who won the award for the second consecutive season. But it was evident that LeBron wasn’t only talking about this year’s award and Giannis.
Not only did Giannis win MVP, as this season’s Defensive Player of the Year, he joined Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan as the only players to win both awards in the same season. So, while LeBron has now gone seven seasons between MVP awards, it also irked him a little bit that his opportunity to win both was also taken away from him, as Marc Gasol won the 2012-13 Defensive Player of the Year when he last won MVP.
Lakers’ LeBron James w/ a long riff on awards voting after finishing second for 2020 MVP: “The voting scale is a little weird to me… I don’t know how much really we’re watching the game of basketball or are we just in the narration mode, the narrative.” pic.twitter.com/xJeQ1HLoMD
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) September 19, 2020
James was upset about the lack of votes this season, but even if he didn’t mention it, the lack of recognition over the past few years has clearly irked him a little bit more than he’s let on over the years. Because even after seven years without an MVP trophy, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone watching the playoffs who still doesn’t believe he’s the best player in the world.
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