NBA Most Valuable Player Award

The National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player (MVP) is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1955–56 NBA season to the best performing player of the season. The winner receives the Maurice Podoloff Trophy, which is named in honor of the first commissioner (then president) of the NBA who served from 1946 until his retirement in 1963. MVP voting takes place immediately following the regular season. Until the 1979–80 season, the MVP was selected by a vote of NBA players. However, since the 1980–81 season, the award is decided by a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom casts a vote for first to fifth place selections. Each first-place vote is worth 10 points; each second-place vote is worth seven; each third-place vote is worth five, fourth-place is worth three and fifth-place is worth one. Starting from 2010, one ballot was cast by fans through online voting. The player with the highest point total wins the award.

No player has ever won the award unanimously by capturing all of the first-place votes. Shaquille O'Neal in 1999–2000 and LeBron James in 2012–13 are the only two to have fallen one vote shy of a unanimous selection, both receiving 120 of 121 votes. Since the 1982–83 season, every player who has won the award has played for a team with at least a .610 winning percentage (equal to 50 regular-season wins in an 82-game season, except the lockout-shortened 50-game 1998–99 season when Karl Malone won and the lockout-shortened 66-game 2011–12 season when James won). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won the award six times. Both Bill Russell and Michael Jordan won the award five times, while Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James won the award four times in their respective careers. Russell and James are the only players to have won the award four times in five seasons. Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson each won the award three times, while Bob Pettit, Karl Malone, Tim Duncan and Steve Nash have each won it twice. The most recent winner is Kevin Durant. Only two rookies have won the award: Wilt Chamberlain in the 1959–60 season and Wes Unseld in the 1968–69 season. Hakeem Olajuwon of Nigeria, Duncan of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Nash of Canada and Dirk Nowitzki of Germany are the only international MVP winners. Duncan is an American citizen by birth, but is considered an international player by the NBA. Of these four players, only Nowitzki was trained totally outside the United States—the other three all played U.S. college basketball (Olajuwon at Houston, Duncan at Wake Forest, and Nash at Santa Clara).