A History of MVP Runners-Up (2026 Update)

Way back in 2020, one of the very first posts on this blog was a review of every player to finish runner-up in NBA MVP voting and how that impacted their legacies. Enough time has passed that the original articles are now too outdated. The below is an update to the original with the addition of the last six MVP runners-up, some thoughts on those runners-up, and updated standings of the runners-up totals. Apart from that, most of the content from the original posts remain the same.

Apart from winning the championship, earning the distinction of league MVP is the single most beneficial accolade a player can add to their legacy. Identification as the league’s best player over the course of an entire season reflects a supreme degree of talent, respectability, and ability to win games. With only thirty-seven players staking a claim to the award as of 2026, recognition as MVP remains incredibly selective and prestigious. And yet, as prestigious as the award is, it is equally reductive, as there is only one winner and the rest of the league is relegated to the loser category, inadvertently diminishing the contributions of the vast ranks of non-MVPs.

Understandably, the optics and significance of the recognition, or lack thereof, holds a tremendous weight on every player’s legacy, while also omitting tremendous amounts of context that went into the selection of the winner. Logically, the MVP runner-up is deemed to have had the second-best season of any player in the league. This is a notable feat, but also often the prime example of the slim margins that dictate the degree of veneration a player will receive, as many of the NBA’s MVP runners-up are not remembered as being one of the two best players in the league at a given point, but instead just piled upon the plethora of other non-winners.

The aim of this article is simple. It will shine a light on the league’s annual second-best and imagine a hypothetical world in which they were number one. How will it impact their legacies? And how will the loss of MVP recognition impact the actual winners?

• Hypothetical — What if every MVP winner missed their MVP winning season(s) and the real-life runners-up had won the award instead?

1950s and 60s

• 1956 — Paul Arizin
• 1957 — Bob Pettit
• 1958 — Dolph Schayes
• 1959 — Bill Russell
• 1960 — Bill Russell
• 1961 — Bob Pettit
• 1962 — Wilt Chamberlain
• 1963 — Elgin Baylor
• 1964 — Wilt Chamberlain
• 1965 — Oscar Robertson
• 1966 — Jerry West
• 1967 — Nate Thurmond
• 1968 — Lenny Wilkens
• 1969 — Willis Reed

In actuality, the MVP award was predominantly shared by Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain within this time frame. Russell and Chamberlain essentially cannibalized each other, each earning an impressive total of wins while being blocked by the other from earning a record-setting total. Curiously, Chamberlain and Russell rarely finished as runner-up to the other and, as a result, our new hypothetical list of winners is delightfully eclectic. Russell and Chamberlain remain in the mix with two MVPs each and Bob Pettit and Oscar Robertson remain unchanged as Pettit still garners two wins and Robertson still collects one. The rest of the hypothetical winners are a who’s who of the decade’s stars who were blocked from the trophy by the two revolutionary centers. Paul Arizin, Dolph Schayes, Elgin Baylor, and Jerry West were all undoubtedly MVP caliber players but never laid their hands on the trophy in real life. Likewise, Nate Thurmond and Lenny Wilkens were stalwart stars of the late 60s and early 70s and their already impressive legacies would have been substantially more revered with an MVP.

1970s

• 1970 — Jerry West
• 1971 — Jerry West
• 1972 — Jerry West
• 1973 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• 1974 — Bob McAdoo
• 1975 — Dave Cowens
• 1976 — Bob McAdoo
• 1977 — Bill Walton
• 1978 — George Gervin
• 1979 — George Gervin

The 70s are highlighted by the bookended repeat wins of Jerry West and George Gervin. Adding three more hypothetical wins to his prior one in 1966, Jerry West now leads the field with four total hypothetical MVPs. Had West been a four-time MVP in real life, he’d likely be in the discussion of the five greatest players ever. Similarly, had Gervin won back-to-back MVPs, he’d likely be remembered as much more than an all-time great scorer, but also a well-rounded winner. Elsewhere, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s real-life haul of four MVPs in the 70s decreases to one, which is somewhat surprising to see since his dominance of the decade should theoretically have lead to more runner-up spots. Dave Cowens and Bill Walton remain at one trophy apiece, while Willis Reed shifts his real-life 1970 win to a hypothetical 1969 win and Bob McAdoo increases his total from one to two. Again, a second MVP trophy would have done wonders for McAdoo’s reputation.

1980s

• 1980 — Julius Erving
• 1981 — Larry Bird
• 1982 — Larry Bird
• 1983 — Larry Bird
• 1984 — Bernard King
• 1985 — Magic Johnson
• 1986 — Dominique Wilkins
• 1987 — Michael Jordan
• 1988 — Larry Bird
• 1989 — Michael Jordan

Astoundingly, Larry Bird is able to not only replicate his real-life back-to-back-to-back MVP wins in this scenario but is also able add a fourth trophy as well! Seven finishes in the top two of MVP voting in a single decade is an astonishing feat. Julius Erving is still able to nab an award and Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson swap spots with Magic going from two trophies to one and Jordan going from one to two. The most exciting development is seeing two of the decade’s most dominant scorers in Bernard King and Dominique Wilkins earn recognition. Had these two won these trophies, it is very possible that both would have been included in the NBA’s Fifty Greatest Players ceremony in 1997. These improvements come at the expense of Moses Malone, who is unable to replace any of his three real-life wins from 1979, 1982, and 1983. Similarly, with no hypothetical wins in the 80s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drops from six real life trophies to just one hypothetical trophy.

1990s

• 1990 — Charles Barkley
• 1991 — Magic Johnson
• 1992 — Clyde Drexler
• 1993 — Hakeem Olajuwon
• 1994 — David Robinson
• 1995 — Shaquille O’Neal
• 1996 — David Robinson
• 1997 — Michael Jordan
• 1998 — Karl Malone
• 1999 — Alonzo Mourning

The most obvious change of the 1990s is Michael Jordan dropping from four MVPs to just one. However, this is understandable given the fact that he was retired for two and a half of these seasons. Alas, given his two wins in the 80s, Jordan still possesses an impressive three hypothetical MVPs. Clyde Drexler and Alonzo Mourning are the two new winners of the decade and Shaquille O’Neal adds a win in the 90s, contrasting his sole real-life win coming in the following decade. Karl Malone drops from two wins to one, David Robinson goes from one to two, and Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Hakeem Olajuwon remain static at one apiece. It is somewhat surprising to see that neither Barkley nor Olajuwon earned more than one MVP in this exercise.

2000s

• 2000 — Kevin Garnett
• 2001 — Tim Duncan
• 2002 — Jason Kidd
• 2003 — Kevin Garnett
• 2004 — Tim Duncan
• 2005 — Shaquille O’Neal
• 2006 — LeBron James
• 2007 — Steve Nash
• 2008 — Chris Paul
• 2009 — Kobe Bryant

Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan dominate the first half of the decade with two wins apiece. Shaquille O’Neal also adds a second hypothetical trophy to his cabinet. Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, and Chris Paul earn some love for the point guard position, which hasn’t seen a winner in this scenario since West, Robertson, and Wilkens in the 60s and 70s. The legacies of Kidd and Paul would benefit greatly from these wins, while Nash would likely remain in the pantheon of great point guards despite going from two real-life wins to one, though perhaps his legacy wouldn’t be quite as sparkling.

2010s

• 2010 — Kevin Durant
• 2011 — Dwight Howard
• 2012 — Kevin Durant
• 2013 — Kevin Durant
• 2014 — LeBron James
• 2015 — James Harden
• 2016 — Kawhi Leonard
• 2017 — James Harden
• 2018 — LeBron James
• 2019 — James Harden

Several tidbits jump out about this decade. First, it is surprising that Kobe Bryant doesn’t make an appearance. Instead, he retains a single hypothetical MVP award, as in real-life. Second, Kevin Durant’s trio of wins would give him a strong claim to being the player of the decade. Third, James Harden’s increased haul of trophies would likely shift his perception as being something more than just an all-time great scorer, much like George Gervin’s hypothetical wins in the 70s. Dwight Howard and Kawhi Leonard feel like worthy winners as each enjoyed incredible five-year runs in this window of time, with Howard’s coming at the start of the decade and Leonard’s coming at the end. Impressively, LeBron James still comes out of this scenario with four hypothetical wins. Unfortunately, Stephen Curry is not able to replace either of his awards.

2020s

• 2020 — LeBron James
• 2021 — Joel Embiid
• 2022 — Joel Embiid
• 2023 — Nikola Jokić
• 2024 — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
• 2025 — Nikola Jokić
• 2026 — Nikola Jokić

Amazingly, LeBron collects a hypothetical MVP win in three decades, with his 2020 hypothetical win coming fourteen years after his first in 2006. Much has been said about LeBron’s amazing longevity, but it’s still astounding to come across feats like this! Jokić is surprisingly able to retain his status as a three-time winner in this exercise and Embiid and SGA both also retain MVP wins, but swap their MVP totals, so there isn’t anything too notable in this decade. More interesting to me is who doesn’t appear. Both Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Dončić have been widely considered as two of the five best players in the league for this entire span of time. Although LeBron, Embiid, Jokić, and SGA are all obviously amazing players, it’s still surprising that Giannis and Luka couldn’t crack the top two at least once in this timespan.

Now let’s check out the new leaderboard to provide some context on how these changes could have impacted our perceptions of the game’s greats…

The Standings

• Four Wins — Bird, James, West
• Three Wins — Durant, Harden, Jokić, Jordan
• Two Wins — Chamberlain, Duncan, Embiid, Garnett, Gervin, M. Johnson, McAdoo, S. O’Neal, Pettit, D. Robinson, Russell
• One Win — Abdul-Jabbar, Arizin, Barkley, Baylor, Bryant, Cowens, Drexler, Erving, Gilgeous-Alexander, D. Howard, Kidd, B. King, K. Leonard, K. Malone, Mourning, Nash, Olajuwon, Paul, Reed, Robertson, Schayes, Thurmond, Walton, Wilkens, Wilkins
• Zero Wins — Antetokounmpo, Cousy, Curry, Iverson, M. Malone, Nowitzki, Rose, Unseld, Westbrook

Several items stand out from this new hypothetical hierarchy of MVPs. First, Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Jerry West take over the spot as co-leaders of the hypothetical MVP race. Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kevin Garnett, George Gervin, Bob McAdoo, Shaquille O’Neal, and David Robinson are now multiple-time winners. This seems fitting for each of them, particularly Shaq as he occasionally faces questions as to why he couldn’t win more than one MVP in real life. In addition to West and Gervin, the thirteen other individuals who go from zero real wins to one hypothetical win stand out as being positively affected by this exercise.

But the most interesting discussion centers on the nine individuals who fall off the rankings. How would history look back on these players had they not won the award? Giannis, Cousy, Curry, Moses, Dirk, and Unseld each have at least one championship to bolster their legacies, and although Iverson and Westbrook do not have championships, they still benefit from far-reaching cultural cache, their entertaining play styles, and the fact that they still had memorable tastes of team success, all in addition to their readily apparent on-court talent. As such, I think each of these players wouldn’t be affected much in this hypothetical reality.

However, the case for Derrick Rose is much more debatable. Rose’s peak was astounding and he was a fantastic player, but the MVP was the crowning achievement of his career and does most of the heavy lifting for his legacy. Fair or not, had he not won the MVP but had everything else about his career remain the same (solid playoff success, First Team All-NBA, significant popularity), I expect that he would be remembered comparably to other players with brief but blazing runs. Brandon Roy comes to mind, though Isaiah Thomas may be more fitting, as he had a single electric season before fading quickly. Archie Clark is another interesting historical comp as someone with moderate playoff success, a brief peak among the very best in the league, and a popular contemporary reputation due to an electric and often ground-breaking play style. As a more modern example, Rose also stacks up similarly to Devin Booker. Booker has way more longevity and far more career statistics than Rose, but when it comes to individual achievements, they both boast a single First Team All-NBA selection¹, they both had a single memorable deep playoff run, and they were both popular and well-regarded players, though not among the five most recognizable in the league. Obviously, in actuality, Rose is far more revered that Roy, Isaiah, Clark, or even Booker, but without the MVP then that would change things dramatically.

Now let’s compare how these hypothetical circumstances stack up against the real thing…

The Changes

• +4 — West
• +3 — None
• +2 — Durant, Gervin, Harden
• +1 — Arizin, Baylor, Bird, Drexler, Embiid, Garnett, D. Howard, Kidd, B. King, K. Leonard, McAdoo, Mourning, S. O’Neal, Paul, D. Robinson, Schayes, Thurmond, Wilkens, Wilkins
• Unchanged — Barkley, Bryant, Cowens, Duncan, Erving, James, Jokić, Olajuwon, Pettit, Reed, Robertson, Walton
• -1 — Cousy, Gilgeous-Alexander, Iverson, M. Johnson, K. Malone, Nash, Nowitzki, Rose, Unseld, Westbrook
• -2 — Antetokounmpo, Chamberlain, Curry, Jordan
• -3 — M. Malone, Russell
• -4 — None
• -5 — Abdul-Jabbar

Players who won multiple MVPs face a natural disadvantage in this exercise. As such, it is not surprising to see great players like Jordan, LeBron, Magic, Russell, and Chamberlain finish with fewer hypothetical trophies than real-life ones. However, the drop from six trophies to just one for Kareem is startling. That being said, although he only had one runner-up finish in his career, he did have an incredible eight additional seasons in which he finished third, fourth, or fifth in MVP voting. Kareem was essentially among the five best players in the league for a decade and a half, so his poor showing in this exercise is a fluke.

The results are similarly surprising for Charles Barkley, Kobe Bryant, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Oscar Robertson. Each player retained their single MVP win, but given their stature as greats of the game, it seems underwhelming that each of them had only two finishes in the top two of MVP voting in their careers. A similar argument could be made for Julius Erving, but he famously raked in MVPs during his ABA career. There are also several players such as Tiny Archibald, Rick Barry, Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, John Havlicek, Elvin Hayes, Isiah Thomas, and Dwyane Wade, among many others, whom I expect many casual NBA fans would have assumed finished as MVP winner or runner-up at least once in their careers but, in fact, did not.

Finally, let’s rank the big winners from this exercise…

The Winners

1. Jerry West — The Logo is the runaway winner of this scenario. Not only does he increase his MVP total from zero to four, but he becomes the joint-winningest hypothetical MVP of all time. Furthermore, nobody else improved their standing by more than two hypothetical trophies, making West’s improvement all the more impressive.
2. George Gervin — The Iceman doesn’t quite reach the lofty accomplishments of West, but becoming a hypothetical back-to-back MVP easily outpaces the rest of the field. Arguably, outside of West, this improves Gervin’s hypothetical legacy more than any other player impacted in this scenario.
3. The rest of the new winners — This group consists of Paul Arizin, Elgin Baylor, Clyde Drexler, Dwight Howard, Jason Kidd, Bernard King, Kawhi Leonard, Alonzo Mourning, Chris Paul, Dolph Schayes, Nate Thurmond, Lenny Wilkens, and Dominique Wilkins. Each of these players’ legacies would have benefited tremendously from winning an MVP award.
4. Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, and James Harden — Durant and Harden go from single MVP awards in the real world to tying LeBron James and Michael Jordan for the second most MVPs in the hypothetical world. Durant and Harden are tremendous players, yet both have faced their fair shares of criticism in recent years. Having one additional MVP, let alone two additional MVPs, would seal their legacies as all-time greats. Although Embiid doesn’t have three hypothetical wins like Durant and Harden, he does improve his actual total of one to a hypothetical total of two. Given that Embiid has played far fewer career games than Durant and Harden, has far fewer accolades than them, and has considerably less playoff success than them, I feel that a second MVP for him would arguably be more impactful on his legacy than three MVPs would be for Durant or Harden.
5. Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Nikola Jokić— Of all the players who won at least two MVPs in real-life, Bird is the only one to increase his total in this hypothetical. That on its own is noteworthy, but reproducing the real-life back-to-back-to-back victories in the hypothetical scenario was incredibly unlikely and makes his four hypothetical awards all the more impressive. Similarly, whereas Bird won three real-life MVPs, LeBron has a real-life haul of four and Jokić has a real-life haul of three. Remarkably, both of them are still able to break even in the hypothetical realm with another four wins and three wins, respectively. While this doesn’t represent an increase in hypothetical wins from real-life wins as was the case with Bird, it’s equally impressive in my eyes.

This exercise just scratches the surface of the ways we can reconsider the MVP voting results. This was a great start in recognizing the players who just missed out on MVP immortality and it goes a long way towards illuminating how many players’ legacies were altered by narrowly missing out on the award. This was also helpful as a lesson in identifying ways that the hypothetical results could mislead us. Seeing Kareem’s drop from six real-life wins to one hypothetical win was shocking, but digging deeper and finding his huge number of real-life third, fourth, and fifth place finishes indicated that this scenario on its own can be deceiving. As such, in addition to the other scenarios we have in store for our review of MVP voting, it is now imperative that we add another to review voting finishes beyond just the top two slots. Still, overall, this hypothetical was a lot of fun to compile!

Footnotes

¹ Booker also has a Third Team All-NBA selection whereas Rose does not. However, Rose came very close to a Third Team spot in 2012. Had positional requirements not been in place in 2012, then I expect that Rose would’ve made the Third Team that year in place of Tyson Chandler.