It’s no surprise that Nikola Jokic is currently trailing in the MVP race, but what may catch your eye is just how close the Denver Nuggets star is to the top of the vote.

ESPN released its first MVP straw poll of the 2025-26 NBA season, a poll of 100 media members that mimics the league’s postseason award balloting. This is the sixth year they are doing it, and the results after two months look very similar to the final results of last year’s MVP race.

The voters have Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (57 first-place votes, 865 total points) just ahead of Jokic (42 first-place votes, 822 total points). Only one other player even received a first-place vote, while 12 players came after those three by getting at least a fifth-place vote.

Because the voting mimics the actual process and includes some real MVP voters, ESPN’s straw poll tends to be the best indicator of the race.

Here’s ESPN’s first NBA MVP straw poll for this season

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Jokic leads the league in rebounds and assists while tallying the fifth-most points. He’s shooting an absurd 61.2% from the field, 42.6% from 3-point range and 84.0% from the stripe. He leads the league in both triple-doubles and double-doubles. The three-time MVP is having another historic season, making you wonder why he isn’t chasing a sixth win of the trophy.

This year, there’s a real reason why Jokic is trailing in the first poll, and that’s because of the hot start in OKC. The Thunder are on a historic pace to start the season, going 25-2. They’re led by the league’s second-best scorer in SGA, who has tallied 44 more points than the next player, though he’s second to Luka Doncic in points per game.

Simply said, if the Thunder break the wins record at 74, which they’re tracking to do, and SGA keeps up this level of play, it’s going to be very hard to vote against him, and yet, with it looking like it may play out that way, Jokic needs to flip just about 1o votes to capture the trophy.

If the Thunder fall short of history, the race will open up for Jokic and possibly Doncic, who is tallying 35.2 points per night, the 10th-best mark in league history. No player since Michael Jordan in 1986-87 has scored 36.5 or more points a game, which is on the table for Doncic — putting him next to basically just Wilt Chamberlain’s three best scoring seasons.

The Nuggets have yet to play either the Lakers or Thunder, with their first matchup with Los Angeles coming in late January and the first against OKC due for February 1.