Who would’ve thought 15 years ago that the Denver Nuggets would have someone at the top of the MVP race every single season? When the Nuggets selected Nikola Jokic with the No. 41 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, not a single soul predicted that he was going to be one of the most dominant players in the league.
Fast forward back to 2025, and the joker is chasing history, as he could become just the sixth player in league history to win four MVP awards. There’s an argument that he should already have five trophies instead of three, but a smear campaign against him in 2023 and an all-time race in 2025 have prevented him from doing so. With NBA hoops back on the horizon, Jokic has already been crowned as the favorite to take home one of the league’s most prestigious individual awards.
Nikola Jokic enters this season as the betting favorite to win NBA MVP for the fourth time, per @DKSportsbook:
Jokic = +220
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander = +250
Luka Doncic = +380
Giannis Antetokounmpo = +950
Victor Wembanyama = +1800 pic.twitter.com/r8KmOMcEJb
— Evan Sidery (@esidery) September 24, 2025
Oddsmakers at DraftKings Sportsbook have Jokic (+220) slightly ahead of Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+250) to win the award for a fourth time. Los Angeles’ Luka Doncic is third (+380) and the only other player in the same ballpark as the two who went head-to-head a season ago. Even though Jokic became just the third player in NBA history to average a triple double for an entire season, the voters gave the nod to SGA as he led the league in scoring and led the Thunder to an impressive 68-win season.
Jokic’s second-place finish was the fifth straight season in which he finished in the top-2, and he became the first person to achieve that since Larry Bird.
Elsewhere in the books, the Nuggets have the second-best odds (+650) to win the title and the Western Conference (+450), Jokic has the fourth-best odds to win Clutch Player of the Year (+1,300), head coach David Adelman has the third-best odds to win Coach of the Year (+600).
Jokic and the Nuggets have been getting a lot of love this preseason, as Jokic was voted as the top player by scouts, coaches and executives, he was ranked as the top player in the league by ESPN, and five other Nuggets ranked inside the top 90 in those same rankings. The hopes are a mile high in Denver this year with the season under a month away.
