{"id":50964,"date":"2025-05-23T01:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T01:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/50964\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T01:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T01:29:10","slug":"former-nuggets-coach-michael-malone-clarified-he-would-have-voted-for-nikola-jokic-as-mvp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/50964\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Nuggets coach Michael Malone clarified he would have voted for Nikola Joki\u0107 as MVP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/denver-nuggets\/7\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Denver Nuggets;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Denver Nuggets<\/a> coach Michael Malone used some of his ESPN airtime on Thursday night to clarify his 2025 NBA MVP sentiment about his former player, Nikola Joki\u0107.<\/p>\n<p>During NBA playoff pregame coverage in Oklahoma City, Malone clarified, if he had a MVP vote, he would have voted for Joki\u0107 over eventual MVP winner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nikola [Joki\u0107] won the first of his three MVPs, and I did vote for him again this year if I had a vote,&#8221; Malone shared his comments. &#8220;Want to make sure the people in Denver know that because right now, I&#8217;m getting a lot of heat back home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/article\/did-mike-malone-coldly-cook-113757331.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:Malone seemed to get his words twisted a bit;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Malone seemed to get his words twisted a bit<\/a> recently while speaking about Gilgeous-Alexander being the consensus MVP, but he&#8217;s clearly covering his bases to make sure Denver fans now he&#8217;s still riding with Joki\u0107.<\/p>\n<p>To view this content, you\u2019ll need to update your privacy settings. <a href=\"https:\/\/yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com\/guc-redirect?app=thirdPartyContentEmbed&amp;bucket=pd_2&amp;lang=en-GB\" class=\"caas-consent-dashboard-link caas-didomi-consent-dashboard-link link\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"sec:article_reconsent;subsec:priv-content-embed;ll1:3rd-party-consent;elm:reconsent;itc:0;elmt:tweet\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Please click here<\/a> and view the &#8220;Content and social media partners&#8221; setting to do so.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nikola [Jokic] won the first of his three MVPs and I did vote for him again this year if I had a vote. Want to make sure the people in Denver know that because right now, I&#8217;m getting a lot of heat back home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Former Nuggets coach Michael Malone \ud83d\ude05<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Q0XRLfAk1P\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:pic.twitter.com\/Q0XRLfAk1P;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">pic.twitter.com\/Q0XRLfAk1P<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ClutchPoints\/status\/1925711794347167904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:May 23, 2025;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">May 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maybe this will clear it all up?<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on For The Win: <a href=\"https:\/\/ftw.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/2025\/05\/22\/michael-malone-clarified-he-would-have-voted-for-nikola-joki-as-mvp\/83803938007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Michael Malone clarified he would have voted for Nikola Joki\u0107 as MVP;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Michael Malone clarified he would have voted for Nikola Joki\u0107 as MVP<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone used some of his ESPN airtime on Thursday night to clarify his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,301,187,3943,4231,6,2033,253,302,475,179,209],"class_list":{"0":"post-50964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-denvernuggets","12":"tag-michael-malone","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-mvp","15":"tag-nikola-jokic","16":"tag-nuggets","17":"tag-oklahoma-city","18":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","19":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114554559763540558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}