What’s going on with the USA-born NBA players who haven’t won a regular season MVP award in the last four years? Steph Curry recently won the NBA Finals MVP but his regular season stats weren’t good enough to win the other award.
The first player to win an MVP Award was Bob Pettit in the 1955-1956 NBA season, at the time he was playing for the St. Louis Hawks as Power Forward. He won the award again in the 1958-1959 season.
Other players like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the ones with the most MVP Awards earned during their careers. Only one active NBA player is among the players with 4 or more awards.
Who won the last four NBA MVP Awards?
Giannis Antetokounmpo won twice in a row between the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 season, he was born in Greece and plays for the Milwaukee Bucks. The other foreign player who recently won the MVP award was Nikola Jokic twice between the 2020-2021 season and the 2021-2022 season.
Russell Westbrook and James Harden were the last two USA-born NBA players to win MVP Awards, one in the 2016-2017 season and the other during the 2017-2018 season respectively, thus sealing the third longest winning streak for USA-born players.
Of the 37 players who have won the MVP Awards only eight players are active in the NBA, and only one of them has won the award more than three times, LeBron James with a total of four awards.