Which NBA player won 2021?

12.31.2021

Which NBA player won 2021?

To answer that question, it’s time to bring back my annual ‘Golden Basketball’ award, which, like soccer’s Ballon d’Or, considers performance during the NBA regular season and playoffs, as well as international competition, distinguishing it from the NBA regular season and Finals MVP awards.

Last year presented an unusually interesting competition for the ‘Basketball Gold’. There is no overlap between the 2020-21 MVP (Nikola Jokic), 2021 Finals MVP (Giannis Antetokounmpo) and the frontrunner for MVP after two months of the 2021-22 season (Stephen Curry). A fourth player (Kevin Durant) was MVP at the Tokyo Olympics.

The 2021 ‘Golden Basketball’ race is also unique because of the absence of LeBron James, who won four times between the invention of this award in 2014 and its last award in 2019. LeBron would have been an easy choice again in 2020, when the pandemic made it easier with no high-level international basketball and only one week of the 2020-21 regular season taking place in 2020.

With injuries and a short playoff run ruling James out of the picture in 2021, Curry (2015) is the only former winner among my final four. Who will claim this year’s award? Let’s analyze the contention.

The finalists
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks

  • NBA Champion
  • Bill Russell Finals MVP Award
  • First Team All-NBA

After winning back-to-back MVPs, Giannis finished a distant fourth in 2020-21, reflecting a slight drop-off in play, but also perhaps skepticism about his inability to maintain his dominance in the postseason. A brilliant 2021 run capped by one of the greatest games in Finals history to secure Milwaukee’s first title in 50 years erased those doubts.

Although Giannis was not the best player on the court in the Bucks’ series with Brooklyn, he averaged 31.9 points per game and 12.9 rebounds per game and had 40 points on 15-of-24 shooting as Milwaukee beat the Nets in overtime in Game 7. A knee injury in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals threatened to prematurely end Antetokounmpo’s playoffs, but after the Bucks advanced without him, he returned to the court for Game 1 of the NBA Finals against Phoenix.

Amazingly, Giannis had back-to-back 40-point performances in Games 2 and 3, with the latter helping Milwaukee avoid a 3-0 deficit. He saved the best for Game 6 with the title on the line, scoring 50 points on 16-of-25 shooting and making 17 of his 19 free throw attempts as the Bucks celebrated the championship.

Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors

  • First-team All-NBA
  • NBA all-time scoring leader
  • NBA all-time leader in three-pointers made

Readers of a certain age may remember a time in early 2021 when Curry’s ability to lead a team to championship contention was in question. Ha! Curry lifted a regular Warriors team without the injured Klay Thompson to a 15-5 final stretch in 2020-21 before losing in the play-in tournament, finishing third in MVP voting.

With veteran reinforcements added over the summer, Golden State has kept pace, starting 2021-22 with an NBA-best 27-7 record while awaiting Thompson’s return from injury. Curry is the main reason the Warriors are back in the championship picture. He also had the defining moment of this season to date, surpassing Ray Allen at Madison Square Garden for the NBA three-point record. Even before that, Curry was the heavy favorite in ESPN’s first MVP poll of the season.

Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets

  • Olympic gold medalist
  • Olympic men’s basketball MVP

Separating Curry and Durant has seemingly elevated each to new heights, the latter despite a ruptured Achilles tendon that sidelined him for the entire 2019-20 campaign. Durant was still injury-stricken in the 2020-21 regular season, playing just 31 of Brooklyn’s 67 games after the New Year, but was back in MVP form for the playoffs.

With James Harden and Kyrie Irving missing time due to injuries, Durant almost single-handedly dragged the Nets to the conference finals, averaging 43 PPJ, 12.3 RPJ and 6.3 APJ in the final three games of their seven-game loss to the Bucks. Had Durant’s toe been an inch further back, his jump shot that tied the score at the end of Game 7 might have eliminated the eventual champions.