Giannis Antetokounmpo named 2019-20 NBA Most Valuable Player
Giannis Antetokounmpo has been named the 2019-20 NBA Most Valuable Player, making it the second straight year he’s won the honor.
It’s official: Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo is your 2019-20 NBA Most Valuable Player.
First reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski Friday morning, Antetokounmpo will be presented with the honor later this afternoon and Bucks fans will be able to catch the presentation on NBA TV at 1 p.m. central time.
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This obviously makes Antetokounmpo’s second straight MVP honor and he now has become the first to repeat as back-to-back MVP since Steph Curry did it in 2014-15 and 2015-16 with the Golden State Warriors.
Doing this all at 25 years old, Antetokounmpo becomes a part of the rare club of two-time MVP winners and becomes the third youngest player to pull off such a feat, standing behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James.
Not only did Antetokounmpo repeat his MVP honor, but with winning this year’s MVP as well as being named this year’s Defensive Player of the Year, he now joins Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only players to win both MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season.
The Greek superstar averaged 29.5 points on .553/.304/.633 shooting splits, 13.6 rebounds, 5.6 assists, a steal and a block over 30.4 minutes per contest across his 63 appearances on the season. Antetokounmpo’s minutes, even with the season being shortened due to the coronavirus pandemic, are the lowest minutes total for an MVP in NBA history.
Again, no small feats, but Antetokounmpo isn’t your normal player by any standard.
And from a Bucks lens, Antetokounmpo continues chasing the best player to ever don a Bucks jersey in Abdul-Jabbar, who won four MVP honors over the six seasons he had in Milwaukee, which he all took home by his age-26 season in the 1973-74 campaign.
This is the elite company that Antetokounmpo now belongs with, not only in franchise history, but in the league itself.
Of course, it’s hard for Antetokounmpo’s second MVP honor not to be sullied by the fact that the Bucks’ season came to an explosive end last week as they lost to the Miami heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. And as a result of that, the Bucks are faced with a whole host of uncomfortable questions, especially as Antetokounmpo contemplates his future with his supermax extension and being a year out from free agency.
The Bucks are forced to address a number of questions this offseason and the answers to those questions wait for another day. For now, Antetokounmpo’s second straight MVP honor is worthy of celebrating and commemorating in such an unprecedented season.
After not wanting to be called MVP anymore last summer, Antetokounmpo did it all over again this year. Yes, he’s still very much focused on winning a championship, but Antetokounmpo proved that first MVP season was no one-year wonder.
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Once a kid with big dreams while growing up in Greece, Antetokounmpo has nearly achieved all of them in Milwaukee. That’s no small feat, indeed.