NBA roundup: Nuggets' Jokic wins MVP award; Knicks take 2-0 lead on Pacers

Nikola Jokic did it all again. And the MVP trophy is his again.

Jokic, the Denver Nuggets star from Serbia, was announced Wednesday night as the NBA's Most Valuable Player – his third time winning the award in the past four seasons, a feat that just six other players in league history have accomplished.

He averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists. Others averaged more in each category – and Jokic has had better years in each of those categories – but he was the only player to rank in the NBA’s top 10 in points, rebounds and assists per game this season.

Jokic got 79 of a possible 99 first-place votes from the panel of reporters and broadcasters who cast ballots on awards when the regular season ended.

“It’s got to start with your teammates,” Jokic said on TNT, where the award was announced. “Without them, I’m nothing. Without them, I cannot do nothing. Coaches, players, organization, medical staff, development coaches … I cannot be whoever I am without them.”

It likely was not a coincidence that Jokic appeared on television for the award announcement wearing a T-shirt commemorating the life of one of his mentors, Golden State assistant coach Dejan Milojević, who died earlier this year after a heart attack on a road trip.

Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was second and Dallas’ Luka Doncic was third, both getting into the top three of MVP voting for the first time. With Jokic from Serbia, Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada and Doncic from Slovenia, it marked the third consecutive season that three players born outside the U.S. finished 1-2-3 in the MVP balloting.

This time, the foreign dominance atop the NBA was even more pronounced: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is from Greece, was fourth – so this became the first time in the award’s 69-year history that international players went 1-2-3-4 in the voting. It also became the sixth consecutive year that a player born outside the U.S. won the award.

Jokic appeared on all 99 ballots, with 18 second-place votes and two third-place votes. Gilgeous-Alexander also appeared on every ballot, with 15 first-place votes, 40 second-place, 40 third-place, three fourth-place and one fifth-place nod.

Doncic was on all but one ballot and got four first-place votes. Antetokounmpo got one first-place vote on his way to fourth. New York's Jalen Brunson was fifth, followed by Boston’s Jayson Tatum, Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis and Phoenix’s Kevin Durant.

“Some people say it’s the best player on the best team,” Jokic said, when asked to define an MVP. “To me, it’s the guy who’s the most valuable, the team couldn’t play without him.”

Jokic is now the ninth player to win the MVP award at least three times. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won it six times, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan each won five, Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James won four, and Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are the other three-time winners.

Jokic’s surprise rise to superstardom has been chronicled time and again over the years: He was the 41st overall pick in the 2014 draft, didn’t even think he had a realistic chance at playing in the NBA when his career was beginning and now has a Hall of Fame resume at 29.

The other players with three MVP trophies in a four-year span are James, Johnson, Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain and Russell. And Jokic becomes the fifth player to be first or second in the MVP voting in four consecutive years – joining Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Russell and Tim Duncan.

Gilgeous-Alexander had perhaps the best feel-good story in the NBA this season, helping Oklahoma City to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference by averaging 30.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists. The Thunder won 57 games, 17 more than they did last season and 33 more than they did two years ago, their rise coinciding with Gilgeous-Alexander’s emergence as one of the game’s elite players.

“There is not a night when I don’t feel like we have the best player on the floor. … There’s no one I’d rather have on our team than him,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, the league’s coach of the year this season, said last month.

Doncic made a casefor the MVP award by posting the first season in NBA history in which a player averaged 34 points, nine rebounds and nine assists per game. There had been 14 instances before this year in which a player averaged that many points and rebounds in a season – of those, five had resulted in MVP wins, including last season when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid averaged 33 points and 10 rebounds.

And this was the second time ever that a player averaged at least 33 points and nine assists per game. The other was in 1972-73, when Kansas City’s Tiny Archibald averaged 34 points and 11 assists. He finished third in that season’s MVP voting, just like Doncic did this season.

But in the end, it was Jokic who stood above all others – and the vote wasn't close.

“I think he’s stated his case pretty well," Nuggets guard Jamal Murray said. “He does it every night. It’s hard to do what he does and face the kind of pressure that he does each and every game. He does it with a smile on his face. He makes everybody around us better. And he’s a leader on the court and somebody that we expect greatness from every time he steps on the court and he’s delivered.”

Knicks 130, Pacers 121

New York — Jalen Brunson left the locker room on an injured leg, walked onto the court and sent the Madison Square Garden crowd into a frenzy, just as Willis Reed had exactly 54 years earlier.

As the roars turned into “MVP! MVP!” chants, Brunson tried to block out the pain in his body and the noise all around him as he warmed up at halftime.

“It was really cool to hear, but I just knew that I had to get my mind in the right place to figure out how I was going to attack the second half,” Brunson said.

He shook off his right foot injury to score 24 of his 29 points in the final two quarters, leading the New York Knicks to a 130-121 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

On the anniversary of Reed's dramatic emergence from the locker room before Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals to lead the Knicks to their first title, Brunson had missed the entire second quarter while the Pacers surged ahead to a double-figure lead.

Reed's teammates have said they didn't know if he would play that night. Brunson's had no doubt.

“I mean, he’s a warrior. That’s all I got,” Donte DiVincenzo said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he’ll be back. All season long, no matter what is thrown at him, injury bug or whatever, he always bounces back. And we knew the severity of the game and everything, so we knew, everybody had confidence he was coming back."

Brunson fell short of becoming the second player in NBA history to score 40 or more points in five straight playoff games, but he gave the Knicks everything they needed to move halfway to their first Eastern Conference finals appearance since 2000.

“He’s a great leader, so I think the players all have respect for that, when a guy goes out and is willing to give whatever he has, and so that says a lot about him," Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said.

OG Anunoby added a career playoff-high 28 points before leaving with a left hamstring injury in the third quarter for the injury-riddled Knicks, who have already lost three key players to season-ending injuries.

But they got Brunson back and received huge efforts again from his two Villanova teammates. DiVincenzo scored 28 points and Josh Hart had 19 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists for the No. 2-seeded Knicks.

Tyrese Haliburton rebounded from a poor Game 1 with 34 points, nine assists and six rebounds for the Pacers, who finished the game without coach Rick Carlisle after he got two technical fouls and was ejected.

“Small-market teams deserve an equal shot,” Carlisle said during a postgame complaint about the officiating. “They deserve a fair shot no matter where they are playing.”

The series moves to Indiana for Game 3 on Friday and Game 4 on Sunday.

Coach Malone reminds Nugget they're the champs

Denver — After a difficult-to-watch film session of their Monday night meltdown against Minnesota and an energetic practice Wednesday, Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone gave his team a stinging reminder and made a request.

“Guys, we're the reigning world champions,” Malone said. "Act like it and play like it.”

They did neither in their 108-80 Game 2 loss to the Timberwolves, who took a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 Western Conference semifinal series back to Minneapolis.

On Tuesday, the NBA fined Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray $100,000 for tossing a towel and a heat pack onto the court “in the direction of a game official during live play” in the second quarter of Game 2.

Murray avoided a suspension and also dodged any punishment for making a money sign at an official earlier in the second quarter. A similar gesture by Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert in a regular season game in March drew a $100,000 fine from the league.

Murray, who has been flummoxed by a strained left calf, a lost shooting touch and a paucity of whistles going his way, left Ball Arena without speaking to reporters after Games 1 and 2.

He met with the media after practice Wednesday but didn't have much to say about his actions that endangered players on both teams and Marc Davis' officiating crew or the fine issued by the league.

“Nah, I mean it is what it is and I take everything in full responsibility, so on to the next,” Murray said when asked whether he had expected the fine and if he felt his punishment was appropriate.

Asked for an explanation of his actions, Murray said, "Yeah, on to the next. I mean, two days ago, not much for me to say about it right now.”

When asked about issuing an apology or taking responsibility, Murray cut off the line of questioning by asking, "Do you have any basketball questions?”

Murray acknowledged the Nuggets lost their collective composure Monday night when the Wolves hounded them into a 35% shooting performance even though their best defender, Rudy Gobert, who won the league's Defensive Player of the Year Award on Tuesday, was back in Minneapolis for the birth of his son.

“We've just got to be ready to play and not get frustrated with how the game goes sometimes and we allowed it to take us out of our game,” Murray said. “So, we've just got to stay composed and find a way to stick together during the game and figure it out. No matter what the scoreboard says, we've got to be able to claw back.”

The towel Murray threw landed at the heels of Davis on the baseline but the heat pack skidded across the floor just as Karl-Anthony Towns was going for a lay-up.

Wolves coach Chris Finch called Murray’s actions “inexcusable and dangerous,” saying somebody easily could have gotten hurt.

“I've never seen that from Jamal. That was very uncharacteristic,” Malone said, attributing Murray losing his cool to "taking a charge and it's not called, not making shots at the level we know he's capable of making, being down 30 points to a team that we're trying to beat to get to the Western Conference finals.

“So when you put it all in the boiling pot, that's a lot to handle. And he didn't handle it the way he knows he needs to handle it, and I'm sure he told you guys that."

Coming off the first NBA championship in franchise history, the Nuggets have shown a fatigue in these playoffs that has plagued previous champions.

Unlike last year when they coasted at the end of the regular season with the top seed in the West already secured, the second-seeded Nuggets jockeyed with Minnesota and Oklahoma City until the final weekend of the season.

Murray missed 23 games this season with a variety of lower body injuries and the constant double teams that opponents threw at Nikola Jokic is evident in the scars on his upper arms.

It's not just health but slow starts that have plagued the reigning champs ever since the playoffs began.

They've trailed by large margins in all seven of their postseason games. They bounced back against the Lakers to win in five, with Murray hitting a pair of game-winning buckets. But they've been bamboozled by Minnesota's swarming defense, size advantage and deeper bench and now have to beat rising star Anthony Edwards four times in five tries to make it to the Western Conference finals.

Malone said he showed his team nine clips of Game 2 “that kind of encapsulated that game and why we lost. And our players owned it. And my greatest challenge to them and I don't have an answer for whoever's going to ask me do these guys believe? I don't know. They all say they do but we will all find out collectively come Friday night.”

Beverley calls his actions 'inexcusable'

Indianapolis police announced Wednesday they've opened an investigation into an “NBA player and citizen” altercation that happened at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on the night Bucks guard Patrick Beverley threw a ball at a fan in the final minutes of a season-ending loss to the Pacers.

Police said in a news release the case has been forwarded to detectives, “who are currently investigating this situation and take all accusations seriously.”

Detectives will present the case to the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office at the conclusion of the investigation, the release stated.

Cameras showed Beverley sitting on the bench and tossing a ball into the stands, hitting a fan in the head with about 2 ½ minutes left in the game on May 2. After a different fan threw the ball back to Beverley, who was holding his arm out for it, the Bucks guard fired it back at that spectator.

Beverley spoke about his behavior on an episode of “The Pat Bev Podcast” that was released Wednesday. He said he was called a word that he’d never been called before, but added that his own actions were “still inexcusable.”

“I will be better," he said. "I have to be better, and I will be better. That should have never happened. Regardless of what was said, that should have never happened. Simple as that.”

Beverley added the atmosphere in Indiana “was great” aside from “a handful of fans” who crossed the line. The Pacers beat the Bucks 120-98, eliminating Milwaukee from the playoffs.

“I ain’t bringing a basketball on the bench no more,” Beverley said. “That … threw my whole vibe off.”

After the game, Beverley wouldn't allow ESPN journalist Malinda Adams to ask him a question in a group interview in the locker room. He said it was because she didn't subscribe to his podcast. Beverley told her to get her microphone out of his face and then eventually asked her to leave the interview circle.

On his podcast Wednesday, Beverley said he had asked that of reporters who interviewed him ever since he launched his podcast. Beverley said he told Adams that “it was never my intent to disrespect you.”

A day after the loss, Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Beverley's behavior was “not the Milwaukee way or the Bucks way.”

“We’re better than that," Rivers said. "Pat feels awful about that. He also understands emotionally – this is an emotional game and things happen – unfortunately, you’re judged immediately and he let the emotions get the better of him.”

Eastern Conference

Second round

Indiana vs. New York

(Knicks lead 2-0)

▶ Game 1: New York 121-117

▶ Game 2: New York 130-121

▶ Game 3: Friday @ Indiana, 7

▶ Game 4: Sunday @ Indiana, 3:30

▶ Game 5: May 14 at New York, TBA

▶ Game 6: May 17 @ Indiana, TBA

▶ Game 7: May 19 @ New York, TBA

Boston vs. Cleveland

(Celtics lead 1-0)

▶ Game 1: Boston 120-95

▶ Game 2: Thursday @ Boston, 7

▶ Game 3: Saturday @ Cleveland, 8:30

▶ Game 4: Monday @ Cleveland, 7

▶ Game 5: May 15 @ Boston, TBA

▶ Game 6: May 17 @ Cleveland, TBA

▶ Game 7: May 19 @ Boston, TBA

Western Conference

Denver vs. Minnesota

(Timberwolves lead 2-0)

▶ Game 1: Minnesota 106-99

▶ Game 2: Minnesota 106-90

▶ Game 3: Friday @ Minnesota, TBA

▶ Game 4: Sunday @ Minnesota, TBA

▶ Game 5: Tuesday, May 14 @ Denver, TBA

▶ Game 6: Thursday, May 16 @ Minnesota, TBA

▶ Game 7: Sunday, May 19 @ Denver, TBA

Oklahoma City vs. Dallas

(Thunder lead 1-0)

▶ Game 1: Oklahoma City 117-95

▶ Game 2: Thursday @ Oklahoma City, 9:30

▶ Game 3: Saturday @ Dallas, 3:30

▶ Game 4: Monday @ Dallas, 9:30

▶ Game 5: May 15 @ Oklahoma City, TBA

▶ Game 6: May 18 @ Dallas, TBA

▶ Game 7: May 20 @ Oklahoma City, TBA

Eastern Conference

First round

Milwaukee vs. Indiana

(Indiana wins 4-2)

▶ Game 1: Milwaukee 109-94

▶ Game 2: Indiana 125-108

▶ Game 3: Indiana 121-118 (OT)

▶ Game 4: Indiana 126-113

▶ Game 5: Milwaukee 115-92

▶ Game 6: Indiana 120-98

Boston vs. Miami

(Celtics win 4-1)

▶ Game 1: Boston 114, Miami 94

▶ Game 2: Miami 111, Boston 101

▶ Game 3: Boston 104, Miami 84

▶ Game 4: Boston 102, Miami 88

▶ Game 5: Boston 118-84

Cleveland vs. Orlando

(Cavaliers win 4-3)

▶ Game 1: Cleveland 97, Orlando 83

▶ Game 2: Cleveland 96, Orlando 86

▶ Game 3: Orlando 121, Cleveland 83

▶ Game 4: Orlando 112, Cleveland 89

▶ Game 5: Cleveland 104, Orlando 103

▶ Game 6: Orlando 103, Cleveland 96

▶ Game 7: Cleveland 106-94

New York vs. Philadelphia

(Knicks win 4-2)

▶ Game 1: New York 111-104

▶ Game 2: New York 104-101

▶ Game 3: Philadelphia 125-114

▶ Game 4: New York 97-92

▶ Game 5: Philadelphia 112-106

▶ Game 6: New York 118-115

Western Conference

L.A. Clippers vs. Dallas

(Mavericks win 4-2)

▶ Game 1: L.A. Clippers 109-97

▶ Game 2: Dallas 96-93

▶ Game 3: Dallas 101-90

▶ Game 4: L.A. Clippers 116-111

▶ Game 5: Dallas 123-93

▶ Game 6: Dallas 114, L.A. Clippers 101

▶ Game 7: Sunday @ L.A. Clippers, TBA

Denver vs. L.A. Lakers

(Nuggets win 4-1)

▶ Game 1: Denver 114-103

▶ Game 2: Denver 101-99

▶ Game 3: Denver 112-105

▶ Game 4: L.A. Lakers 119-108

▶ Game 5: Denver 108-106

Oklahoma City vs. New Orleans

(Thunder wins 4-0)

▶ Game 1: Oklahoma City 94-92

▶ Game 2: Oklahoma City 124-92

▶ Game 3: Oklahoma City 106-85

▶ Game 4: Oklahomas City 97-89

Minnesota vs. Phoenix

(Timberwolves win 4-0)

▶ Game 1: Minnesota 120-95

▶ Game 2: Minnesota 105-93

▶ Game 3: Minnesota 126-109

▶ Game 4: Minnesota 122-116