Can Nikola Jokic Still Win The MVP Award? Here's The Latest On His Eligibility
Jan 28, 2026
On Tuesday, Nikola Jokic missed a Denver Nuggets game for the 15th time this season. While he’s expected to make a return to the Nuggets lineup sooner or later, his DNP against the Detroit Pistons was certainly a big deal.
Jokic has said time and time again that individual accolades hardly matter to him, but now, he’s in danger of missing out on precious hardware. Here’s why: After not suiting up in the Nuggets-Pistons game, Jokic can only afford to sit out two more games before becoming ineligible to win major individual awards.
That includes the distinction that Jokic has won on three separate occasions and that he was in serious talks to win yet again before his knee injury in late December: the NBA MVP award.
In order to be eligible for major awards like MVP, All-NBA, and Defensive Player of the Year, NBA players are required to play at least 65 regular-season games. (Further, players need to play a minimum of 20 minutes in each of these outings.) This means that players who miss 18 games are all but eliminated from contention for any of those awards.
Jokic, then, can only afford to sit out just two more games for the rest of the 2025–26 campaign. However, for fans holding out hope that the one-time NBA champion can still contend for a major award, a report that came out on Tuesday cast a grim outlook on this possibility.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Nuggets are set to re-evaluate Jokic’s on-court readiness in “about a week.” The problem is, Denver has three games over the next five days: they have back-to-back contests against the Brooklyn Nets and the LA Clippers, and they’ll be taking on the defending champions, the OKC Thunder, on Sunday.
It’s hard to imagine that the Nuggets organization will rush the process to give Jokic a clean bill of health following the hyperextension of his knee on December 29. After all, the bigger picture is the playoffs, and the Nuggets were just a game away from making the Western Conference Finals last year. The ultimate objective of a championship, though, might be the death knell for Jokic’s MVP hopes this season.
