{"id":140986,"date":"2025-05-22T19:35:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T23:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=140986"},"modified":"2025-05-22T19:35:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T23:35:28","slug":"streak-of-mvp-winners-born-outside-u-s-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/05\/22\/streak-of-mvp-winners-born-outside-u-s-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"The Streak of MVP Winners Born Outside The U.S. Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every season from 2007-08 until 2017-18, a player born and from the U.S. was named the league NBA MVP winner. While the game was certainly becoming more international than it previously was, the player voted as the best was constantly coming from someone born in the U.S. Of late, that has not been the case. On Wednesday, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> was named the 2024-25 MVP.<\/a> He led the league in scoring and helped to guide his team to the best record in the NBA. The 26-year-old guard was born in Canada and didn\u2019t move to the United States until he was in high school. Gilgeous-Alexander\u2019s MVP win marks the seventh straight year where a player born outside of the U.S. was named the league\u2019s MVP.<\/p>\n

The Streak of MVP Winners Born Outside The U.S. Continues<\/h2>\n

NBA MVP Winner Hasn\u2019t Been Born In The U.S. Since 2018<\/h3>\n

It wasn\u2019t a surprise to see Gilgeous-Alexander take home the top honors as he was the presumptive favorite for quite some time. It also wasn\u2019t surprising to see the players who finished second and third in voting. Nikola Jokic<\/a> was the runner-up and Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> finished in third. Of course, those players are also from outside the United States with Jokic being from Serbia and Antetokounmpo from Greece.<\/p>\n

\"\"
May 18, 2025; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2) hugs his son and wife after his team defeated the Denver Nuggets in game seven of the second round for the 2025 NBA Playoffs at Paycom Center. Mandatory Credit: Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both Jokic and Antetokounmpo have won league MVP multiple times. The 30-year-old Jokic has won it three times (2020-21, 2021-22, 2023-24) and Antetokounmpo (also 30) won it back-to-back in 2018-19 and 2019-20. They account for five of the last seven MVP winners that have been born outside of the United States.<\/p>\n

The other MVP of the last seven years is Joel Embiid<\/a> who took home the award in the 2022-23 season. The 31-year-old center was born in Cameroon. Remarkably, the last time a player born in the U.S. finished in the top three in MVP voting was in 2020-21. That year, Stephen Curry<\/a> came in third. That means for four straight years, no U.S.-born player has finished better than fourth in MVP voting.<\/p>\n

Who Were The Top U.S. Vote Getters This Year?<\/h3>\n

As mentioned, players born in the U.S. dominated winning the award from 2007-08 until 2017-18. Altogether, seven different players won MVP in that time. The U.S. born players that were named MVP in those 11 seasons were Kobe Bryant<\/a> (2007-08), LeBron James<\/a> (2008-09, 2009-10, 2011-12, 2012-13), Derrick Rose<\/a> (2010-11), Kevin Durant<\/a> (2013-14), Stephen Curry (2014-15, 2015-16), Russell Westbrook<\/a> (2016-17), and James Harden<\/a> (2017-18).<\/p>\n

The top U.S. born player in this year\u2019s voting was Jayson Tatum<\/a> who finished fourth. Unfortunately, he is expected to sit out most (if not all) of next season. He suffered a torn meniscus in the Boston Celtics second round matchup with the New York Knicks. The other top vote getters from the United States were Donovan Mitchell<\/a> (fifth), LeBron James (sixth), Cade Cunningham<\/a> (seventh), and Anthony Edwards<\/a> (eighth).<\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every season from 2007-08 until 2017-18, a player born and from the U.S. was named the league NBA MVP winner. While the game was certainly becoming more international than it previously was, the player voted as the best was constantly coming from someone born in the U.S. Of late, that has not been the case. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":141025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,3,22],"tags":[564,1489],"class_list":["post-140986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","category-thunder","tag-nba-mvp","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140986"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141034,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140986\/revisions\/141034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}