Anti-White Sports Media Bias Cost Nikola Jokic History In Quest For 4 Straight MVPs | Bobby Burack

Nikola Jokic is -4000 to win the NBA MVP award. The race is effectively over. A win for Jokic would mark the third time he's won league MVP. Only eight other players have won the award at least three times. Jokic would be the ninth. 

But he should be the first, as in the first player to win four straight MVPs.

Jokic won the award in 2021 and 2022. Last March, he was the prohibitive favorite to win a third straight. The race was all but over. And then it was over for Jokic. 

The MVP was his until ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins accused MVP voters of favoring white players when casting their ballots. Perkins suggested white voters cost black players a chance to win the award. 

What proof did he provide, you might ask? Unfortunately, he didn't provide any. None.

Perkins said the MVP race favors white players. Yet only five white players have ever won the award, compared to 29 different black players.

If a racial bias exists within the NBA media – which decides the award – the overwhelming evidence says it doesn't favor the whites.

Nonetheless, the odds shifted away from Jokic following Perkins' claims. Subsequently, media members – Gilbert Arenas, Bomani Jones, Michael Smith, Stephen A. Smith, Domonique Foxworth, and ESPN's Andscape vertical – parroted the baseless taking point.

Ultimately, white voters felt they needed to prove they were not racist. Black voters felt they needed to prove they were not sellouts. As a result, voters handed the MVP to Joel Embiid, who was undeserving but black.

As Fox Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb commented in May, "Jokic was winning the MVP until Perk made it about race." 

Jokic has been the best player in the NBA each of the past four seasons. Assuming he wins this year, he will have won the award the three seasons that race did not play a role in deciding the award. He will have lost the award the one season that race did.

Denver Nuggets C Nikola Jokic gets out in transition vs. the Boston Celtics at TD Garden. (David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports)

Quite frankly, it's perplexing that one of the many race hustlers in the sports media didn't inject race into the voting narrative this season – knowing they could've cost Jokic the award again.

Perhaps their focus on Caitlin Clark and her whiteness distracted them, keeping their focus away from Jokic. See some examples here. 

Winning four straight MVP awards would have inked Jokic's name in the history books, achieving a feat not even Michael Jordan or LeBron James had attained – thus firmly establishing himself as one of the greatest players of the modern era. 

And had he been of any other skin color, that is how his legacy would've read.