Winning the NBA MVP award, nicknamed the Michael Jordan Trophy since 2022, is the highest individual honor that can be bestowed on a basketball player.
Jordan himself has won it five times. His chief competitor in the all-time GOAT debate, who many, including us, believe has surpassed him in the race, LeBron James, has won it four times in his career. Bill Russell is tied with Jordan for the second-most MVPs in league history with five. And an underrated GOAT candidate, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, once the NBA's all-time leading scorer, won the award a record six times in his illustrious career.
Today, what we're going to discuss is the NBA players who have gotten the largest share of MVP votes in their careers. This list is about to be littered with some of the biggest names the sport of basketball has ever seen, so buckle up.
1. Michael Jordan: 35.97 percent
Number of MVPs won: Five
Seasons getting MVP votes: 13 out of 15
The runaway No. 1 winner of this honor, His Airness, Michael Jordan, owns the top spot here thanks to his otherworldly talent, as well as his relatively shorter career compared to other megastars.
If you take away Jordan's Washington Wizards years, his career was only 13 seasons long, and if you remove the year that included his late-season return in '95, it was 12. And if you remove Jordan's 18-game second season, which was cut vastly short due to injury, you realize Jordan's peak was more like 11 years. That, coupled with how dominant Jordan was as a player, makes it easy to see how he has such a huge lead in this exercise.
In Jordan's 11 full seasons pre-Wizards, he earned MVP votes, finishing Top 3 in the vote an astounding 10 times, and winning it outright five times. That number would be higher, too, if it weren't for voter fatigue, as our Global Rating metric determined that Jordan was the best player in the league, according to the stat, nine times during that stretch.
Making that even more impressive is the fact that Jordan was this dominant in an era that was still the Age of the Big Men in the NBA, in which centers dominated award voting. In the 29 seasons prior to Jordan's rookie campaign of 1984-85, a center had been named league MVP 23 times. What's more, only two backcourt players had won MVP prior to MJ, and they were both point guards, making his utter domination from the 2-guard spot not only awe-inspiring, but totally unheard of.
We don't see anyone passing Jordan ever in share of first-place MVP votes won, at least not anytime soon, not with how long modern careers last thanks to modern medicine.
2. Nikola Jokic: 26.96 percent
Number of MVPs won: Three
Seasons getting MVP votes: 8 out of 11
As Denver Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic gets up there in age, this number will likely go down, as will the big Serbian's place in this ranking. But for now, Jokic ranks second all-time in percentage of first-place MVP votes gotten during his career, an even more impressive feat considering he came off the bench for nearly 40 games over his first two seasons in the NBA.
By his fourth season, Jokic was on his way to establishing himself as an eventual first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, earning MVP votes every season since 2018-19, winning the award three times and finishing in second two other times.
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 26.90 percent
Number of MVPs won: Six
Seasons getting MVP votes: 17 out of 20
People give LeBron James a ton of credit for his longevity, and rightfully so, but a player who deserves more love in that regard is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who ranks third all-time in percentage of first-place MVP votes received at 26.90 percent. That's a particularly wild number considering his career spanned two decades.
The first year Abdul-Jabbar got MVP votes was in 1969-70, his rookie season. The last season Abdul-Jabbar got MVP votes was 1985-86, his 17th season, when he finished fifth in the vote in his age-38 campaign. Another fun longevity stat about Abdul-Jabbar is the fact that he's the player with the most time between Finals MVP awards in league history. The UCLA legend's first time winning the award was in 1971 and his next time winning it was in 1985, his age-37 season.
Abdul-Jabbar owns the record for most MVP awards ever, though his peak happening during the 1970s, when the NBA was a bit down in talent, has to be taken into account there. Still, Abdul-Jabbar is one of only two players ever to win MVP back when players voted for the award (prior to 1979-80), and then to win the award again once the media took over the vote after that. Moses Malone is the only other player who can say the same.
4. Bill Russell: 23.79 percent
Number of MVPs won: Five
Seasons getting MVP votes: 12 out of 13
Prior to 1979-80, players decided who would win league MVP every year, with the rule that they couldn't vote for themselves or teammates. And one player who benefited from that rule was the all-time rings leader, Bill Russell, who was clearly more respected by his contemporaries on the court than by the media who covered the league.
Russell is one of just two players in NBA history to win league MVP honors without making 1st Team All-NBA that same season, and he accomplished that three times, in '58, '61 and '62. In 1957-58, Hawks big man Bob Pettit earned 1st Team All-NBA, as voted on by the media, while Russell won MVP. And then in '61 and '62, Wilt Chamberlain was 1st Team All-NBA, while Russell was MVP. The only other player who can say the same is another legendary Celtic, Dave Cowens, who pulled off the same feat once, in 1972-73.
Who could say how many regular-season MVPs Russell would actually have if the media were voting for MVP back then, and not players with personal vendettas against other frontrunners for the award?
Either way, Russell earned MVP votes in 12 out of his 13 seasons in the NBA, and has one of the highest shares of first-place MVP votes earned in NBA history.
5. Larry Bird: 22.72 percent
Number of MVPs won: Three
Seasons getting MVP votes: 12 out of 13
Another player who benefited from having a shorter career than most others on this list, Larry Bird won league MVP honors three times, and earned MVP votes in 12 out of his 13 seasons in the league, to go with his 22.72 percent of first-place MVP votes earned in his career.
It also helped that Bird arrived in the NBA as a ready-made product after spending three dominant seasons at Indiana State, before getting to the league for his age-23 campaign. Had Bird gotten to the NBA as a 19-year-old former one-and-doner, it's unlikely he'd have garnered as large a share of first-place MVP votes as he did.
Nevertheless, Bird was dominant out of the gate in the NBA, finishing fourth in the MVP vote as a rookie, while earning 1st Team All-NBA honors as a first-year player. Bird is one of just four players ever, along with Chamberlain, Wes Unseld and Tim Duncan, to make 1st Team All-NBA as rookies.
Bird would then finish second place in the MVP vote from his second season to his fourth season, before finally winning the award for the first time in 1983-84. The Celtics all-timer would then reel off three straight MVP awards, a feat that he shares with Russell and Chamberlain.
6. Wilt Chamberlain: 21.05 percent
Number of MVPs won: Four
Seasons getting MVP votes: 11 out of 14
As we discussed in the Russell section, Chamberlain got hurt in MVP award voting, more than likely due to his lack of popularity with other players. Despite the fact that he won league MVP honors four times in his career, Chamberlain made 1st Team All-NBA seven times, including twice in seasons that the media voted him as the best center in the league (by naming him to 1st Team All-NBA), while the players voted Russell as league MVP.
According to a study we did over three years ago, no player got hurt by MVP voting more than Chamberlain did, as our Global Rating metric believes he was the best player in the league nine times, while he won MVP just four times. If nothing else, Chamberlain probably should have won MVP at least twice more in his career, specifically in the seasons in which he was named 1st Team All-NBA over the actual MVP winner, Russell. Journalists likely had an easier time being more impartial when it came to award voting than fellow players, hence why the NBA switched to letting the media decide the winner every year starting in 1979-80.
Even so, Chamberlain was so dominant that even despite getting somewhat shafted by fellow players in MVP voting, he still earned over 21 percent of first-place votes during his time in the NBA.
7. LeBron James: 19.55 percent
Number of MVPs won: Four
Seasons getting MVP votes: 20 out of 23
James would sit comfortably behind Jordan in this exercise had he retired at a more normal age, but as he runs up the score in the longevity stats, he obviously does lose out on the more impressive "peak" stats, such as share of first-place MVP votes earned. Even so, despite playing an astounding 23 seasons so far and counting, James has earned a near-20 percent of first-place MVP votes in his career, just a ridiculous mark considering how long he's been in the NBA.
James is tied for No. 2 all-time in most unanimous NBA MVP award wins, a feat he accomplished in 2012-13, when he earned 120 out of 121 first-place votes.
James is another player who was also hurt by voter fatigue, as, according to our Global Rating metric, it could be argued that James should have won MVP nine times, as that is how many times our stat had him as the best player in the league.
8. Bob Pettit: 16.65 percent
Number of MVPs won: Two
Seasons getting MVP votes: 9 out of 11
Atlanta Hawks legend Bob Pettit earned MVP votes in nine of his 11 seasons in the NBA, while winning the award twice and finishing Top 3 in the vote five times. He won a championship in 1953-54 and led the league in scoring twice. Pettit also owns the distinction of earning 1st Team All-NBA honors in a season that he did not win MVP, which took place in 1957-58, when the media voted Pettit 1st Team All-NBA while the players voted Russell as MVP.
9. Giannis Antetokounmpo: 14.42 percent
Number of MVPs won: Two
Seasons getting MVP votes: 9 out of 13
It's impressive that the Greek Freak Giannis Antetokounmpo ranks in the Top 10 ever for share of first-place MVP votes earned, as the (current) Bucks superstar came in to the NBA as such a raw product, one who took quite some time to develop into the eventual first-ballot Hall-of-Famer he became.
Antetokounmpo was a bench player for most of his first season, one in which he averaged 6.8 points on 41.4 percent per game in his age-19 campaign. He then became pretty much a full-time starter in Season 2 and 3, before winning Most Improved Player in 2016-17, his fourth campaign in the NBA, when he put up 22.9 points, 8.8 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.9 blocks per game.
From then on, Antetokounmpo became a perennial MVP candidate, finishing Top 7 in the MVP vote every season from his fourth through his 12th, and if he hadn't gotten injured this season, he very likely would have continued that streak in 2025-26. Antetokounmpo would win the award back-to-back years, in '19 and '20, the latter season being when he became just the third player, after Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon, to win MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same campaign.
10. Magic Johnson: 13.93 percent
Number of MVPs won: Three
Seasons getting MVP votes: 12 out of 13
There's no doubt the great Magic Johnson would rank higher here if his prime hadn't been cut short by his HIV diagnosis. When he stepped away after his age-31 campaign in 1990-91, Johnson had just finished second in the MVP vote to Michael Jordan, earned 1st Team All-NBA honors and led the Lakers to the Finals. He surely had years of elite-level play left in him. Thankfully, Magic's health remains strong to this day; he even returned to the NBA in '96 for 32 games, finishing 12th in the MVP vote that year, but it's a shame we couldn't see him add more to his legacy deeper into his 30s.
Johnson enjoyed a ridiculous nine-year stretch from 1982-83 to 1990-91 where he finished Top 3 in the MVP vote every single year, winning the award in 1986-87, 1988-89 and 1989-90, and finishing second two other times.
11. Stephen Curry: 13.29 percent
Number of MVPs won: Two
Seasons getting MVP votes: 11 out of 17
The only unanimous MVP in NBA history, achieving the honor in 2015-16, Stephen Curry is also the MVP winner to have missed the playoffs the most times in their career, tied with Kevin Garnett and Moses Malone.
Curry ranking as high as he does is actually more impressive when you factor in how much time he's missed due to injury, both early in his career and more recently. The former Davidson standout has eight seasons in which he played fewer than 70 games.
As such, the league's all-time greatest shooter has just three Top 3 MVP finishes in his career, two of which saw him win the award.
12. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 12.25 percent
Number of MVPs won: Two
Seasons getting MVP votes: Four out of eight
Probably winning the NBA MVP award for a second season in a row and running away with the vote, Canadian superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is very likely going to climb this ranking in the coming years, as we don't see his reign of excellence ending anytime soon. SGA has simply mastered the modern game, with his quickness, burst, ball-handling, tough-shot-making prowess, pull-up scoring and propensity for drawing fouls, as well as knocking down free throws at an elite rate.
Gilgeous-Alexander is downright putting up modern MJ numbers these days, averaging 31.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 6.2 assists and 1.7 steals on 52.9 percent shooting from the floor over the last four seasons. If the Thunder lead guard keeps that up for another five years (and there's no reason to think he won't, as he remains just 27 years old), plenty more first-place votes await him.
He earned 71 percent of first-place MVP votes last season and is probably getting a similar share this year, so his climb has already begun. We have a strong feeling this is only the beginning of SGA's ascent up the MVP historical hierarchy.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Michael Jordan, Nikola Jokic and the players with the highest share of MVP first-place votes in NBA history
