Nuggets: Nikola Jokic planned to chill in swimming pool amid MVP announcement

Nuggets star Nikola Jokic clearly has had enough of all the MVP talk between him and Sixers star Joel Embiid.

Nikola Jokic has continued to play at an MVP-level for the Denver Nuggets throughout the entirety of the 2022-23 season. Jokic seemed to drop one insane stat line after another on a nightly basis, breaking records belonging to the greatest stat-sheet stuffer of all time in Wilt Chamberlain. Thus, for a while, it seemed like the Nuggets big man was well on his way to becoming just the fourth player in NBA history to win MVP for three straight seasons.

However, the narrative got away from Jokic in the middle of the season. Plenty of pundits brought up the fact that Jokic doesn't impact the game on a two-way level like Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid does, and some even wondered whether the Nuggets are guilty of inflating his stats. Some even brought up the possibility that race played a huge part in the voters' preference of Jokic over Embiid.

As a result, Nikola Jokic felt like the discussion surrounding the MVP race has turned too toxic, and it showed in the Nuggets' slump to end the 2022-23 regular season. But now, with the Nuggets on a roll in the 2023 NBA playoffs, Jokic seems to have taken all the slights he has received over the past few months in stride.

Speaking with Mike Singer of the Denver Post, the Nuggets big man made it clear just how much losing out to Joel Embiid in the MVP race matters to him. (Spoiler alert: not too much.)

“Hopefully it's gonna be a sunny day so I can be in the swimming pool,” Jokic answered when asked what he was planning to do during the MVP announcement.

The Nuggets have three days of rest before they take on the Phoenix Suns in Game 3 of their second-round matchup, so it makes sense for Nikola Jokic to take his time to unwind and not let himself get too bothered by the things beyond his control.

Even then, it's clear that Jokic, after winning two MVPs, no longer has anything to prove, regular-season wise. He now has his sights set on an NBA championship, and if the Nuggets continue playing like this, there may not be a team good enough to stop them from doing so.