Where Jayson Tatum ranked in ESPN’s first NBA MVP straw poll

If Jayson Tatum wants to win MVP, he has a bit of an uphill battle to climb.

The Celtics star came in fourth place in ESPN’s first MVP straw poll of the 2024-25 season. Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo were the three players voted ahead of Tatum in ESPN’s poll, in which 100 media members participated.

While Tatum had a top-five placement in the poll, there’s a bit of separation between him and the top-three vote-getters. Jokic (57 first-place votes), Gilgeous-Alexander (24 first-place votes), and Antetokounmpo (19 first-place votes) received all the first-place votes in the poll. As voters were asked to rank their top five players for MVP, Tatum received just three second-place votes and 13 third-place votes. Tatum also received 51 fourth-place votes and 28 fifth-place votes, while five voters left him off their ballot.

By ESPN’s Tim Bontemps’s tabulation, Tatum received 267 points in the MVP straw poll. He trails Jokic (827) by 560 points for the top spot and is 376 points behind Antetokounmpo for the third-place spot. Gilgeous-Alexander is second with 678 points. 

The Bucks’ title victory in the NBA Cup seemed to have distanced the gap between Antetokoumpo and Tatum. The votes for the poll were initially conducted a day ahead of the NBC Cup final, where Antetokounmpo’s triple-double helped the Bucks beat the Thunder. Twenty-nine voters requested to change their ballot after Milwaukee’s win, which caused Antetokoumpo’s first-place votes to more than double than what he previously had, according to Bontemps. 

Of the four players, Gilgeous-Alexander is currently on the best team. But entering Saturday’s games, the Thunder are only one game ahead of the Celtics at 22-5. The Nuggets are 15-12 while the Bucks are 14-12, clawing their way back up the standings after their poor start. 

In terms of head-to-head individual stats, though, Tatum trails the three frontrunners. His 28.3 points per game is an impressive amount, but is fourth among the group. Antetokounmpo leads the four with 32.7 points per game. Tatum’s nine rebounds per game are the third-fewest among the group (Jokic leads the foursome with 13 rebounds per game). Tatum’s 5.5 assists per game is also fourth among the group, trailing Jokic by 4.3 assists per game. 

In terms of shooting efficiency, Tatum is the only one of the four players shooting below 50 percent from the field at 45.3 percent. His true shooting percentage (59.5 percent) is also the only of the group that’s below 60 percent. 

While the Celtics might have larger aspirations for the 2024-25 season, Tatum made it clear at the start of the year that he’d like to win MVP at some point in his career. 

“As a kid, you set a lot of goals for yourself,” Tatum told reporters in October. “I’ve been very fortunate enough to check off a lot of boxes of things that I wanted to accomplish, things that my favorite players accomplished.

“Saying that MVP is important to me is not in a way taking away from the success of our team. Every guy that’s ever won MVP has been on a championship-contending team. If you’re an MVP, you’re dominating, you’re efficient, you’re playing the right way, and you’re impacting winning.

“You can do both. Championship is the most important, but being the best version of yourself along the way is important as well.”

History could be on Tatum’s side. The leader of the first edition of ESPN’s MVP straw poll in each of the last four years didn’t win the award, including Tatum in the 2022-23 season. Jokic climbed up from the fourth-place spot in the first straw poll of the 2021-22 season to win MVP that year while Joel Embiid climbed up from the 10th spot in the first straw poll of the 2022-23 season to win MVP that same year.

In terms of betting odds, Tatum’s MVP chances have taken a hit since he was third in the opening weeks of the season. He holds +1800 odds to win MVP on DraftKings Sportsbook, which is the fifth-best odds as the top four (Jokic, Gilgeous-Alexander, Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic) each have odds better than +850 to win the award.