The NBA has presented its regular-season Most Valuable Player award every season since 1955–56. These updated figures cover 71 awards to 37 players through 2025–26, when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won his second in a row. They compare the winners by playing role, birthplaces, height, team and career scoring, then add five views of award concentration, streaks and the latest vote.
Scope: regular-season NBA MVP awards through 2025–26. Career points cover NBA regular seasons through 2025–26. Award counts exclude ABA and Finals MVP prizes. Birthplace is not citizenship.
NBA MVP statistics
- NBA MVP awards by primary position, 1955–56 to 2025–26
- MVP positions by award decade
- MVP winners by birth decade and birthplace region
- US states with multiple NBA MVP winners
- Tallest and shortest NBA MVP winners
- Players with at least three MVPs, split by team
- NBA all-time regular-season scoring leaders, through 2025–26
- Players with multiple NBA MVP awards
- Franchises with the most MVP-winning seasons
- Longest consecutive NBA MVP winning runs
- MVP awards won by players born outside the 50 states and DC
- 2025–26 NBA MVP voting: the three finalists
- MVP winner reference table
1. NBA MVP awards by primary position, 1955–56 to 2025–26
Centres have won 30 of the 71 regular-season MVP awards, or 42.3% under the primary-position coding used here. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar alone account for 15 of those seasons. Point guards follow with 13 awards, including two each for Stephen Curry, Steve Nash and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Power forwards have 11, small forwards nine and shooting guards eight. The totals count winning seasons rather than distinct people, so a repeat winner contributes more than once.
A player’s role is not always reducible to one label. Tim Duncan is assigned to power forward, Bob McAdoo to centre, LeBron James to small forward and Gilgeous-Alexander to point guard. Different historical position conventions can move a few awards between categories without changing the winners. This classification is documented in the accompanying CSV. The 2025–26 award went to Gilgeous-Alexander, making this a completed-season count rather than a projection for the coming 2026–27 season.
Sources: NBA: season-by-season MVP winners; NBA: player biographies and listed positions
Wilt Chamberlain was one of the most dominant players in basketball history. Playing in the NBA during the 1960s and early 1970s, he was known for his exceptional size, strength and scoring ability. Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game, a record that still stands. Over his career, he won four Most Valuable Player awards and led the league in scoring and rebounding multiple times. His rivalry with Bill Russell defined an era of basketball.
Wilt Chamberlain wearing a Harlem Globetrotters uniform. Image: Fred Palumbo.
2. MVP positions by award decade
The centre position dominated the award’s early history. It accounted for nine of the ten MVPs in the 1960s and all ten in the 1970s when decades are assigned by the year in which the season ended. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar collected five of the 1970s awards. The 1980s brought more variety, with Larry Bird’s three consecutive small-forward wins and Magic Johnson’s point-guard awards reshaping the mix. Michael Jordan’s five shooting-guard awards then stand out across the late 1980s and 1990s.
No centre won in the 2010s under this coding, but Nikola Jokić’s three awards and Joel Embiid’s one produced four centre wins in the first seven seasons of the 2020s. The decade is incomplete, and a stacked chart of seven years should not be compared uncritically with a completed ten-year decade. The 1950s bar contains only the four inaugural award seasons, 1955–56 through 1958–59. Position labels are editorial assignments, especially for players who played several roles.
Sources: NBA: season-by-season MVP winners; NBA: player biographies and positions
Michael Jordan was the defining star of the NBA during the 1990s. He won five regular-season MVP awards and led the Chicago Bulls to six championships, combining scoring, athleticism and defence. His rise coincided with a shift in the league. Earlier decades had been dominated by centres such as Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jordan demonstrated the impact a perimeter player could have, and his success reflected the growing importance of versatile guards and wings.
Michael Jordan dunking for the Chicago Bulls. Image: Steve Lipofsky · CC BY-SA 3.0.
3. MVP winners by birth decade and birthplace region
The 37 distinct MVP winners span birth years from Bob Cousy in 1928 to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in 1998. All six winners born in the 1950s were born in a US state or Washington, DC, while the four winners born in the 1990s—Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid and Gilgeous-Alexander—were all born outside the United States. This is a comparison of distinct people, rather than the number of awards each generation accumulated.
This birthplace comparison retains the original page’s birth-cohort question but replaces its race categories. Race is not consistently self-reported in the cited award and biography records, and inferring it from names or photographs would be unreliable. Tim Duncan’s birth in the US Virgin Islands is shown separately as a US territory. Steve Nash was born in South Africa even though he is identified with Canada as a player. Place of birth is neither citizenship nor a measure of where somebody learned to play basketball.
Sources: NBA: MVP winners; NBA: player biographies and birthplaces; Naismith Hall of Fame: player profiles
Larry Bird was a key figure for the Boston Celtics during the 1980s. Known for his shooting, passing and basketball intelligence, he helped lead Boston to multiple championships. Bird won three consecutive regular-season MVP awards from 1983–84 to 1985–86, one of the longest such runs in NBA history. His rivalry with Magic Johnson helped define an era and brought a wider audience to the league.
Larry Bird playing for Indiana State University Sycamores. Image: Unknown author (as credited on the existing page).
4. US states with multiple NBA MVP winners
Louisiana and New York have each produced four distinct MVP winners. Bob Pettit, Bill Russell, Willis Reed and Karl Malone were born in Louisiana; Bob Cousy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan were born in New York. California has three: Bill Walton, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia each have two. A state enters the chart when at least two different people born there have won the NBA regular-season award.
This is a birthplace count, not an award total or a ranking of development programmes. For example, New York’s four winners have 13 MVP awards between them, while California’s three have three. Stephen Curry was born in Ohio despite growing up around basketball in North Carolina; Michael Jordan was born in New York before his family moved to North Carolina. Washington, DC is counted in the underlying US group but is not a state, and Tim Duncan’s US Virgin Islands birthplace is kept separate. Population size and migration also shape such comparisons.
Sources: NBA: MVP winners; Naismith Hall of Fame: Pettit, Russell and other profiles; NBA: player biographies
Bob Pettit was one of the NBA’s first superstars and a pioneer of the power forward position. Born in Louisiana, he starred for the St. Louis Hawks and became the first player to win the NBA MVP award, eventually winning it twice. An exceptional scorer and rebounder, he led the Hawks to the 1958 championship over the Boston Celtics. He finished with more than 20,000 regular-season points, a remarkable total for his era. His career helped establish the influence a forward could have on a team.
Bob Pettit scoring for the St. Louis Hawks. Image: Unknown author (as credited on the existing page).
5. Tallest and shortest NBA MVP winners
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s listed 7 ft 2 in converts to about 218 cm, at the tall end of the MVP group. Wilt Chamberlain, David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal are listed at 7 ft 1 in, about 216 cm. At the other extreme, Allen Iverson is listed at 6 ft, about 183 cm, and Bob Cousy at 6 ft 1 in, about 185 cm. Derrick Rose and Stephen Curry are each listed at 6 ft 2 in. This selected-extremes view deliberately includes shorter guards and several very tall centres.
The measurements are published playing heights, rounded to the nearest centimetre after converting feet and inches. They are not independently remeasured heights, and listed NBA heights have sometimes changed with roster measurement conventions. The chart should therefore be read as a comparison of published profiles rather than precise anatomical differences. Height has mattered greatly for rebounding and interior defence, but the presence of Iverson and several point guards among MVPs makes clear that elite value is not confined to the tallest players.
Sources: NBA: player biographies and listed heights; Basketball-Reference: player profiles
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the tallest NBA MVP in this comparison at a listed 7 ft 2 in. Born in New York City, he played for two decades and became famous for his skyhook. His six regular-season MVP awards remain the league record. Abdul-Jabbar also held the NBA career scoring record for many years and won championships with Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Lakers. His combination of longevity, skill and consistency made him one of basketball’s most influential players.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reaching backwards to score. Image: New York World-Telegram and The Sun.
6. Players with at least three MVPs, split by team
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won six MVPs, split evenly between Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron James’s four divide between Cleveland and Miami, while Wilt Chamberlain collected one with the Philadelphia Warriors and three with the Philadelphia 76ers. Moses Malone’s three comprise two in Houston and one in Philadelphia. The other leaders shown won all of their awards with one franchise, including Michael Jordan’s five in Chicago and Bill Russell’s five in Boston.
Nine players have won the award at least three times through 2025–26; Jokić is the newest three-time winner, all with Denver. The chart counts the team credited by the NBA in each winning season and labels the Warriors as one franchise across their Philadelphia and Golden State eras. It does not include ABA MVPs: Julius Erving won three there in addition to his one NBA award, but only the latter belongs in this NBA comparison. Team moves can split an individual total without diminishing the award.
Sources: NBA: year-by-year MVP winners and teams
Bill Russell was a dominant figure in the NBA’s early decades. With the Boston Celtics, he won eleven championships and five regular-season MVP awards. His influence rested on defence, rebounding and leadership as much as scoring. Russell’s rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain shaped an era dominated by centres. He also became the first Black head coach in major American professional sport. His achievements on and off the court left a lasting legacy in basketball and beyond.
Bill Russell during his time at the University of San Francisco. Image: Unknown author (as credited on the existing page).
7. NBA all-time regular-season scoring leaders, through 2025–26
LeBron James ended the 2025–26 season on 43,440 regular-season points, extending his lead over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387. Karl Malone follows on 36,928 and Kobe Bryant on 33,643. Kevin Durant has risen to fifth with 32,597, ahead of Michael Jordan’s 32,292, while James Harden has climbed to ninth on 29,339. All ten players in this ranking have also won the regular-season MVP award, giving the original page’s career-points topic a direct connection to its award history.
Career points reward production sustained over many games and years, not just a single peak season. Jordan’s scoring average, for example, offers a different comparison with James’s longevity. The NBA leaderboard here excludes playoff points and ABA statistics, and its active-player totals are a completed 2025–26 regular-season snapshot. Durant, Harden and James can change their positions or totals once the 2026–27 campaign begins. The list is sorted by points rather than by MVP awards, so it answers a distinct question from the award rankings below.
Sources: NBA: official all-time regular-season scoring table; NBA: LeBron’s 2025–26 career total
8. Players with multiple NBA MVP awards
Sixteen players have won the NBA’s regular-season MVP more than once. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leads with six; Michael Jordan and Bill Russell have five apiece; LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain have four. Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Moses Malone and Nikola Jokić have three each. The remaining seven players have won twice, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander joining that group when he repeated in 2025–26. The chart includes every repeat winner, so ties do not disappear at an arbitrary top-ten boundary.
This is a count of the NBA award introduced in 1955–56, not Finals MVPs, All-Star awards or ABA equivalents. It reflects individual recognition in very different voting systems and basketball eras. Before 1980–81, players cast MVP ballots; the modern award is decided by a media panel. Counting trophies is a useful historical summary but cannot settle a comparison of every player’s quality. The new charts also explore team concentration, runs of consecutive wins, birthplace and the latest vote.
Sources: NBA: complete MVP winner history; NBA: 2026 repeat-winner context
9. Franchises with the most MVP-winning seasons
Boston leads the franchise count with ten MVP-winning seasons, including five by Bill Russell and three by Larry Bird. The Lakers have eight, three apiece from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, plus one each from Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Philadelphia has seven, with Wilt Chamberlain accounting for three. Chicago’s six include Michael Jordan’s five and Derrick Rose’s 2010–11 award. Milwaukee has five, split between Abdul-Jabbar’s three and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s two.
Oklahoma City and Houston have four apiece, while Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio and the Warriors share the next tier on three. All clubs tied at three are shown, making eleven franchises rather than a forced top ten. The Warriors combine Philadelphia and Golden State seasons; the count otherwise uses the franchise named for the winning season. It does not measure championships or rank total team quality. A franchise can have an MVP winner during a season that ends before the Finals, while other successful teams may spread votes across a deep roster.
10. Longest consecutive NBA MVP winning runs
Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird share the longest consecutive MVP run at three seasons. Russell’s streak covered 1960–61 to 1962–63, Chamberlain’s 1965–66 to 1967–68, and Bird’s 1983–84 to 1985–86. Another eleven players have achieved a two-season run. Gilgeous-Alexander joined that company by winning in both 2024–25 and 2025–26. His consecutive wins are distinct from having two awards separated by a season, which would not count as a run here.
The figure records each player’s longest uninterrupted sequence, not every sequence the player achieved. LeBron James had two separate back-to-back pairs, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also repeated in two different stretches; each is plotted once at two. The calculation follows the NBA’s complete season-by-season winner list and matches the league’s description of Gilgeous-Alexander as its fourteenth back-to-back winner. Repeating is difficult because competition, injuries, team results and voter judgements can change quickly, but this is an awards measure rather than an objective scale of year-to-year performance.
Sources: NBA: complete MVP winners; NBA: Gilgeous-Alexander becomes 14th back-to-back winner
11. MVP awards won by players born outside the 50 states and DC
Serbia leads this birthplace breakdown with Nikola Jokić’s three awards. Canada contributes Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s two, Greece has two from Giannis Antetokounmpo and South Africa has two from Steve Nash. Tim Duncan’s two awards appear under the US Virgin Islands, explicitly labelled a US territory rather than a foreign country. Germany, Nigeria and Cameroon contribute one each through Dirk Nowitzki, Hakeem Olajuwon and Joel Embiid. Together these eight players account for 14 of the 71 MVP-winning seasons.
The chart reports the birthplace of the individual winner, so Nash is grouped under South Africa although he represented Canada internationally, and Olajuwon and Embiid later became US citizens. It should not be read as a national-team or citizenship ranking. In the eight seasons from 2018–19 through 2025–26, every MVP winner was born outside the 50 states and DC: Antetokounmpo, Jokić, Embiid and Gilgeous-Alexander. That modern run is noteworthy, but historical access to the NBA and its global scouting network have changed greatly since the first award.
Sources: NBA: MVP winners; NBA: player biographies and birthplaces; NBA: eight straight non-US-born MVPs
12. 2025–26 NBA MVP voting: the three finalists
Gilgeous-Alexander retained the MVP with 939 voting points, 305 more than runner-up Jokić’s 634. Victor Wembanyama came third on 569 in his first season among the three finalists. Gilgeous-Alexander received 83 first-place votes from the 100-member media panel, Jokić ten and Wembanyama five. The result gave the Oklahoma City guard his second consecutive regular-season award after a season in which he averaged 31.1 points per game and the Thunder posted a league-best 64–18 record.
These are award-ballot points, not basketball points scored in games. Voters rank candidates and positions on a ballot receive different weights; a gap in this chart therefore represents voting support, not the size of a performance gap. The NBA published the complete vote and voter ballots. Showing the three finalists keeps the comparison legible, but other players also received votes. Jokić’s runner-up finish did not add to his existing three MVP awards, and Wembanyama has not won the regular-season award as of 2025–26.
Sources: NBA Communications: official 2025–26 MVP voting totals; NBA Communications: winner release
13. NBA MVP winners: position, birthplace and listed height
The original reference-table topic is retained as an editable Gutenberg table. It lists each distinct NBA MVP winner once, with the number of awards through 2025–26, the primary-position assignment used above, birthplace and published playing height. Where a person won several times, the table does not repeat their row. Place of birth and citizenship can differ; the racial-group field from the earlier page has been omitted because it lacks a consistently sourced, self-reported classification.
| Player | MVPs | Position | Birthplace | Listed height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | 6 | C | New York | 7 ft 2 in |
| Bill Russell | 5 | C | Louisiana | 6 ft 10 in |
| Michael Jordan | 5 | SG | New York | 6 ft 6 in |
| LeBron James | 4 | SF | Ohio | 6 ft 9 in |
| Wilt Chamberlain | 4 | C | Pennsylvania | 7 ft 1 in |
| Larry Bird | 3 | SF | Indiana | 6 ft 9 in |
| Magic Johnson | 3 | PG | Michigan | 6 ft 9 in |
| Moses Malone | 3 | C | Virginia | 6 ft 10 in |
| Nikola Jokić | 3 | C | Serbia | 6 ft 11 in |
| Bob Pettit | 2 | PF | Louisiana | 6 ft 9 in |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 2 | PF | Greece | 6 ft 11 in |
| Karl Malone | 2 | PF | Louisiana | 6 ft 9 in |
| Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | 2 | PG | Canada | 6 ft 6 in |
| Stephen Curry | 2 | PG | Ohio | 6 ft 2 in |
| Steve Nash | 2 | PG | South Africa | 6 ft 3 in |
| Tim Duncan | 2 | PF | US Virgin Islands | 6 ft 11 in |
| Allen Iverson | 1 | SG | Virginia | 6 ft 0 in |
| Bill Walton | 1 | C | California | 6 ft 11 in |
| Bob Cousy | 1 | PG | New York | 6 ft 1 in |
| Bob McAdoo | 1 | C | North Carolina | 6 ft 9 in |
| Charles Barkley | 1 | PF | Alabama | 6 ft 6 in |
| Dave Cowens | 1 | C | Kentucky | 6 ft 9 in |
| David Robinson | 1 | C | Florida | 7 ft 1 in |
| Derrick Rose | 1 | PG | Illinois | 6 ft 2 in |
| Dirk Nowitzki | 1 | PF | Germany | 7 ft 0 in |
| Hakeem Olajuwon | 1 | C | Nigeria | 7 ft 0 in |
| James Harden | 1 | SG | California | 6 ft 5 in |
| Joel Embiid | 1 | C | Cameroon | 7 ft 0 in |
| Julius Erving | 1 | SF | New York | 6 ft 7 in |
| Kevin Durant | 1 | SF | Washington, DC | 6 ft 11 in |
| Kevin Garnett | 1 | PF | South Carolina | 6 ft 11 in |
| Kobe Bryant | 1 | SG | Pennsylvania | 6 ft 6 in |
| Oscar Robertson | 1 | PG | Tennessee | 6 ft 5 in |
| Russell Westbrook | 1 | PG | California | 6 ft 4 in |
| Shaquille O’Neal | 1 | C | New Jersey | 7 ft 1 in |
| Wes Unseld | 1 | C | Kentucky | 6 ft 7 in |
| Willis Reed | 1 | C | Louisiana | 6 ft 9 in |
Sources: NBA MVP winners; NBA player biographies; Basketball-Reference player profiles.
Related sports statistics
- NFL MVPs by season
- MLB baseball statistics
- Summer Olympic medals
- Olympic 100 metres
- Heavyweight boxing champions
Sources and methodology
Prepared 29 September 2026. The NBA’s year-by-year winners list contains 71 regular-season awards from 1955–56 to 2025–26 and 37 distinct players. Positions are assigned once per player as a primary role, even when a player occupied multiple positions. Award decades use the season-ending year. A companion CSV contains every assignment and underlying winner-team-season row.
Birth decades count distinct winners; state and country charts use birthplace rather than citizenship, upbringing or national-team eligibility. Washington, DC is included in the US-origin group but excluded from the chart of states. The US Virgin Islands are separately identified as a US territory. The source records do not support a consistently self-reported racial classification, so the original race chart and table column were replaced with auditable birthplace categories.
The heights are listed playing heights converted at 2.54 cm per inch, with rounding to the nearest centimetre. The career-points chart includes NBA regular-season points through 2025–26, excluding ABA and postseason play. Franchise totals include predecessor city names within a continuing franchise. The 2025–26 voting chart plots only the three finalists and uses weighted ballot points rather than points scored in games.
The six original in-page photographs and their accompanying biographies are included as standard Gutenberg Media & Text blocks beneath charts 1–6. Credits and known licences appear with each image. The import reuses the existing page’s featured image when the importer can edit that source page. Its existing related-page links are reproduced above.