What is NBA Most Valuable Player Award?
{{No sources|date=January 2025}} The '''National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player Award''' ('''MVP''') is an annual [[National Basketball Association]] (NBA) award given since the [[1955–56 NBA season|1955–56 season]] to the best performing player of the [[NBA#Regular season|regular season]]. The winner receives the [[Maurice Podoloff]] Trophy, which is named in honor of the first [[Commissioner of the NBA|commissioner]] (then president) of the NBA, who served from 1946 until 1963. Until the [[1979–80 NBA season|1979–80 season]], the MVP was selected by a vote of NBA players. Since the [[1980–81 NBA season|1980–81 season]], the award is decided by a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada. Each member of the voting panel casts a vote for first to fifth place selections. Each first-place vote is worth 10 points; each second-place vote is worth seven; each third-place vote is worth five, fourth-place is worth three and fifth-place is worth one. Starting from 2010, one ballot was cast by fans through online voting. The player with the highest point total wins the award. As of June 2019, the current holder of the award is [[Joel Embiid]] of the [[Philadelphia 76ers]]. Every player who has won this award and has been eligible for the [[Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame]] has been inducted. [[Kareem Abdul-Jabbar]] won the award a record six times. He is also the only player to win the award despite his team not making the playoffs back in the [[1975–76 NBA season|1975–76]] season. Both [[Bill Russell]] and [[Michael Jordan]] won the award five times, while [[Wilt Chamberlain]] and [[LeBron James]] won the award four times. Russell and James are the only players to have won the award four times in five seasons.[[Moses Malone]], [[Larry Bird]], [[Magic Johnson]] and [[Nikola Jokic]] each won the award three times, while [[Bob Pettit]], [[Karl Malone]], [[Tim Duncan]], [[Steve Nash]] and [[Stephen Curry]] have each won it twice. Only two rookies have won the awa