“I don’t think about it anymore”

Sorry debaters and hot-takers. Nikola Jokic has better things to worry about than the MVP race.

Personally, he has a young family that he misses every time the Nuggets hit the road. Professionally, he has an NBA championship to win. The two lawsuits have shaken his interest, twice, in discussing or even considering the MVP race.

“I don’t think about it anymore,” he said earlier this week as the team wrapped up a 10-day road trip to Washington. “It’s from the past.”

At some point during his first two MVP runs, it got into his mindset. But now, when the conversation has moved on and he and the Nuggets are onto bigger and better things, Jokic doesn’t have time for that. (Don’t make the mistake of assuming the price doesn’t matter to him; just accept that, to him, the conversation isn’t worth having and he has nothing to add.)

Some of the NBA’s MVP voters could be swayed this coming week, when Denver hosts Milwaukee and Giannis Antetokounmpo on Saturday or Philadelphia and Joel Embiid on Monday. When Embiid scored 47 points in their opener, it was an impossible touchstone to ignore.

And yet, with just nine games left in the regular season and the Nuggets more keen on retaining Memphis for the No. 1 seed, chances are Jokic will try to dodge the conversation entirely. And if he doesn’t, expect him to be hugely complimentary to both players. It always has been.

That’s the part that goes to Nuggets coach Michael Malone. Although Jokic hasn’t explicitly told him he’s tired of the conversation, Malone has his guesses.

“I can only imagine it’s hard not to be put off by this,” he said.

Asked about the MVP run on Wednesday after Denver’s victory over the Wizards, Malone alluded to a toxic and unhealthy tenor who consumed the debate.