Logo

I don’t want to make the Charles Barkley mistake. 

I don’t want to repeat the Karl Malone error. 

Access the Yankees beat like never before

Don’t miss Greg Joyce’s text messages from The Bronx and beyond — he’s giving Sports+ subscribers the inside buzz on the Yankees.

Sign Up Now

Michael Jordan won five NBA MVP awards and should have won at least seven. But a Jordan fatigue set in, and voters went looking for someone else. So after Jordan won two in a row, Barkley was elected MVP for the 1992-93 campaign. And after Jordan won the 1995-96 MVP in his first full season back from his baseball foray, Malone was selected the following year. 

In retrospect, Jordan did not win those additional two MVPs because 1) a ho-hum, he is just historically great again mentality pervaded, and 2) voters tend to love narrative and grow bored with repetition. 

Comments
anonymous profile image
Powered by RoundtableBuilt on infrastructure designed for real-time media. Learn more at RTB.io.© Roundtable 2026. By using this site you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy