The 2026 NBA MVP finalists are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic. Luka Doncic is not on the ballot. First Take's Stephen A. Smith and Brian Windhorst used a YouTube exclusive to defend a snub that has become one of the most talked-about storylines of awards week.
Windhorst, who said his top three matched the league's finalists, opened with the framing Lakers fans have heard plenty of times.
"No," Windhorst said, when asked whether he had a problem with Luka being left out. "He was fourth on my ballot. These are the top three. I had Shai, and Jokic in that order. There are people who I have listened to have made a very compelling case for Jokic to get the number one spot this year because of the kind of season he had. It's not a commentary on Luka's season. It's a commentary on how these three were so great."
The technical story, in Windhorst's telling, is that Wembanyama's minutes cost him the top line — not the reverse.
"I know that the big case that everybody wants to make is that Wembanyama didn't play enough minutes," Windhorst said. "I don't use that. It's not like I saw Victor and was like, 'well, if he played more minutes, he wouldn't be as great.' Victor, if he played more minutes, might have gotten the number one spot for me. If anything, Victor's minutes held his candidacy down a little bit. So no, I don't have a problem with it."
Stephen A. Smith took a harder line. He had Luka fifth, and the name he placed fourth was the one he said he wrestled with most.
"I had, believe it or not, I had Luka at number five. I did not want to put Jaylen Brown at number five," Smith said. "Luka did go through a 40-game stretch where the Lakers were playing .500 ball. That happened on his watch. I watched for the first 60-plus games Jaylen Brown carry the Boston Celtics without Jayson Tatum and be a top-two seed in the Eastern Conference and show that there absolutely would be no drop-off with Jayson Tatum being out."
Smith's argument pivoted to the financial and narrative context around Brown's year, which he said was the kind of two-way, lead-the-team production that gets forgotten when awards season gets compressed.
"Before Jayson Tatum came back, Jaylen Brown was averaging nearly 29 a game," Smith said. "He was an All-Star. He was arguably the best two-way player in basketball. Boston was a number two seed. All they had as his supporting cast was Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and a bunch of cats that we see and we like — okay, they're decent, but they ain't Jayson Tatum. They're nothing close to him or Jaylen Brown's level. That's what I saw Jaylen Brown do after signing a $34 million contract a couple of summers ago. And then coming out there knowing that all eyes would be on him because Jayson Tatum was gone, and what are you going to do to prove whether or not you were worthy of that money and could you indeed be a number one option for a team. And that's what the hell he did."
Windhorst did not argue the ranking. He pushed the conversation sideways, into Coach of the Year.
"I voted Joe Mazzulla coach of the year," Windhorst said. "I was so impressed with how he was able to uplift all of those role players, and obviously Jaylen was at the front of the line there and made so much of it happen. If you're a Lakers fan and you realise how many 40-point games in a row Luka had, you're going to feel a certain way. The competition was just very stiff this year."
Smith went the other way on Coach of the Year, defending his JB Bickerstaff vote with a case he has been making for weeks.
"The reason what did it for me with JB is that Cade Cunningham goes down with the partially collapsed lung, and JB still ends up holding on to the number one seed in the Eastern Conference, coaching his butt off to stave off Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics," Smith said. "That combined with Joe Mazzulla saying the award didn't mean a damn thing to him — all of those things contributed to me saying, okay, JB deserves it."
What the exchange put on the record is clear. The top three were never the argument. The argument is whether Luka's season, on a Lakers team whose trajectory wobbled in the middle 40 games, earns him a fourth-place vote in a year where Jaylen Brown carried a top-two seed through Tatum's absence. Two of the loudest voices in the national conversation arrived at the same answer from different directions — Luka is not in the MVP conversation this year, and Jaylen Brown is.
The Lakers are not likely to agree. The finalists announcement does not change how the postseason is refereed, but it does carry a scoreboard Luka's camp will hear for the rest of the spring.
