LeBron James is getting his fourth Most Valuable Player award — and the only mystery left is whether the vote was unanimous.
The Miami Heat star will be introduced Sunday as the award winner, according to a person familiar with the results and who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the league has not publicly announced this year’s recipient. James will become the fifth player with at least four MVP awards, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
No one has ever swept every first-place vote in the NBA’s MVP balloting. After the season he had, James could be the first.
“I don’t know who else you’d vote for,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said Friday. “No offense to everybody else, but that’s just how good he has played this year.”
James averaged 26.8 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists this season, shooting a career-best 56 percent from the field. It was absolutely no surprise that he won the award, and given the timetable for Miami’s next game — the Heat don’t open Eastern Conference semifinal play until Monday night against Brooklyn or Chicago — it had been widely assumed for several days that Sunday would be the day.
If tradition holds, NBA Commissioner David Stern will then present James with the trophy again Monday night in front of the Miami fans.
“I absolutely have not even thought about it,” James said earlier this week when asked if he considered the weight of winning the award four times in five years. “I have not thought about it until you just brought it up. I know the history. It would be a unique, unbelievable class I would be a part of, so we’ll see.”
Only Russell had won four MVPs in five years, and only Abdul-Jabbar had gone back-to-back on the award twice. Abdul-Jabbar has six MVPs in all, Jordan and Russell have five apiece, and Chamberlain won four.
James, who won the award in 2009 and 2010, only got four first-place votes in 2011 — his first season with the Heat — before reclaiming the award last season.
“The other day I was sitting there with him, a week or two ago and it dawned on me,” Heat guard Dwyane Wade told the AP. “I said to him, ‘Do you know you’re about to get four MVPs in five years?’ And he’s like, ‘Man, I’m just a kid from Akron.’ He could have gotten five in five.”
