Sports
The Five Players Destined For NBA MVP Glory Per The Guy Who Said Zion Would Be Fine
By Michael Yappaport, . BSN Network. Satire.
A basketball media outlet published its definitive ranking of the NBA's top five MVP candidates for the year 2029 on Tuesday, confidently identifying the future of the league with the same forensic certainty previously applied to Zion Williamson's long-term durability, Ben Simmons' shooting development, and the Oklahoma City Thunder's long-term irrelevance.
The list was authored by senior NBA correspondent Derek Follins, whose previous five-year projections have aged with the grace of a mid-range jumper in the modern era.
"I feel very good about this group," Follins told his podcast co-host, who was nodding in a way that suggested he had stopped listening. "I looked at the trajectory, I looked at the tape, I looked at the comps, and I think these five names are going to define the next half-decade of professional basketball. You can quote me on that."
We did.
The list itself includes three players who are currently healthy, one player who has been described by his own coaching staff as "a guy we love having around," and a seventeen-year-old from Montverde Academy whose inclusion Follins defended on the grounds that he "just moves like somebody who matters."
LeBron James is not on the list, which Follins presented as a brave editorial choice rather than the obvious biological acknowledgment that it is.
Nikola Jokic appears at number three, despite the fact that Follins spent the previous eighteen months arguing Jokic was a product of the system, a claim he has since revised to mean that Jokic IS the system, a distinction he explained for eleven minutes without stopping.
Number two on the list is a twenty-two-year-old guard who had one transcendent playoff game last spring that Follins has since described, in print, as "a generational statement," "a changing of the guard," and, in a piece published four days later under a different headline, "a sign of things to come" while referencing a completely different player.
Number one is a name Follins is keeping private until the accompanying YouTube video crosses a hundred thousand views, which is the kind of editorial courage that defines the modern sports media landscape.
When reached for comment, the NBA declined to confirm that any of the listed players would still be in the league in 2029, citing what a spokesperson called "the basic passage of time and the human knee."
Follins' previous five-year MVP projection, published in 2020, correctly identified one of the five names. That player won the award in 2022, at which point Follins described it as validation. The other four he described as a learning experience.
The new list has already received seventeen thousand likes, a follow from one of the players named, and a comment from that player's agent asking if the outlet is looking for sponsored content.
It is.
The story we are making fun of: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25497290-predicting-nbas-top-5-mvp-candidates-5-years