NBA MVP Race: 5 Closest MVP Races Of All Time

#1 Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan

David Stern and Magic Johnson at the MVP Presentation Ceremony

The closest MVP vote in NBA history is also its weirdest. This is the sole occasion in which the player who received the most first-place votes did not win the award. In that, Charles Barkley likely has the most valid MVP gripe ever, having obtained 36 first-place votes - 9 more than his closest competitor Magic, who eventually won the trophy.

Having a five-deep pool of reasonable candidates threw off the entire tabulation, though. Malone and Patrick Ewing grabbed votes -- three for first, nine for second and 21 for third between them -- that likely should have belonged to Barkley or Jordan. What's even weirder: three voters omitted Jordan, who averaged an unreal 33.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, 6.3 assists and 2.8 steals per game, dominating on both sides of the court.

"I guess I can understand an anti-Jordan sentiment," Jordan told the Chicago Tribune in 1990. "There are going to be some rotten apples in every barrel. Three rotten apples."

Jordan was right to be bitter. Unlike Johnson or Barkley, he was a fearsome defender -- so much so that he was voted first-team All-Defense in the previous two seasons and would be selected again in 1990. He led the league in points and steals per game, and in retrospect, we know that he bested all players that season in win shares and Player Efficiency Rating.

No player, Barkley included, used more of his team's possessions in 1990 than Jordan, and yet for all that shot creation Jordan still ranked in the top 15 in true shooting percentage with an amazingly low turnover rate. His was the greatest statistical season of all time, and yet the majority of his votes came as a third-place candidate.

There's a clear case to be made for Johnson as well, given the responsibility he shouldered for the Lakers after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's retirement. He had more talent around him (James Worthy, Byron Scott, Vlade Divac, Mychal Thompson and Michael Cooper) than either Jordan or Barkley did at that point, but Johnson shifted around to play every position that season -- a flexibility that led Peter Vecsey of the New York Post to describe him as "a human Scrabble blank." Besides, his team won a league-best 63 games during the regular season.