There was a purple-and-orange blip on the MVP voting this week.
Kevin Durant won the Most Valuable Player award, the league announced on Tuesday, and the votes that led to it happening were also released.
The totals revealed Goran Dragic making an appearance in the final tally, landing a trio of fifth-place votes less than two weeks after being named the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the 2013-14 season.
The sixth-year guard from Slovenia averaged 20.3 points and 5.9 assists per game while shooting over 50 percent from the field and 40 percent from three-point range. He admitted to having enjoyed “proving people wrong” this season, referring to pessimistic expectation both in the U.S. and his home country when he entered the league in 2008.
Since then Dragic has seen his scoring average rise from 7.5 points per game in the 2010-11 campaign to 11.7, 14.7 and 20.3 in the three seasons since.
Durant, the MVP winner, made it a point to interrupt a Suns.com interview with Dragic during All-Star Weekend to voice his opinion that the Suns’ guard should play in the All-Star Game itself. Dragic was there as a participant in the Taco Bell Skills Challenge, but was not voted onto the Western Conference All-Star team.