With the regular season over, voters have begun to turn in their award ballots. The most prestigious of the group is the MVP trophy. Like last year, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic headlined the heated race. And also like last year, there seems to be an obvious winner.
Reading the vibes online and scouring betting odds, Gilgeous-Alexander should win the MVP award. The only drama with the final tally is by how many votes he will win by. The Oklahoma City Thunder completed one of the greatest regular season campaigns ever with a 68-14 record and plenty of franchise and NBA records broken.
While he won’t need the extra convincing, Thunder Wire will list out five reasons why Gilgeous-Alexander should win the MVP award:
Best player on best team
This adage has been part of the MVP discourse since the award was invented. Sometimes it’s as simple as the best player on the best team. Most years have the winner of that saying up for debate, but Gilgeous-Alexander is the clear-cut example this year.
Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of the Thunder. When the average fan thinks of the winning machine, they think of him. The Thunder have been blessed with some of the greatest players in their short history. From 2014 Kevin Durant to 2017 Russell Westbrook, 2025 Gilgeous-Alexander should soon join them as an MVP winner.
Everything the Thunder have done these last two seasons is eerily similar to what the Golden State Warriors did in the early stages of their dynasty from 2014-16. In that span, Stephen Curry was the first player to win the MVP award with a unanimous decision. It won’t happen this year with Gilgeous-Alexander, but he should be pretty close.
One of the best scoring campaigns
No matter how you slice it up, Gilgeous-Alexander had one of the best scoring seasons in NBA history. He easily ran away with the scoring championship at 32.7 points on 51.9% shooting. Second-placed Giannis Antetokounmpo was just 30.4 points.
Among the 35 players who’d have a 32-plus point season, he ranks fifth in true-shooting percentage among them. That means this is one of the most efficient 32-plus-point campaigns ever. The 6-foot-6 guard had center-esque efficiency.
Gilgeous-Alexander also led the NBA in total points. What makes that impressive is that he did that in relatively few minutes. Because of the Thunder’s dominance, he sat out 17 fourth quarters this season. If you only included the points he scored in the first three quarters of games, he’d be second in the NBA in total points.
Gilgeous-Alexander led the NBA in 20-point games, 30-point games, 40-point games and 50-point games. Plain and simple, he’s the sport’s best scorer. And has been for three years now with three straight 30-point campaigns. All before he’s even 27 years old.
Plenty of folks believe Gilgeous-Alexander is the closest player to a Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant reincarnation. That isn’t just because of similar playstyles to mid-range assassins. The consistency is there, too. He finished the season on a 72-game streak of 20-plus points. That passed Jordan for the third-longest streak in NBA history.
Advanced metrics love SGA
All the advanced stats Jokic supporters cited during his three MVP seasons have turned against them. Gilgeous-Alexander is either at the same level or barely ahead/behind him in all the categories. That happens when you have one of the most efficient scoring seasons ever.
They’re neck and neck in win shares, VORP, plus-minus, usage rate and shooting efficiency stats. Going deeper, they’re close in all-in-one stats like LEBRON and DARKO. It’s advantageous when your guy dominates the rest of the field in these categories, but that isn’t the case this year with Jokic.
Even for the section of NBA fans who love spreadsheets, they must admit the gap between the players isn’t wide enough to ignore other elements in the average MVP race. Gilgeous-Alexander is as much of an advanced analytics darling as Jokic.
The right narrative
For the storyteller lovers, Gilgeous-Alexander has the best narrative to back him up. In this season alone, he was the best player on the best team. The Thunder were upgraded in their role as a main character. They went from the underground band your buddy loves to a household name everybody knows.
After years of disrespect, the Thunder finally returned to the national stage. They were featured on ESPN and TNT as often as any non-Coast team was this season. Deservingly so, too. The only real complaint was the lack of a Christmas game. But that should be corrected next year.
Besides that, it just feels like Gilgeous-Alexander’s turn. He’s the perfect developmental story the NBA should latch onto. He went from a lottery project that didn’t even headline the Paul George trade to slowly working his way up the hierarchy.
Two seasons ago, Gilgeous-Alexander made his first All-Star Game. He finished fifth in MVP voting. Last season, he finished runner-up. It only makes sense for him to finally take that final step on the ladder this year and win the award with his constant improvement.
Team success
Did I mention how dominant the Thunder have been this season? They finished with the NBA’s best record by a decent margin. Nobody could’ve predicted that, as the Cleveland Cavaliers were equally as impressive until they let their foot off the gas a bit in April.
The Thunder finished with the best point differential ever, the best total point differential ever and finished just shy of the best net rating ever. Not only were they the best team this season, but they belong in the same group as some of the NBA’s best teams ever. History favors OKC in its playoff adventure too, as all the similar ball clubs cruised to a championship.
Now compare that to the Denver Nuggets. They finished as the fourth seed with a forgettable 50-32 record. It was a headache season filled with inconsistencies and underperformance in Denver. A lack of depth finally caught up to them this year. They even shockingly fired Michael Malone and Calvin Booth in the final week of the regular season.
The gap between the Thunder and second-placed Houston Rockets is as large as the gap between the latter and 11th-placed Phoenix Suns. It’s just ridiculous what OKC did. Team success has always been a key ingredient in the MVP discourse and Gilgeous-Alexander laps Jokic in that.