NEW YORK — In a sport dominated by soaring point totals, Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the NBA’s leading scorer and the best player on the league’s top team. What could be more “valuable?”
Gilgeous-Alexander, 26, will reportedly be named the NBA Most Valuable Player on Wednesday following a campaign in which he averaged a league-best 32.7 points per game for a Thunder team that won 68 games and claimed the league’s No. 1 seed heading into the playoffs.
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He is expected to be officially unveiled as the winner on TNT before Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Thunder have an event planned for this evening at their team facility, a team source said.
The Thunder star beat out fellow finalists Nikola Jokić, the Denver Nuggets’ 2024 MVP, who won the award three times and was trying to join LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain as four-time winners, and Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP. Not only did Gilgeous-Alexander beat Jokić in a vote, but the Thunder beat Jokić’s Nuggets last week in seven games to advance to the Western Conference finals. The Oklahoma City star was runner-up to Jokić for MVP last season.
Born in Toronto and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Gilgeous-Alexander, a former University of Kentucky standout who is in his seventh pro season, is the seventh consecutive NBA MVP from outside the United States. He is the first Canadian winner of the award since Steve Nash won consecutive MVPs in 2005 and 2006. The last American to win MVP was James Harden in 2018.
Drafted in the first round with the 11th pick by the Los Angeles Clippers just a month after Harden’s MVP campaign, Gilgeous-Alexander was traded after one season to the Thunder as part of the Paul George deal. A masterful scorer and ball handler who controls the pace of any game he plays, the 6-foot-6 Gilgeous-Alexander not only set a career high in points this season but also averaged a career-best 6.4 assists while grabbing 5.0 rebounds with 1.7 steals and 1.0 blocks per game.
Shooting 50.1 percent from the field, Gilgeous-Alexander joined Michael Jordan as the only players in league history to average more than 30 points while making half of his shots. He is also just the fifth player to win the league’s scoring title while shooting 50 percent or better from the field.
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As you might expect from the player who led the NBA in scoring in a year when teams averaged 113.8 points per game, Gilgeous-Alexander scored 50 or more points on four occasions this season, tops in the league. He set his personal best with 54 points on Jan. 22 against the Utah Jazz, and then reached 52 points a week later in a loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Simply scoring loads of points is not usually enough to win MVP, however. Gilgeous-Alexander is the first NBA scoring champ to win MVP since Russell Westbrook in 2017, but in that season, Westbrook was also the first player since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double. Gilgeous-Alexander is a complete player, yes, with those steals and blocks from his point-guard position making him a strong candidate to be a second-team All-NBA defense selection, but part of what made Gilgeous-Alexander’s case so strong was his role as the top player on the best regular-season team in the league.
The 2024 Thunder became the youngest team in NBA history to finish atop their conference, and they repeated that feat in a landslide this year. They are now the youngest team to reach a conference finals. The next-closest team in the 2025 standings, the Houston Rockets, finished a whopping 16 games behind. While Gilgeous-Alexander was joined in this year’s All-Star Game for the first time by teammate Jalen Williams, Gilgeous-Alexander is the unquestioned face of the Thunder franchise, a role he’s filling with a gravitas and star appeal that has endeared him to fans and opened up numerous marketing opportunities. The go-to interview for any sideline reporter, Gilgeous-Alexander does nearly every postgame interview surrounded by as many teammates as can fit into a wide-angle lens.
Jokić was runner-up despite this being his best statistical season, averaging career highs in points (29.6), rebounds (12.7) and assists (10.2) per game and leading the NBA with 34 triple-doubles. His 61-point triple-double on April 1 was the highest-scoring triple double in NBA history. He is the first player to finish in the top three in scoring, rebounds and assists in a season.
Perhaps a victim of voter fatigue, Jokić was also on a team that fired coach Michael Malone just days before the regular season — perhaps souring his candidacy in at least a few voters’ minds who decided the MVP can’t be on a team underperforming enough for the coach (and general manager Calvin Booth, for that matter) to be fired just before the Nuggets’ playoff run.
Antetokounmpo, who was the MVP in 2019 and 2020, averaged 30.4 points and 11.9 boards.
NBA awards season is now complete, with All-NBA teams still to be announced. The other individual award winners this season were:
- Rookie: Stephon Castle, San Antonio Spurs
- Sixth Man: Payton Pritchard, Boston Celtics
- Defensive Player: Evan Mobley, Cleveland Cavaliers
- Clutch Player: Jalen Brunson, New York Knicks
- Most Improved: Dyson Daniels, Atlanta Hawks
- Coach: Kenny Atkinson, Cleveland Cavaliers
This story will be updated.
(Photo: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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