Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander officially named NBA MVP, his first win

This year’s NBA MVP announcement was put on hold while the players who everyone knew would finish one-two in the voting — Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — went head-to-head in an epic playoff series. With that series in the rearview mirror and the Thunder moving on, the league is announcing the winner on Wednesday.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named NBA MVP, getting 71 of the 100 first-place votes. This is Gilgeous-Alexander’s first MVP award.

Jokic got 29 first-place votes and 71 second place votes — only he and Gilgeous-Alexander got top-two votes from the global panel of 100 media members who voted. Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo came in third and had 80 third-place votes, while Boston’s Jayson Tatum was fourth and got 84 fourth-place votes. Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell finished fifth with 60 fifth place votes. Other players to get votes included LeBron James, Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards and Stephen Curry, among others.

Gilgeous-Alexander led the league in scoring at 32.7 points per game and was the offensive engine of a 68-win Thunder team. He also averaged 6.4 assists and 5 rebounds a game this season.

Jokic’s backers in the MVP race point to the legitimate argument of him averaging a triple-double this season of 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds and 10.2 assists a game. However, the argument that he drove winning more than Gilgeous-Alexander fell flat with enough voters for two key reasons: 1) SGA is a much better defender and that is a key to winning, especially with this Thunder team; 2) To say Jokic had to do more because he had a lesser team around him is to punish Gilgeous-Alexander because his GM, Sam Presti, did a better job of roster construction than Denver’s now-fired GM Calvin Booth. It’s not on the player what teammates he has around him, it’s how he leads and interacts with them, and both Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic were brilliant on that front.

Gilgeous-Alexander becomes the 11th player in NBA history to lead the NBA in scoring and be on a 60+ win team — and with SGA, 10 of them won MVP. (The one that didn’t was Michael Jordan in the 1996-97 season when voters gave it to Karl Malone, a case now synonymous with voter fatigue.)

Gilgeous-Alexander is eligible to sign a four-year $293 million extension with the Thunder this offseason, but he likely waits a year because with this MVP award he becomes eligible to sign a five-year $380 million super-max extension in the summer of 2026.

Gilgeous-Alexander, born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, continues the trend of foreign-born MVPs. This is the seventh year in a row a player born outside the United States has won the award (the last American to do it was James Harden in 2018).

SGA is the third Thunder player to win MVP, joining Kevin Durant (2014) and Russell Westbrook (2017). The Thunder drafted MVPs in three straight years with Durant, Westbrook and Harden (who won his with Houston).