The Athletic has live coverage of Timberwolves vs Thunder in Game 2 of the 2025 NBA Western Conference finals.
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, was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player on Wednesday on TNT from Madison Square Garden, ahead of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Knicks and Pacers. 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.
The Thunder star easily defeated 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. Gilgeous-Alexander earned 71 of a possible 100 first-place votes from media members who cover the league and Jokić received the remaining 29. The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, finished third in voting, the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum was fourth and Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell was fifth.
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.
“You try so hard throughout the season to like, not think about it and just worry about playing basketball and getting better and trying to win games,” Gilgeous-Alexander said on TNT from the Thunder’s team facility in Oklahoma City, where he was flanked by teammates in a theater-style film room.
The Thunder, who lead the Minnesota Timberwolves, 1-0, in the Western Conference finals, planned a celebration for later Wednesday.
“But as a competitor and as a kid dreaming about the game, it’s always in the back of your mind,” Gilgeous-Alexander continued. “I’m very thankful to be on this side of the ballot, but none of this is possible without the guys behind me. The amount of games we won, in the fashion that we won the games, is so impressive and that’s probably the main reason why I got to do it. So without them, this is not possible.”
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 their shots. He is also just the fifth player to win the league’s scoring title while shooting 50 percent or better from the field.
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. Gilgeous-Alexander only scored fewer than 20 points once during the regular season – on Oct. 30, against San Antonio, when he tallied 18 points – which means he closed the season on a 72-game streak with at least 20 points.
No one has done that since the 1963-64 season when Chamberlain scored at least 20 points in 80 straight and Oscar Robertson scored at least 20 in 76 consecutive games.
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.
He said he used last year’s runner-up finish in MVP voting to Jokić as “motivation.”
“There’s voters every year, that will never change,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And last year, all it meant was that more people thought I shouldn’t have won than I should have won. And this year, I wanted to change the narrative. It flipped, and I think I did a good job of that.”
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
(Photo: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images)
