Are We Sure Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Is the NBA's Most Valuable Player?

The NBA has yet to announce the winner of the 2024-25 MVP award, and the delayed release is starting to lead to some speculation around the internet as to why.

Is there some surprise result the league is scared to release? Does it want Nikola Jokić's Denver Nuggets and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's Oklahoma City Thunder to finish their series first? Are they going to suspend the trophy over half court of Game 7 like a WWE ladder match?

Not knowing for sure by now is weird, but we do have a pretty good idea that SGA will be named at some point. Max Croes' MVP Tracker, which counts votes that have been made publicly available, has Gilgeous-Alexander holding a commanding lead with about half the total tallied.

The rest swinging the race back to Jokić would be truly shocking.

But during their conference semifinal, the three-time winner is showing that there is sometimes a distinction between the league's most valuable player and the NBA Most Valuable Player.

For each of the last five years, including 2024-25, no one has fit the literal definition better than Jokić, even if SGA had a very real argument for the trophy we're about to see handed out.

We might as well start with where we are now, even though the award itself is based on regular-season play.

In this series, which goes to a deciding Game 7 on Sunday, despite facing consistent double- and triple-teams and some of the most physical defense you'll see in the modern NBA, Jokić is averaging 29.8 points, 14.7 rebounds and 5.7 assists.

When he's been on the floor in this round, Denver is allowing 110.2 points per 100 possessions (well shy of OKC's regular-season mark of 119.2), compared to 114.4 when he's off.

He has to orchestrate almost every aspect of Denver's offense, while also operating as the signal-calling middle linebacker on the other end.

As TNT's Charles Barkley pointed out after Game 5, "This guy has more responsibility than any player in the NBA."

Meanwhile, SGA is putting up spectacular numbers of his own against Denver (28.8 points, 7.0 rebounds and 7.0 assists), but he's on a team and in a situation that feels almost perfectly tailored to amplify what he does best: score.

Relative to what they did in the regular season, Denver is holding his supporting cast in check, but there are seven or eight different players on OKC's roster that can completely swing an individual game. There are just as many high-end defenders who take a ton of pressure off SGA on that end.

There are eight Thunder rotation players other than Gilgeous-Alexander who had an above-average three-point percentage in the regular season, and that doesn't even include Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso, who've been lights out in the playoffs.

SGA is a truly incredible scorer. There's no denying that. He's capable of occasional outbursts in other statistical categories, too. But his team checks so many boxes around him. And the level of support he typically gets (and certainly got in the regular season) makes it significantly easier to zero in on his biggest strength.

That's part (and I do only mean part, because again, Gilgeous-Alexander is an incredible scorer) of why he led the 2024-25 regular season in points per game, free throws per game, 20-point games and 30-point games.

The scoring also contributed to a league-leading 8.6 estimated plus-minus (one of the most trusted catch-all metrics in NBA front offices).

Put all of that together with a 68-win season and the highest team point differential of all time, and again, the MVP case for SGA was (and is) very real.

But Jokić just averaged a triple-double. 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds, 10.2 assists and 1.8 steals, to boot. He was top three in the league in all four categories. And his 66.3 true shooting percentage was nearly nine full points above the league average of 57.6. We're talking peak Kevin Durant or Stephen Curry-type scoring efficiency.

His net rating swing (the difference in a team's net points per 100 possessions when a given player is on or off the floor) dwarfed SGA's too. In fact, his plus-21.3 net rating swing topped the league (among players with at least 500 minutes). When he was on the floor, Denver had a point differential around that of a 65-win team. When he was off, it was around that of a 19-win team.

The Thunder, on the other hand, had a point differential around that of a 61-win team when SGA was off the floor. The strength of his team is undoubtedly part of his case for this individual award.

When you put the whole statistical profile together, it's pretty hard to deny Jokić's case. In a blind poll conducted on X earlier this month, the results backed that take:

But Jokić's case in 2024-25 wasn't based entirely on numbers (nor was it in any of the previous four seasons).

Those who've watched a fair bit of the Nuggets over the last few years have consistently seen what they're seeing during this conference semifinal. Jokić is the most all-encompassing basketball talent in the world right now. The degree to which he impacts and influences every aspect of every game is unmatched. The way he elevates the individual games of teammates is Larry Bird or Magic Johnson-esque.

He's the next link in the NBA's evolutionary chain that includes those two, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

He may not win 2024-25 Most Valuable Player, but Jokić is still the NBA's most valuable player.