For the third time in league history, the NBA’s most valuable player is a Canadian.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has won the NBA MVP award after leading the league in scoring and the Oklahoma City Thunder to a league-best 68-14 record, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Wednesday.
Gilgeous-Alexander is just the second Canadian to win the award, following Victoria, B.C.’s Steve Nash, who won MVP in back-to-back seasons in 2005 and 2006.
The Hamilton, Ont. native had yet another stellar campaign, averaging a career-high 32.7 points per game on 63.7 per cent true shooting through 76 contests. He also recorded 72 consecutive 20-point games, surpassing Hall of Famer Michael Jordan’s mark of 69.
According to Charania, Gilgeous-Alexander also joins Jordan as the only two players in NBA history to average at least 30 points on 50 per cent shooting, five rebounds, five assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 blocks per game along.
Gilgeous-Alexander wins MVP after also posting career highs in average assists (6.4), steals (1.7, tied-10th in the NBA), blocks (1.0), made field goals (11.3) and three-point percentage (37.5). He’s also the only guard in league history to shoot better than 57 per cent on over 15 two-point shots per game for a full season.
In his seventh season as a pro, the former 11th overall pick even led the league in total points (2,484), made field goals (860), made free throws (601) and finished second for total steals (131).
His efforts fronted the NBA’s youngest team to not only the league’s best record, but also a franchise high win-total for a single season and the most wins by a squad since the 73-9 Golden State Warriors. Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder ranked third on offence and first on defence as they ran away with the No. 1 seed in the West, holding a 16-game lead over the next-closest team by the end of the regular season. OKC also smashed the previous point-differential record set by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1971-72, outscoring opponents by 12.9 points per game.
SGA beat out a pair of multi-time MVPs in Nikola Jokic (three times) and Giannis Antetokoumpo (twice), who were the remaining two finalists for the award. Gilgeous-Alexander won despite Jokic becoming just the third player in NBA history to average a triple-double for a season (29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds, and 10.2 assists) and the Greek Freak posting 34.2 points (second-highest), 11.9 rebounds (sixth), 6.5 assists (18th) and 1.2 blocks.
The 26-year-old also wins the award after finishing top five in MVP voting the last two seasons, just losing out in 2023-24 as the runner-up to Jokic.
Gilgeous-Alexander is also the first guard to win the award since James Harden in 2017-18. All the while, a Canadian taking home the award makes it seven consecutive seasons that a non-American has won MVP. Gilgeous-Alexander joins Jokic (Serbia), Joel Embiid (Cameroon) and Antetokounmpo (Greece) as part of the recent international dominance over the NBA’s highest individual honour.
The newly minted MVP and his Thunder squad return to action on Thursday, hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves for Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals, already holding a 1-0 series lead. He’s the first MVP to make a Conference Finals appearance in the same season he won the award since Antetokounmpo in 2019.
OKC took down the now-dethroned MVP in Jokic and his Nuggets in seven games during the West semis to secure its first third-round appearance since 2016. Gilgeous-Alexander has averaged 29.2 points (first among conference finalists), 5.8 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 1.6 steals throughout the playoffs.
