SGA and Jokic have put on an MVP race for the ages
It's been a foregone conclusion for weeks, if not months, that the NBA MVP award will go to one of two players. With 10 days left in the 2024-25 season, there's only one thing left to determine in one of the most compelling award races we've seen in ages: Will Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Nikola Jokic lift the Michael Jordan Trophy?
The purpose of this piece isn't to make a case for one over the other, it's to unpack the historic seasons both are having and let readers draw their own conclusions.
For starters, one simple way to capture how otherworldly Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic have been this season is to note that Giannis Antetokounmpo - who's averaging roughly 30 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists while shooting over 60% from the field and playing excellent defense - doesn't even register as a contender. He was third in ESPN Bet's MVP odds posted earlier this week ... at 100-1. Some books don't even have him on the board.
Quibble with that if you want, but them's the breaks when you're up against maybe the best offensive season from a center in the 3-point era and one of the best all-around seasons ever from a guard - one who happens to be leading a team with the best scoring margin of all time.
Let's lay out some of the basic facts:
Jokic is averaging 29.7 points, 12.8 rebounds, and 10.2 assists, vying to become the third player ever to average a triple-double. He's doing that while shooting 63% from 2-point range and 42% from deep, good for a 66% true-shooting mark that's nine percentage points better than league average. The Nuggets rank third in offensive rating despite sitting dead last in 3-point attempt rate, and it's thanks to Jokic's unparalleled ability to score in the paint and dime up cutters while processing opponents' defensive rotations with the speed of a supercomputer.
It's important to harp on this stuff because Jokic has made the previously impossible seem so routine that we can take it for granted: The most prolific post-up scorer in the NBA also ranks second in assists, seventh in points off cuts, top 20 in 3-point percentage, and in the 89th percentile as a pick-and-roll ball-handler. When he isn't popping for threes, short-rolling for buttery floaters, shoulder-checking defenders to clear space for his automatic baby hook, or bamboozling the weak-side zone with pinpoint no-look skip passes, he's casually tossing in three-quarter-court heaves with the flick of his wrist.
Gilgeous-Alexander gained some separation in the race during Jokic's recent five-game injury absence, but what Jokic has done since returning - including authoring a 61-point triple-double in a double-overtime loss to the Timberwolves on Tuesday without Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr. - ought to have put some of the wind back in his sails. It says a lot when a guy posts the first 30-20-20 game in history, and you can't even be sure it was his most impressive game of the season.
In his own estimation, the guy who's won three of the last four MVPs is playing better than ever. But it still might not be enough to earn him a fourth trophy this season because Gilgeous-Alexander - the Gumby-like Oklahoma City Thunder guard whose body seems to move in three different directions and at three different speeds at once - has been that undeniable. As Jokic himself said, "I think I'm playing the best basketball of my life, so if that's enough, it's enough. If not, the (other) guy deserves it. He's really amazing."
All Gilgeous-Alexander has done this season is average a league-leading 32.8 points per game on a combination of usage (34.8%), efficiency (64% true shooting), and ball protection (8.7% turnover rate) that has no equal in NBA history. Even if you adjust efficiency for era, Michael Jordan's 1987-88 and Tracy McGrady's 2002-03 are the only seasons that come close. And Gilgeous-Alexander's doing this for the 64-12 Thunder whose plus-13.4 net rating is currently tied with Jordan's 1995-96 Bulls for the top mark of all time.
On a per-possession basis, Gilgeous-Alexander's season ranks as the fifth most prolific scoring campaign since the merger. And among the top 10 such seasons, only Joel Embiid's MVP-winning effort in 2022-23 was more efficient relative to the rest of the league. Here's a look at those campaigns, with scoring measured by points per 75 possessions and efficiency by True Shooting Plus, where 100 is league average. (Gilgeous-Alexander's 111 TS+ this season means he's scored 11% more efficiently than average.)
Gilgeous-Alexander's MVP case goes beyond the fact that he's having one of the great scoring seasons in modern NBA history. The Thunder have been so dominant because they pair an elite offense with one of the best defenses of all time. They allow 7.6 fewer points per 100 possessions than the average team, which is the sixth-best relative defensive rating of the past 60 years - just a notch above the 2003-04 Pistons, per Basketball-Reference. And while Gilgeous-Alexander isn't the best or even one of the five best defenders on the team, he's a meaningful contributor to what OKC does on that side of the ball.
He's an elite defensive playmaker, with phenomenal hands and a consistent willingness to rotate and challenge guys at the rim. He ranks sixth in the league with 1.7 steals per game and second among guards with 1.0 blocks (behind only Derrick White). Between his proclivity for takeaways at the defensive end and his singular ability to avoid giveaways at the offensive end, Gilgeous-Alexander is the biggest factor in the Thunder having the largest turnover margin the league has ever seen.
If he ultimately gets the nod over Jokic, his defense will be the reason. The Nuggets are 18 games behind the Thunder in the standings, despite having a comparable offense, because they can't stop anyone. Jokic is one of the culprits. He isn't as bad a defender as his critics make him out to be, and there have been seasons where he's been a genuine positive on that end. This year hasn't been one of them.
That's also easy to understand given the load Jokic carries on offense. His 105.4 touches per game are 12 more than any other player in the league this year and more than any player in any season in NBA.com's 12-year database. The Nuggets score 21.6 more points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. Among players who've played at least 1,000 minutes, the next-biggest positive differential belongs to Steph Curry at 12.7.
Gilgeous-Alexander doesn't have as dramatic an on/off split (the ninth largest at plus-10.4), but he shouldn't be penalized for having a better supporting cast than Jokic does. Instead, we should focus on the fact that the Thunder outscore opponents by 17.1 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, the best individual mark in the league and miles above every non-Thunder player who isn't having his plus-minus juiced by Gilgeous-Alexander's presence. (Luke Kornet and Evan Mobley are next in line after the wave of OKC guys, with net ratings of 13.5 and 12.4, respectively.)
On/off data is noisy and should always be taken with a grain of salt, but the easy way to interpret those numbers is that Jokic makes a bad team very good, while Gilgeous-Alexander makes a good team historically great.
Rarely do we get to see two players of this caliber sustaining this level at the same time. Most catch-all metrics paint this as the most impactful top two in the league since at least 2015-16. By Dunks and Threes' Estimated Plus-Minus, no other player is within six wins added of either one of them.
By Basketball-Reference's win shares per 48 minutes, Gilgeous-Alexander's season ranks 10th all time and Jokic's ranks 11th. This is the only time two of the top 20 individual seasons by that metric have occurred in the same year. By box plus-minus, Jokic's campaign is tied for second all time, while Gilgeous-Alexander's ranks 14th. The only other time two guys put up top-20 BPM seasons in the same year was LeBron James and Chris Paul in 2008-09.
It's unlikely that anything will happen between now and the end of the season to meaningfully alter the shape of the race. And the hair-splitting required to pick a winner will be discerned by the eye of each beholder.
How will voters value Gilgeous-Alexander's individual scoring brilliance and two-way play versus the rising tide of Jokic's total offensive mastery that lifts all boats in Denver? How much weight will they put on the historic team success Gilgeous-Alexander has engendered compared to Jokic's ability to carry a roster with no other All-Stars and very little shooting to a 128.2 offensive rating when he's on the floor?
There's no right or wrong answer here. It's simultaneously impossible to make a mistake and impossible not to do one of these guys incredibly dirty. Whoever misses out will instantly go down as having one of the best non-MVP seasons ever.
That's why, regardless of which one of them we feel is more deserving of the hardware, we ought to just celebrate what Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander are doing. This race may be a zero-sum game when it comes to the eventual result, but when it comes to praise, there's no limit to how much we can heap on both of them.
Joe Wolfond covers the NBA for theScore.