Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has taken home the NBA MVP Award after guiding the Oklahoma City Thunder to a historic season.
The MVP resides in OKC.
Per Shams Charania of ESPN, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be named the 2024-25 NBA MVP on Wednesday night. The official announcement is expected to come during TNT’s pregame coverage of the Eastern Conference Finals opener between the Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks.
Gilgeous-Alexander was one of three finalists listed for the award alongside previous winners Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee and Nikola Jokic of Denver. He becomes the third Thunder star to earn the NBA’s most prestigious individual honor, joining Kevin Durant (2014) and Russell Westbrook (2017).
Moving one spot up after he was the MVP runner-up to Jokic in 2023-24, Gilgeous-Alexander is also the seventh consecutive international winner of the honor and the second Canada-based winner since Steve Nash (born in South Africa but of Canadian nationality) earned back-to-back MVPs with the Phoenix Suns in 2005-06. The last American born NBA MVP was James Harden of the Houston Rockets in 2017-18.
Under the watch of Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City finished atop the Western Conference and the Association as a whole with a franchise-best 68-14 record. He led the league in scoring at 32.7 points per game and at average successful free throws at 7.9 with an 89.8 percent success rate.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is your 2024-25 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player!#NBAAwards | #KiaMVP | @Kia pic.twitter.com/odc6IHMMoo
— NBA (@NBA) May 21, 2025
Gilgeous-Alexander’s historic scoring output places him in the same sentence as NBA legends: at 72 consecutive regular season games with at least 20 points, Gilgeous-Alexander becomes the sixth player to build a streak of at least 70 alongside Durant, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. With a dominant 35-point showing in the Thunder’s Game 7 win over Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals, Gilgeous-Alexander is the sixth man to pair that tally with no turnovers in a deciding game (a list that also includes Jayson Tatum, Dominique Wilkins, CJ McCollum, Dirk Nowitzki, and Marques Johnson).
Oklahoma City is three wins away from returning to the NBA Finals after Gilgeous-Alexander scored 31 points in the Western Conference closer’s opening game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. He’ll return to action on Thursday for Game 2 (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
