Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the current betting favorite for MVP, but the award isn’t locked up with Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets having his own historic season right behind him. In fact, who knows if Jokić even is behind Gilgeous-Alexander in voters’ minds. In truth, the only thing betting odds tell you is how wagered money is coming in from the public.
Either way, this is a tight race and everything that both Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokić, and by extension their teams, do over the final five weeks of the season — good or bad — will have an impact on the final tally.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m going to guess that Gilgeous-Alexander putting up 51 points in Oklahoma City’s win over the Rockets on Monday qualifies as a good thing on his side of the ledger.
This was the fourth time that Gilgeous-Alexander has scored at least 50 points this season, which leads the league. And all four of those 50-point outings have come in his last 19 games. Gilgeous-Alexander also leads the league in 40-point games (9), 30-point games (37) and 20-point games (59). SGA has only scored fewer than 20 points one time this season, and even then he scored 18 in the fourth game of the season.
Add that up, and that’s 56 straight games with at least 20 points for the league’s scoring leader at 32.6 points per game. The next closest player is Jalen Brunson, who has scored 20 in seven consecutive games. Seven. Think about that.
The icing on the cake was that SGA’s performance Monday came in the Thunder’s 50th win of the season, and they needed every bit of their top dog’s scoring. Houston put up 128 points despite being without four starters in Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet.
Jalen Williams scored 24 for Oklahoma City but no other starter had more than 11. Gilgeous-Alexander made 18 of his 30 shots including 5 of 9 from 3, and he was 10 for 10 from the free-throw line. He added seven assists, five rebounds plus a steal and a block in the 137-128 victory.
