We no longer have the Big Monday doubleheader in college basketball because the regular season is finished, but the NBA steps up in a big way tonight with Denver at Oklahoma City. It’s not just a possible preview of the Western Conference Finals but also perhaps the last chance that Nikola Jokic has to realistically track down Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the MVP race — although SGA should tie one very impressive league record in the matchup.
No doubt we will have an eighth straight non-American winner, as the last player from the USA to take home the MVP was James Harden in 2018 with Houston, which feels like forever ago. That capped a run of 11 straight American winners. And I’m not sure when the United States will claim another with France’s Victor Wembanyama just entering his prime and a likely favorite the rest of the decade.
Currently, Canada’s Gilegous-Alexander is -300 to repeat as MVP, while Serbia’s Jokic is +500 to win his fourth MVP; he was also the last repeat winner in the 2021-22 season. It could be that injuries decide this race by default as players must compete in 65 games to be eligible for regular-season awards, meaning they can miss no more than 17 contests. Jokic has missed 16 and Gilgeous-Alexander has missed 12.
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I do think that the sportsbooks are baking Jokic’s possible ineligibility into the numbers because he’s having easily the better statistical season, averaging a triple-double of 28.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 10.3 assists. Those latter two numbers both lead the NBA, and Jokic leads by a mile with 23 overall triple-doubles. Wilt Chamberlain is the only player in NBA history to lead the league in both total rebounds and total assists in a single season, doing so in the 1967-68 season when Chamberlain won his fourth and final MVP.
Major League Baseball has WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, while the NBA has VORP, or Value Over Replacement Player. Jokic leads the league at 6.9 with Gilegous-Alexander second at 6.1. No one else is above 4.9, and no one else has MVP odds below +1200 (Detroit’s Cade Cunningham).
One memorable performance in a head-to-head game featuring a pair of MVP candidates can go a long way in voters’ minds, and the Nuggets and Thunder play just once more near the end of the regular season on April 10. Most minds will be long made up by then. Ballots are submitted by the panel of media members around mid-April.
Jokic holds the seventh-best game score of 59.8, which came just last Christmas in an OT win over Minnesota when he had a triple-double of 56, 16 rebounds and 15 assists. He also set an NBA record with 18 points in overtime. If he does something in that ballpark on Monday, and he may well jump into the favored role unless Gilgeous-Alexander goes nuts, too.
Jokic will be my MVP play and we just have to hope he doesn’t get nicked up and miss two more games. I can’t imagine the Nuggets rest him multiple times. OKC has won both matchups this season. Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 35.0 points and 11.0 assists in the two, while Jokic averaged just 19.5 points — the Thunder have two good big men to deal with him in Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein — but also 12.0 rebounds and 11.0 assists. Hartenstein is out for Monday, while Holmgren is questionable.
Gilgeous-Alexander has scored at least 20 points in 125 consecutive games, one shy of tying Chamberlain’s record of 126 in a row set from 1961-63. Chamberlain averaged 49.2 points in his 126-game run, which ended on Jan. 20, 1963 when he was ejected just four minutes into a game in St. Louis.
Gilgeous-Alexander has scored at least 20 points in 60 straight on the road, breaking Wilt’s previous mark a couple of weeks ago and is -6200 (!) for at least 20 tonight with a points + rebounds + assists over/under of 43.5. Jokic has a PRA of 49.5, and it should be a fun watch assuming both play (neither is on the injury report).
