It probably shouldn’t have been a great night for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. His Oklahoma City Thunder were set for a marquee matchup against the Denver Nuggets, but they were very shorthanded. No Jalen Williams. No Isaiah Hartenstein. No Alex Caruso. Oh, and Chet Holmgren had the flu, so he was ruled out closer to tip. Plenty of teams would have punted the game under those circumstances.
But Gilgeous-Alexander has been making lemonade all season. Oklahoma City has spent virtually all season dealing with injuries and absences, yet the Thunder still have the NBA’s best record. So Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City B-Team against one of the best teams in the league and, naturally, had one of the best nights of his career.
Let’s start with what he didn’t do, because there’s not much of that. Gilgeous-Alexander finished the game with 35 points, 15 assists and nine rebounds. That left him one rebound short of a triple-double, which, amazingly, would have been just the third of his career and the first since 2021. I bring this up mostly to prove that Gilgeous-Alexander is, in fact, mortal, because little else from Monday’s exhibition suggests as much.
In the third quarter, Gilgeous-Alexander drilled a step-back 3-pointer to take his scoring total, at that point, up to 22 points. That made it 126 consecutive games in which he’s scored at least 20, tying a 63-year-old Wilt Chamberlain record that frankly seemed unbreakable. Even LeBron James, who reached 10 points 1,297 times in a row, never had a 162-game streak with 20 or more.
But Gilgeous-Alexander did so and, considering the shots he lives off as a guard, that seems almost impossible. Remember, Chamberlain was a 7-foot-1 center at a time when the league was much smaller and less athletic. Gilgeous-Alexander, without those physical advantages and in a league that plays at a slower pace, has become so absurdly consistent that he was able to achieve something six decades’ worth of players haven’t. Gilgeous-Alexander will have a chance to break the record on Thursday, when the Thunder face the Celtics.
Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t stop there. In the final minutes, Denver mounted a furious comeback and managed to turn an eight-point deficit with two minutes to go into a 126-126 tie. So where did the Thunder go to try to break that tie? Gilgeous-Alexander, who won the game on a step-back 3-pointer with less than three seconds to play.
Already, we’re talking about a historic night. But here’s the kicker: Gilgeous-Alexander was facing Nikola Jokić, arguably his only serious challenge in this season’s MVP race. The two have finished first and second in each of the last two races, with Gilgeous-Alexander winning in 2025 and Jokić taking the 2024 trophy. The two had already faced off head-to-head twice this season, with the Thunder taking both and Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 70 points in those two wins. But a game-winner like this against his biggest rival may have been the signature moment he needed to tie up this year’s MVP race. Sure enough, both FanDuel Sportsbook and Caesars Sportsbook have Gilgeous-Alexander as a -800 favorite to win MVP after Monday’s win.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a cherry on top? FanDuel also now has him as a slight -105 favorite to win Clutch Player of the Year over Anthony Edwards. The samples are small enough in that race that a single, high-profile shot can theoretically swing a race. So sure, why don’t we throw another possible trophy into Gilgeous-Alexander’s case?
And to think, all of this came on a night in which the Thunder were far from full strength. That’s where they’ve been for most of the season. It hasn’t mattered in large part because Gilgeous-Alexander has been the best player in the league, and if he keeps doing this when the Thunder are healthy in a few months, he’s only going to add more records and hardware to his collection.
