A funny thing happened to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on Monday night, on the way to another signature moment to add to a résumé that may well earn him his second consecutive Most Valuable Player award: He wound up on the other side of the whistle.
With 15 seconds left in a tie game between his West-leading Oklahoma City Thunder (playing without starters Jalen Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein) and the East-leading Detroit Pistons (playing without four starters, including All-Stars Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren), Gilgeous-Alexander joined teammate Ajay Mitchell in double-teaming Detroit ball-handler Daniss Jenkins, and then sliced back into the passing lane to pick off a feed intended for Pistons guard Javonte Green. Gilgeous-Alexander dribbled the ball into the frontcourt, sized Green up, drove to his left and stepped back to his right, rising up for a would-be game-winning 3-pointer.
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The triple splashed through the net with four seconds remaining in regulation … and was promptly waived off, with the officials calling an offensive foul on Gilgeous-Alexander for pushing off on Green’s shoulder to create the space needed to get his shot off.
Considering he’d been called for only 10 offensive fouls in 63 games this season entering Monday, you can understand Gilgeous-Alexander’s shock at the FTW-erasing whistle:
(By the same token, you can understand the opposing coaches and fan bases who have repeatedly voiced frustration at the disparity between the level of physicality with which the Thunder defend and the level of physicality allowed against the league’s MVP being kind of shocked that this one got called.)
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After Jenkins’ attempt to author a game-winner of his own went a little strong off the back iron, the game went to overtime knotted at 101. For Gilgeous-Alexander, that rare moment of late-game frustration gave way to a fresh new opportunity.
“I have five minutes to go win the basketball game,” he later told reporters.
And so, he did:
Gilgeous-Alexander scored, assisted on or delivered the hockey assist on all 13 of Oklahoma City’s points in the extra session, pushing the Thunder over the finish line in a 114-110 win. He’d finish with 47 points (12-for-19 from the field, 21-for-25 at the foul line), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in 40 minutes of work — his eighth 40-plus-point performance of the season (third-most in the league, behind Luka Dončić and Anthony Edwards), his 43rd 30-plus-point outing (tied with Dončić for the most) and his 136th straight game of at least 20 points, extending the NBA record he set earlier this month.
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Most importantly: Gilgeous-Alexander’s big game and bigger closing kick enabled the Thunder to hold serve with the hard-charging San Antonio Spurs, who’d dominated the Chicago Bulls earlier in the evening for their 25th win in 27 games since the beginning of February. Holding off Detroit kept OKC’s lead over San Antonio in the race for the West’s No. 1 seed at 2.5 games with just two weeks left in the regular season.
Maintaining that lead isn’t only critical because it would afford the Thunder home-court advantage throughout the 2026 NBA playoffs. It also could help serve as a tie-breaker of sorts in what’s become an increasingly tight MVP race.
San Antonio superstar Victor Wembanyama recently made the case for his candidacy. Lakers head coach JJ Redick has stumped for Dončić, the league’s leading scorer, who has helped L.A. surge toward solidifying the No. 3 spot out West. (And oh, by the way, there’s still this guy named Nikola Jokić, who’s leading the league in rebounds and assists en route to averaging a triple-double for the second straight season at the helm of a Denver Nuggets team that still has a shot to take third place, too.)
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Afforded the opportunity to step out onto the stump himself, though, Gilgeous-Alexander just smiled and demurred.
“No, I’m good. Thanks for asking, though,” he said, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “Yeah, I’m good. I let my game do the talking.”
Spoken like a man confident that his game’s awfully loud.
Gilgeous-Alexander trails only Dončić in scoring, averaging 31.6 points per game while shooting a career-best 55.2% from the field, 38.2% from 3-point range and 88% from the free-throw line. That gives him a true shooting percentage of 66.6% — just behind 2015-16 Stephen Curry for the most efficient 30-point-scoring season in NBA history.
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He has paired that gargantuan scoring efficiency with even tighter work as a ball-handler, delivering an assist on 34.6% of his teammates’ baskets while he’s on the floor while turning it over on just 8.5% of his offensive possessions. The only players in Stathead’s database to finish a season with a usage rate as high, a turnover rate as low and an assist rate even in the vicinity of what SGA has posted thus far? Michael Jordan in 1993, at the end of the Bulls’ first three-peat, and Tracy McGracy, back in 2003 — one of the great individual seasons of this era.
Gilgeous-Alexander leads the NBA in a slew of advanced metrics, including estimated plus-minus, win shares, Jeremias Engelmann’s xRAPM, win probability added and Neil Paine’s LAKER. He also ranks second or third in a slew of others, like value over replacement player, box plus-minus, player efficiency rating, regularized adjusted plus-minus and The BBall Index’s LEBRON.
If the all-in-one alphabet soup nerd numbers aren’t your thing: Gilgeous-Alexander’s also been absolute nails in crunch time.
He leads the NBA in points scored when the game’s within five points in the final five minutes, with 19 more “clutch” points than second-place countryman Jamal Murray, 175-156, in 36 fewer close-and-late minutes played. SGA is shooting 51.5% in those situations with a 21-to-7 assist-to-turnover ratio. On shots with a chance to either tie or take the lead in crunch time, he’s shooting 55%; he hasn’t missed a field-goal attempt in the fourth quarter or overtime in the last seven games, going a perfect 11-for-11.
Combine that scoring volume, pristine efficiency, timely shot-making and how much his on- and off-ball gravity opens things up for his teammates, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of why Oklahoma City scores like the NBA’s No. 1 offense with him on the floor, and like a bottom-five offense without him.
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That impact’s been particularly critical given how many injuries the Thunder have dealt with; only the Grizzlies and Trail Blazers have lost more player games to injury this season, according to Spotrac. Oklahoma City has only had the starting five from its championship team — SGA, Williams, Chet Holmgren, Hartenstein and Luguentz Dort — for eight games and 75 total minutes this season. All told, Gilgeous-Alexander has played 926 minutes without either All-NBA running buddy Williams or All-Star stretch big Holmgren, according to PBP Stats; the Thunder have won those minutes by 242 points, a +11.9 net rating, scoring at a top-five clip.
There are excellent cases to be made for all the top candidates this season; plenty of proxies, or the candidates themselves, are already making them. For Gilgeous-Alexander and his backers, the argument starts with the consistency of his excellence from autumn through springtime, and needs no embellishment beyond what’s on display night after night.
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“Just watch the games,” Thunder guard Alex Caruso told reporters. “Got a game-winner against the No. 1 seed in the East called off tonight and then had 47. His game does a lot of talking.”