Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Claims Second Straight NBA MVP Award

On Sunday, the day before the NBA’s conference finals get underway, the league announced the biggest individual piece of hardware handed out annually. That, of course, is the award for the Most Valuable Player. After some late lobbying altered the eligibility of a couple players that wouldn’t have been in the field otherwise, the results came out Sunday. For more information on what unfolded, read on.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Earns Second Straight MVP

Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won his second straight MVP award, collecting 83 of 100 first-place votes. He racked up a total of 939 points to easily distance himself from the field. Gilgeous-Alexander finished second in the league with 31.1 points per game while ranking 14th by dishing out 6.6 assists a night.

Gilgeous-Alexander became the seventh player to win multiple MVPs by age 28. He is also the fifth active player to win back-to-back MVP awards. That’s a good note as far as future consideration for the Hall of Fame. Every non-active player that claimed two straight MVP awards in their career is a member of the Hall of Fame. That’s a group of elites, including Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.

The Rest of the Field

Denver center Nikola Jokic earned 10 first-place votes en route to 634 points to finish second in the voting. Jokic won back-to-back MVP awards in 2021 and 2022 before adding a third one in 2024. He finished second in the award voting in 2023, 2025 and 2026. That means Jokic finished in the top two in the MVP voting six straight seasons. It marked the first time that has happened since Larry Bird accomplished the feat from 1981-86. Bill Russell (1958-63) also accomplished the feat previously.

San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama, who finished with five first-place votes and 569 points, finished third. He did win Defensive Player of the Year, so he has some hardware to his credit. That gives him something to put on the shelf before the Spurs and Thunder kick off the Western Conference Finals. He averaged 25 points, 11.5 rebounds and a league-leading 3.1 blocks per game on the year.

The Lakers’ Luka Doncic (250 points) and the Pistons’ Cade Cunningham (two first-place votes, 117 points) rounded out the top five. Both players were originally ineligible for postseason award consideration but had their appeals approved. As it turned out, Doncic never saw the floor in the postseason after suffering a hamstring injury in an early April contest against the Thunder. Meanwhile, Cunningham and the Pistons took Cleveland to the limit before falling in seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals.