Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the 2025-26 NBA Most Valuable Player. ESPN reported the Thunder star’s win on Sunday. After a hotly debated race, the defending winner has retained his crown after a historically efficient offensive season.
Dominant Offensive Performance
Gilgeous-Alexander’s raw scoring technically went down from 32.7 to 31.1 points per game. However, he went about scoring those points far more efficiently. Gilgeous-Alexander closed the season shooting 55.3% from the floor, 38.6% on 3s and 87.9% on free throws. Only Kevin Durant has ever achieved those shooting percentages on more than 250 total shots.
Durant managed this in the 2022-23 season in 47 games. Gilgeous-Alexander did it in 68 and still managed to finish his season with fewer total turnovers and almost twice as many assists.
Leading the Thunder to Victory
Gilgeous-Alexander scored the second-most points per game in the NBA at 31.1, trailing only Luka Dončić. He did so while averaging the 42nd-most touches per game, 66.6. This meant that Gilgeous-Alexander nearly scored one per for every two times he touched the ball. He led the team with the most regular-season wins, 64.
He achieved this with his only teammate who had made an All-Star Game before this season, Jalen Williams, playing 33 diminished games. Only two Thunder players, Cason Wallace and Isaiah Joe, managed to play 70 games this season, and several key pieces like Ajay Mitchell, Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein missed 25 or more games.
A Competitive MVP Race
Gilgeous-Alexander was nearly the wire-to-wire favourite for the award. Throughout the season, a number of different players made runs at his trophy. It started with three-time winner Nikola Jokić, who opened the season with two historic offensive months. A knee injury hampered his candidacy.
From there, voters looked at the leaders of the two surprising Eastern Conference contenders: Cade Cunningham in Detroit and Jaylen Brown in Boston. Neither wound up factoring meaningfully into the race, but historic second halves from Dončić and Victor Wembanyama made things interesting in March. Dončić ultimately fell out of the hunt after getting hurt in a blowout loss to Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder. Wembanyama’s lack of minutes doomed his candidacy, and despite a late push, Jokić just couldn’t make up for the time he missed or his deficiencies as a defender.
Joining an Elite Group
Gilgeous-Alexander is now in historic company. He is now the 16th player in NBA history to win multiple MVP awards. Among those multi-time winners, Gilgeous-Alexander is the 14th player to win the award consecutively.