Gilgeous-Alexander's steady, MVP-level excellence helping boost Thunder

TORONTO — Ho hum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been excellent again this season.

The Oklahoma City Thunder star from Hamilton makes his lone visit to the Golden Horseshoe this season on Thursday night against the Toronto Raptors, but for as well as he has played, he arrives with all the buzz of a high-yield savings bond.

In his seventh season, Gilgeous-Alexander seems to have fallen into a steady rhythm of excellence and consistency. It’s a nice place to live. There are plenty of places to go to find your NBA sugar rush, Gilgeous-Alexander is your source for lean protein.

As the 26-year-old settles into the heart of his prime, his statistical profile has taken on a clearly defined shape: lots of points generated from the most valuable square footage on the floor — Gilgeous-Alexander leads the NBA in drives per game for the fifth straight year and, this season stands first in scoring from drives and fourth in assists, per NBA.com. And don’t forget the opportunistic defence all delivered with the reliability of premium-priced courier service.

There are plenty of reasons the 16-5 Thunder are in first place in West — the all-NBA-level defence and floor spacing fellow national team star Lu Dort provides OKC among them — but Gilgeous-Alexander is the main reason most believe they are the beginning what could be a long-term championship window.

Through the first quarter of the NBA season, Gilgeous-Alexander is putting up gaudy numbers, the same as ever, with averages of 29.8 points per game, 5.5 rebounds a game and 6.5 assists a game along with 1.8 steals and 1.0 blocks a game.

There is almost no discernable difference in the Canadian national team star’s production compared to his previous two seasons, when he finished fifth and second in the MVP vote, respectively.

Through 21 games, for example, Gilgeous-Alexander has converted 57.6 per cent of his two-point field goal attempts. Last season? He shot 57.6 per cent from two. He’s shooting 34.4 per cent from three this year, while two years ago he shot 34.5 per cent.

The only shift in his stat line: Gilgeous-Alexander is taking more threes this season, pushing his attempts up to 6.1 per game, which is nearly double his career average. Because his accuracy hasn’t improved along with it, trading some of his accuracy on twos for a few more threes has taken his overall efficiency down ever so slightly, but it’s a worthy experiment — if the Thunder guard can prove defences need to stretch more to meet him at the three-point line, it’s hard to imagine an opponent’s game plan that would be titled anything other than ‘hope’.

Otherwise, in a 30-team league featuring constant travel and playing with and against ever-changing lineups, Gilgeous-Alexander has achieved a level of superb sameness that would get a nod of approval from a metronome.

It’s not something easily accomplished, but it’s easier if you’re a slithery six-foot-six guard in superb physical condition and willing to make a basketball-driven routine the centre of your day-to-day existence. His head coach calls him a robot when it comes to preparation in and out of season.

When I asked Gilgeous-Alexander about it last year, he said it was a character trait, more than anything.

“I'm very, very strict on consistency in every aspect of life,” Gilgeous-Alexander said at the time. “And I think it helps my basketball. Whether it’s my eating, my day-to-day schedule, how clean my house is. It’s what I do with my time, whether I’m playing or not. I try to be very, very strict on discipline, being consistent. I think it helps with my basketball.”

It’s unlikely anything has changed, and it's why Gilgeous-Alexander will remain on the short list of MVP candidates this season and for the foreseeable future.

But what has changed this year at least is that the NBA parity era seems to be in full swing. That, and the pre-season expectations for the Thunder to be the dominant team in the Western Conference after adding big man Isaiah Hartenstein in free agency to shore up their rebounding, and wing defender Alex Caruso to give them even more defensive punch via trade.

The two factors combined could make Gilgeous-Alexander’s climb to the top of the MVP ladder that much more difficult.

Last season, the Thunder were upstarts, making the jump from 40 wins in 2022-23 (which was a jump from 24 wins the season before that) to 57 wins, with then-rookie Chet Holmgren the only significant roster addition. In those circumstances, it was hard to argue against Gilgeous-Alexander as a leading MVP candidate — I had him first on my ballot — even if Nikola Jokic ended up with the award.

But this season, the Thunder are favourites, and even if Hartenstein has played only six games due to injury, Holmgren (hip fracture) has been out since early November and is unlikely to return until March, at the earliest, and Caruso (shooting just 20 per cent from three) has struggled badly offensively, Oklahoma City will likely have to win the West convincingly for Gilgeous-Alexander to have significant momentum for top spot on most ballots, fair or not.

And even if that comes to pass, a lot of voter sentiment might shift toward Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum (28.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and 5.6 assists, effective field-goal percentage of 55.2), who is putting together what will likely be his fourth straight first-team all-NBA season, even if he’s never finished higher than fourth in MVP voting. If the defending champion Celtics — on pace for 66 wins, two better than last season — win the East again, Tatum might get his due, and by that measure Donovan Mitchell of Cleveland (24.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, 4.1 assists, eFG of 55.3 in just 31 minutes a game) will need consideration too, if the East-leading Cavs maintain their torrid pace.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle to Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP chances is that the field in the NBA become so crowded. Just 2.5 games separate the Denver Nuggets from the second-place Houston Rockets in the Western Conference, even though Denver is kind of limping along with an 11-8 record.

Similarly, in the East, the Milwaukee Bucks are in fifth place, just two games from a home seed in the first round with an 11-10, which is more impressive given they started the season 2-8.

The relevance is that if either of those teams can finish in the top six or better in their respective conferences, it will be difficult to overlook the historic level of performance being provided by the Nuggets' Jokic and the Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo, who have won five of the last six MVPs between them.

Having won three MVPs in four seasons, you’d think we’d have already seen the best of Jokic in Denver, but somehow as the Nuggets battle injury and declining depth, he’s never been better. Arguably, no one has.

So far this season, he’s averaging 30.1 points, 13.4 rebounds and 10.4 assists while shooting 56.4 per cent from the floor and 52.2 per cent from three. Put another way, he’s leading the NBA in rebounds and assists as a centre, stands third in scoring and is more accurate from deep than Steph Curry. It’s unprecedented and, frankly, mind-boggling.

As long as the Nuggets can squeeze into the top six in the West — there’s never been an MVP winner on a team that finishes lower than sixth in its conference, and that’s happened only twice — Jokic seems like a lock, right?

Sure, were it not for Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. The 2019 and 2020 MVP is on pace for a career high in scoring with his league-leading 32.7 points a game while adding a career-best in assists with 6.7 per game and shooting a career-best 61.7 per cent from the floor. The 11.7 rebounds and 1.4 blocks don’t hurt, either.

If the Bucks can continue to climb the standings in the East — even if that means securing a top-four seed with 45 wins, which is all it might take — Antetokounmpo will get serious consideration for his third MVP.

So therein lies Gilgeous-Alexander’s challenge. If the Thunder don’t win the West, or don’t do it convincingly — even given their own injury woes — his brand of simple excellence might not be enough to sway voters when other teams — let’s say, Boston and Cleveland — have stars putting together monster seasons while their teams load up to 65 or more wins.

Similarly, if stars like Jokic and Antetokounmpo can lead deeply flawed teams to regular-season relevance while putting up numbers that are not only better than their own remarkable standard but bordering on historic league-wide, it will be hard to argue against their candidacy.

Over the past two years, Gilgeous-Alexander’s absurdly high standard of play has elevated the Thunder from also-ran to contender, earning him MVP consideration in the process. For Gilgeous-Alexander to break through and win the award in what is shaping up to be a deep field, this time he might need the Thunder to help him.