The 2024 NBA MVP award will almost certainly go to Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic, but multiple other players also had MVP-caliber showings during the regular season that shouldn’t go overlooked.
Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic and Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are two of those players.
Neither one of them is likely to win the award this season, but former NBA guard Nick Young thinks that if Doncic were in Gilgeous-Alexander’s position, he’d be the unanimous MVP.
Young seems to believe that there’s a narrative working against Gilgeous-Alexander that doesn’t apply to Doncic.
They dnt want SGA to win MVP before Luka …
— Nick Young (@NickSwagyPYoung) April 16, 2024
If Luka was the 1 seed with SGA numbers it would be unanimous!
— Nick Young (@NickSwagyPYoung) April 16, 2024
Gilgeous-Alexander helped the Thunder claim the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference this season, and he was extremely productive along the way.
The 25-year-old averaged 30.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game while shooting 53.5 percent from the field and 35.3 percent from beyond the arc. He also averaged 2.0 steals per game on the defensive end.
Meanwhile, the Mavericks earned the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference with the help of Doncic.
He led the league in scoring during the regular season, averaging a whopping 33.9 points per game while shooting 48.7 percent from the field and 38.2 percent from 3-point range. He also averaged 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists per contest, meaning he nearly averaged a triple-double per game.
But it’s Jokic who will likely be taking home his third MVP award this season if some of the publicly released ballots are any indication.
His Nuggets finished second in the Western Conference with the same record as the Thunder. The six-time All-Star averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists per game in the regular season while shooting 58.3 percent from the field and 35.9 percent from deep.
All of the aforementioned players will be battling for the same thing in the Western Conference playoffs in the coming weeks: a trip to the NBA Finals.
There’s a chance a couple of the players will cross paths at some point in the postseason depending on how the chips fall, so that’s certainly a storyline worth monitoring. But above all, the focus is on winning a championship, which would be the second for Jokic and first for Gilgeous-Alexander or Doncic.
