The NBA deadline to anoint its Most Valuable Player is approaching and the two front runners are Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who has a comfortable lead over Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic.
Gilgeous-Alexander leads the league in 50, 40, 30 and 20-point games. He scores with solid efficiency. He reached 20 points Friday night against the Houston Rockets for the 70th straight game, moving past Michael Jordan for the fourth-longest single-season streak in NBA history.
Gilgeous-Alexander eclipsed the 69-game streak Jordan had in 1990-91 and became the first player to have a 70-game streak since the 1960s.
He finished with 22 points in the Thunder’s 125-111 loss to the Rockets, the No. 2 team behind the Thunder in the Western Conference. Wilt Chamberlain tops the list with 80-game streaks in both the 1961-62 and 1963-64 seasons. Oscar Robertson is third with a 76-game streak in 1963-64.
Jokic, last season’s MVP, hopes to become only the third player to win four MVPs in a five-year span, joining LeBron James in 2008-12 and Bill Russell in 1961-65.
Despite Gilgeous-Alexander’s lead, Jokic is presenting perhaps his best MVP case. Behind career highs in points (29.7), assists (10.2) and 3-point percentage (41.6) with 12.8 rebounds, Jokic has lifted a Nuggets roster beset by injuries to the West’s No. 3 seed.
Jokic is heavily admired by Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr who rates him as one of the best centers in NBA history. Kerr was effusive before Golden State’s 118-104 victory over the Nuggets last week.
“It’s unfair to compare eras, but he’s the best centre I’ve ever seen,” Kerr told the media. “I played against Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar]... Kareem couldn’t do all this stuff.
“And again, eras dictate a lot of that, so we’re in the modern era and we are watching a guy doing things that nobody has ever done before.
“It goes so far beyond the skill level with Jokic, it’s the demeanour, it’s the competitiveness, it’s the intelligence. He is absolutely one of the smartest players ever, and you see it in so many different ways.”
Kerr not only played against Abdul-Jabbar, who by all accounts is the greatest center of all-time, but he also battled with Shaquille O’Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon, as well as playing with Tim Duncan, who was an occasional center. The season’s MVP is announced on April 26.
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