On December 22, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 31 points against the Mavericks and crossed a threshold that only one player in NBA history had ever reached: 100 consecutive games scoring 20 or more points. The other name on that list is Wilt Chamberlain, who did it three times between 1961 and 1964, in an era when the pace of play was so fast that teams regularly attempted 120 possessions per game. Gilgeous-Alexander did it in the modern NBA, where defensive schemes are built specifically to take away the primary scorer, where analytics departments track every action he takes on the floor, and where every opponent game-plans around stopping him first. Tonight, when the Thunder host the Golden State Warriors at Paycom Center (8:30 PM EST), Gilgeous-Alexander and Oklahoma City will try for something that feels almost routine given how their season has gone: win number 50.
The Thunder are 49-15, the best record in the NBA, and they are the defending champions. Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 31.7 points per game on 55.1% shooting from the field and 89.3% from the free throw line, per Basketball Reference. He won the 2024-25 MVP and Finals MVP awards. He is now chasing a back-to-back MVP that would place him alongside LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic as the only players to accomplish the feat in the last two decades. The numbers, the wins, and the historical context all point in the same direction: this is one of the best individual seasons the NBA has seen, and it is happening in a city that did not have a professional basketball team 18 years ago.
The Only Guard in History Doing This
There have been 49 seasons in which an NBA guard averaged 30 or more points per game, per Thunderous Intentions. Gilgeous-Alexander is the only one who shot better than 55% from the field. That statistic is worth sitting with, because it reframes SGA's scoring from "prolific" to "historically efficient in a way no guard has ever been at this volume." Michael Jordan never did it. Allen Iverson, who averaged 33 points per game in 2005-06, shot 44.7%. Kobe Bryant's 35.4-point season in 2005-06 came on 45% shooting. Even Curry, the greatest shooter in NBA history, never combined 30-plus points with 55% from the floor across a full season.
What makes the efficiency so striking is how Gilgeous-Alexander generates his offense. He is not a spot-up shooter benefiting from open looks. He is not a roll man finishing at the rim off someone else's creation. He is the primary initiator on nearly every possession, facing constant double teams and defensive attention, and he is converting at a rate that defies what we know about high-usage guards. His 2.1 turnovers per game are the fewest among all 30-point scorers in league history, per Thunderous Intentions. He is not just scoring efficiently; he is doing it while protecting the ball better than anyone who has ever produced at this level.
The January 21 game against Milwaukee crystallized what this season has been. Gilgeous-Alexander scored 40 points on 16-of-19 shooting (84.2%) with 7 rebounds and 11 assists in a 122-102 demolition of the Bucks. He joined Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to record 40-plus points, 10-plus assists, and 5-plus rebounds on at least 80% shooting in a single game. That was not a favorable matchup against a weak opponent. Milwaukee had Giannis Antetokounmpo, who finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds, and the Bucks entered the game with a top-ten defensive rating. Gilgeous-Alexander simply took the game apart with a precision that left no room for debate about who the best player on the floor was.
A Defending Champion That Kept Getting Better
The typical arc for a defending NBA champion involves regression. The 2023 Nuggets went from a title to a second-round exit. The 2021 Bucks stumbled to a second-round loss the following year. Even the dynastic Warriors dipped from 67 wins to 58 wins in their title defense season of 2015-16 before Kevin Durant arrived. The Thunder have not followed that pattern. At 49-15 through 64 games, they are on pace for 63 wins, which would be the best record by a defending champion since the 2017 Warriors went 67-15 following their 73-win, title-losing campaign the year before.
Head coach Mark Daigneault set the tone for this from the start. "Improvement is necessary in our situation because everyone else is getting better," Daigneault said during training camp, per ClutchPoints. That was not coach-speak. It was a genuine assessment of the challenge facing a young team that won a championship and needed to avoid the complacency that has derailed other title holders. The Thunder's defensive rating has remained among the league's best, and their 118.9 points per game on offense, per Fox Sports, puts them in the top tier on both ends of the floor.
The roster construction around Gilgeous-Alexander deserves more attention than it gets. Oklahoma City has the depth to absorb significant injuries without falling apart. Jalen Williams, the team's second-best player, has been out with a hamstring injury. Thomas Sorber is done for the season with a knee injury. Alex Caruso, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Ajay Mitchell are all dealing with day-to-day ailments. Despite that injury list, the Thunder have won seven of their last eight and eight of their last ten, holding opponents to 106.5 points per game during that stretch, per Fox Sports. Sam Presti built a roster where the margin for error is wide enough that missing key players does not collapse the system.
The 65-Game Tightrope and the MVP Race It Created
The most unusual wrinkle in Gilgeous-Alexander's MVP candidacy is not his competition. It is the NBA's 65-game minimum rule, introduced in 2023, which requires a player to appear in at least 65 regular-season games to be eligible for end-of-season awards. Gilgeous-Alexander has played 49 of the Thunder's 64 games so far, meaning he has missed 15 and can only afford to miss three more over the remaining 18 games, per the Yardbarker MVP Ladder. This math, not Cade Cunningham's surge in Detroit or Jokic's production in Denver, is the primary obstacle between SGA and a second consecutive MVP trophy.
The irony is thick. Gilgeous-Alexander's per-game numbers are the strongest in the race. The Thunder's winning percentage with him on the floor is 78.8%, projecting to a 64-win pace, compared to 74.1% for Cunningham's Pistons and 60.9% for Jokic's Nuggets, per Thunderous Intentions. If the award were decided purely on performance and team impact, the conversation would already be over. But the 65-game rule was designed to prevent players from resting through regular-season games and then claiming individual awards, and it could end up disqualifying the player having the best season. Jokic faces the same problem; he has missed 16 games and can only miss one more, per the Yardbarker MVP Ladder.
If both Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic fail to reach 65 games, Cunningham would become the likely winner by default, which would be the first time in modern NBA history that the midseason MVP favorite lost the award due to a games-played technicality rather than on-court performance. That outcome would force a reckoning with the 65-game rule itself. Is the league really prepared to give the MVP to the third-best player in the league because the top two missed a few games to injury?
Where SGA Fits Among Back-to-Back MVP Winners
Only 12 players have won back-to-back MVPs in NBA history, and the list reads like a roster for the greatest team ever assembled: Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar, Bird, Jordan, Duncan, James, Nash, Curry, Antetokounmpo, Jokic. What separates the great repeat winners from the merely excellent first-time winners is typically an improvement in at least one area during the second season. Curry went from 23.8 points per game to 30.1 in his back-to-back years. Jokic expanded his scoring from 27.1 to 27.4 while increasing his assists from 7.9 to 8.3. James improved his three-point shooting from 31.5% to 33.9% between his first and second Cleveland MVPs.
Gilgeous-Alexander's improvement has come in efficiency and shot selection rather than raw production. His scoring average dropped slightly from 32.7 last season to 31.7 this season, but his field goal percentage climbed from 53.5% to 55.1%, per Basketball Reference. He is getting to the rim less and shooting more mid-range pull-ups, the shots that are hardest for defenses to take away and most resistant to playoff adjustments. It is the same evolution that Jordan made in the early 1990s when he shifted from a slasher who needed open lanes to a mid-range assassin who could score over any defender. The parallel is not hyperbole. As Andscape reported, Gilgeous-Alexander himself has talked about adding "a level of confidence to my walk and swagger on the court" with each award and each season, a self-awareness that suggests he is engineering this evolution deliberately.
Daigneault has noticed the same thing. "The trend with Shai is that he always knew before any of us," the head coach said, per ClutchPoints. "He has always had a very clear vision for himself of not only where he wants to go, but what he needs to do next." That kind of self-directed improvement is what separates the perennial MVP candidates from the one-time winners. Nash won back-to-back, but his game did not change much between the two seasons. Gilgeous-Alexander is actively adding new dimensions to a game that was already the league's best.
Tonight's Game and the Williams-Shaped Hole in the Lineup
The Warriors arrive in Oklahoma City at 32-30, clinging to the eighth seed in the West, and missing Stephen Curry (knee) and Jimmy Butler III (out for the season with a knee injury). Golden State did pick up a gritty 115-113 overtime win at Houston on Thursday, but that game exposed the same inconsistencies that have plagued them all year: a 4-6 record over their last ten and a defensive rating that has allowed 116.3 points per game in that stretch, per Fox Sports. The Thunder are favored by 14.5 points, and the SportsLine projection model has Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 32.4 points tonight, per CBS Sports.
The more interesting subplot is how Oklahoma City manages the absence of Jalen Williams, who has been the Thunder's most versatile two-way player this season. Williams' hamstring injury has forced Daigneault to adjust his rotation, leaning more heavily on Cason Wallace (8.9 points per game over the last ten) and Isaiah Joe (14.2 points per game over the last ten) to absorb minutes and defensive assignments that Williams typically handles, per Fox Sports. The Thunder's ability to win seven of eight without Williams is a credit to their depth, but it also raises a question that matters more in April than in March: can this team sustain a four-round playoff run without its second-best player at full health? The trade deadline acquisitions across the league have made the Western Conference deeper, and the Thunder's margin for error in the postseason will be smaller than their regular-season dominance suggests.
The last time these two teams met, on January 3, Oklahoma City won 131-94. Gilgeous-Alexander had 30 points in that game. A Warriors team without Curry and Butler is unlikely to offer much more resistance tonight, which makes this less a competitive test and more a milestone opportunity: win number 50, the earliest the Thunder have reached that mark in franchise history.
After the Buzzer
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is having the kind of season that forces you to recalibrate what you think a guard can do in the modern NBA. No guard has ever averaged 30-plus points on 55% shooting. No one besides Chamberlain had scored 20-plus points in 100 consecutive games. The defending champions have the league's best record despite significant injuries to their rotation. And the only thing standing between Gilgeous-Alexander and a second straight MVP is a 65-game minimum rule that was designed for a completely different problem than the one it is creating now.
The Thunder will almost certainly get their 50th win tonight against a depleted Warriors team. The more consequential question is whether Gilgeous-Alexander can stay healthy enough to hit 65 games played and claim the individual award that his performance has already earned. If he does, his case is not just strong; it is historic. Among the 12 back-to-back MVP winners in league history, only Curry in 2015-16 combined this level of scoring efficiency with a team record this dominant. Gilgeous-Alexander is 26 years old. The Thunder are built to contend for the next half-decade. The playoffs start April 18, and if the regular season is any indication, Oklahoma City will enter as the team no one in either conference wants to face in a seven-game series. The only debate left is whether the rule book will allow the voters to acknowledge what the court has already made obvious.
Sources
- Thunderous Intentions: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's unanimous MVP is still within reach
- Fox Sports: Oklahoma City looks for 50th win this season in matchup with Golden State
- CBS Sports: Warriors vs. Thunder odds, prediction, spread, time: 2026 NBA picks for Saturday, March 7
- Yardbarker: 2025-26 NBA MVP Ladder Week 20: Will SGA and Jokic Be Disqualified?
- Andscape: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 'in the moment' even as his trophy case grows
