Perhaps no team in the NBA has been more surprising this season than the Oklahoma City Thunder, led by star point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has established himself as one of the most exciting players in the game over the last two years. Despite their recent blowout loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, the Thunder are still just a game out of first place in the vaunted Western Playoff picture, and Gilgeous-Alexander has raised eyebrows this season with his consistent dominance, constantly leaving opposing defenses at his mercy.
Perhaps no eyebrows are raised higher than those of former NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal, who recently took to TNT's Inside the NBA to break down why Gilgeous-Alexander is his choice for this year's league MVP.
“The MVP is SGA… He meets my criteria and everybody else's criteria. He’s the baddest player in the game and their team is 49-21,” said O'Neal, per ClutchPoints on X. “He has 50 thirty-point games. Who else is doing that?”
Fans of the Denver Nuggets might have reservations about O'Neal's assertion that Gilgeous-Alexander is the “baddest” player in the game. Although “baddest” doesn't necessarily equate to “best,” it'd be hard to argue that there's a more feared player in the game right now than Nikola Jokic, who put together one of the most dominant playoff runs in NBA history this past spring, never facing elimination and getting pushed past game five of a series only once en route to the championship.
Still, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has of course been excellent in his own right, and arguably has less help on his Thunder squad than what Jokic has with Denver.
How far can the Thunder advance in the playoffs?
The biggest cause for skepticism for most NBA pundits regarding the Thunder is their relative youth, as the team has the youngest starting lineup in the NBA. Generally, teams with such inexperience do not advance very far into the NBA playoffs, but then again, teams with such inexperience are usually not perched atop their conference standings in late March, as is the case with Oklahoma City.
It's unclear how Gilgeous-Alexander's game will be challenged when opposing defenses have more time to gameplan for him in a postseason scenario. The former Kentucky Wildcat has made two playoff appearances in his career–first with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2019, and then the next season with the Oklahoma City Thunder–but in neither instance was he the number one option on his team, as he clearly is now for the Thunder.
Perhaps the nightmare scenario for the Thunder is that they end up drawing the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, a team that has given them huge problems this season due to their size and obviously has an incredible experience advantage due primarily to the presence of one LeBron James.
Still, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander playing at such an elite level up to this point, there's no reason that the Thunder shouldn't be able to make some noise when the playoffs roll around in just under a month's time.
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