Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Adds Another Trophy Before NBA MVP Announcement

Oklahoma City Thunder All-Star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is expected to win NBA MVP.

In the meantime, he won something else.

On Tuesday, the NBA announced Gilgeous-Alexander as the 2025-26 Kia NBA Clutch Player of the Year, an award the league introduced during the 2022-23 season, with the winner receiving the Jerry West Trophy.

Gilgeous-Alexander accepted the award with help from his young son, Ares:

According to Bleacher Report, Gilgeous-Alexander accounted for 175 clutch points and 6.5 clutch points per game. The former is the highest of anyone this season, and the latter is the highest since the league began recognizing the stat. Those points were registered within the final five minutes of each game, either in the fourth quarter or overtime.

Minnesota Timberwolves All-Star guard Anthony Edwards and Denver Nuggets All-Star guard Jamal Murray were finalists for Clutch Player of the Year, but everything is coming up SGA.

It’s overwhelmingly considered that the NBA MVP announcement later this postseason is nothing more than a formality, and should that be the case, Gilgeous-Alexander will become the league’s third back-to-back MVP since 2019. Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo won MVP in 2019 and 2020, while Denver’s Nikola Jokic won in 2021, 2022, and 2024.

Gilgeous-Alexander is also two months away from potentially becoming a back-to-back NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP. The top-seeded Thunder are one game into their quest of trying to become the NBA’s first repeat champion since the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018.

Oklahoma City demolished the eighth-seeded Phoenix Suns 119-84 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series on Sunday. Game 2 is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday in Oklahoma City.

See the full list of end-of-year awards finalists and the NBA’s announcement schedule here.

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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 5:02 PM.