The NBA announced the finalists for each major award for the 2024-25 season over a month ago, and has slowly been revealing the winners throughout the playoffs. Now, finally, it’s time to learn which player has been crowned MVP.
The 2025 NBA MVP will be announced on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. ET on TNT, prior to Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals between the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers, the league announced earlier in the day.
The finalists for MVP are:
Gilgeous-Alexander is expected to be named the winner after leading the Thunder to 68 wins — tied for the fifth most in a season in NBA history — and the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs. He won the scoring title with a career-high 32.7 points, and also averaged five rebounds and a career-high 6.4 assists per game, while shooting 51.9% from the field.
Based on the publicly tracked ballots from official award voters, Gilgeous-Alexander has a healthy lead over Jokić, while Antetokounmpo is a distant third. Of the 47 official voters who have announced their ballot, Gilgeous-Alexander has received 32 first-place votes, while Jokić has received 15. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but it does mean that Jokić would have to be the first-place choice on an overwhelming majority of the undisclosed ballots.
Jokić was well deserving of the award after a historic season in which he joined Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook as the only players to average a triple-double: a career-high 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds and career-high 10.6 assists on 57.6% shooting. He was also the first player ever to finish in the top three in the league in scoring, rebounding and assists. While the Nuggets’ record was certainly not his fault, they finished well behind the Thunder in the standings at 50-32.
As for Antetokounmpo, he has been included because the league announces three finalists for every major honor, but this has always been a two-horse race. Still, he should be acknowledged for another brilliant campaign, in which he put up 30.4 points, 11.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game to become the first player ever to average 30/10/5 for three consecutive seasons.
If Gilgeous-Alexander does indeed win, he will join Kevin Durant (2014) and Russell Westbrook (2017) as the only Thunder players to be named MVP.
If Jokić wins, he would join Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (six), Michael Jordan (five), Bill Russell (five), Wilt Chamberlain (four) and LeBron James (four) as the only players in NBA history with four MVP trophies.
