It’s mid-May, and we still do not yet (officially) know who the 2025 NBA MVP is.
The likely winner is Oklahoma City Thunder star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who helped pace the Thunder to a stellar 68-win regular season campaign. But as his team battles last year’s MVP and the presumptive runner-up, Serbian center Nikola Jokić, and his Denver Nuggets in a heated second-round series, there’s still no clear indication on when exactly Gilgeous-Alexander could be presented his potential trophy.
Which is weird, with all things considered.
Doing it before Tuesday night’s pivotal Game 5 in Oklahoma City seemed like a perfect opportunity to give Gilgeous-Alexander his flowers in front of his home fans. (Not to mention the irony of doing it in front of Jokić smack dab in the middle of their MVP playoff battle.) But that is apparently not happening.
After TNT announcer Ian Eagle claimed he had heard “murmurs” that the presentation would happen before Game 5 in an interview on Denver’s Altitude Sports Radio, Altitude personality Vic Lombardi later debunked this assertion, reporting that there would, in fact, be no MVP presentation before Game 5.
Huh? Why?
It’s worth noting that Gilgeous-Alexander’s likely MVP announcement is really a bit off trajectory from recent years.
In 2024, Jokić was announced for his third MVP on May 8 before a two-game road trip to Minnesota in the second round. He then promptly got his trophy in front of Denver’s fans before Game 5 of that series on May 14. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid was announced as the 2023 MVP on May 2 in the middle of a road trip against the Boston Celtics in the second round. He would later receive his trophy in front of Philadelphia’s home fans before Game 3 of that series on May 5.
With the apparent delay to Gilgeous-Alexander’s likely MVP presentation, the earliest he could get it now in front of Oklahoma City’s supporters would be before a potential Game 7 … this Sunday, May 18. Or, in a possible Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.
That, of course, heavily presumes there will even be a Game 7 in the Thunder’s series with the Nuggets or that the Thunder will actually advance to the next round in the first place. And that opens the door to the possibility that Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t get to properly celebrate his probable MVP honor with Thunder fans until next season, if at all. That makes all of this a particularly odd gambit to make if you’re the NBA’s decision-makers.
What could possibly be the delay? Is there a schedule conflict with the Thunder’s home arena? The vote for this year’s MVP was finalized on April 15, so it can’t be that.
Maybe it really just comes down to the NBA hoping that Nuggets-Thunder goes seven games, as it could then play up a spicy duel-of-the-MVPs narrative with Jokić watching Gilgeous-Alexander get celebrated right before one of the biggest games of the entire season. That probably wouldn’t help conspiracy theories about the league being “rigged” from some NBA fans after the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery fiasco, but it does appear to be the most plausible and logical at this juncture.
Whatever the case may be, the NBA definitely isn’t doing many favors for itself or Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder here.
