A month since we first ranked our playoff MVP candidates and two weeks since we last did, we are nearly through three rounds of a postseason filled with game-winners, comebacks and upsets — the good stuff.
Let us do it again, placing our Playoff MVPs in so perfect an order you could not possibly argue with it.
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You could only hope to read it.
Enjoy this edition of Playoff MVPs as an appetizer for Saturday’s main course, as two of our top three candidates will wage battle when the Indiana Pacers host the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. The right to face our MVP leader, already in the NBA Finals clubhouse, is on the line.
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder
We talk a lot about how well players can get to the spots on the floor where they are most comfortable, and few players, if any, are as adept at getting to his spots as this year’s MVP. More than that, though, he his points. SGA has scored 25 or more points in 13 of his 16 playoff games (two of the games in which he did not were 40-point blowouts). He has scored 30 or more points in 11 of his 16 playoff games.
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Twelve of those playoff games are wins, as Gilgeous-Alexander has led OKC to series wins over Ja Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies, Nikola Jokić’s Denver Nuggets and Anthony Edwards’ Minnesota Timberwolves. The Thunder need four more victories — against either the Indiana Pacers or New York Knicks — to win it all. As it is, they are outscoring opponents by a sizzling 11.2 points per 100 possessions in this postseason.
Consistent excellency at the league’s highest level is the stuff of legend. Gilgeous-Alexander is becoming one in real time. It is beginning to feel inevitable that he will become the first player since Stephen Curry to win the MVP award and a championship in the same season. And if his Thunder were to win the title, it would be hard to imagine anyone else capturing Finals MVP honors, which would make him the first player since LeBron James in 2013 to accomplish that feat. SGA is rubbing elbows with the game’s gods.
2. Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana Pacers
Who could have seen this coming, other than Pacers fans? At the start of this postseason, Haliburton was pretty comfortably among the top 20 players in the NBA, a fringe All-NBA candidate who cracked the third team for a second consecutive season. He was nobody’s idea of a superstar who could carry a team into serious contention, not in an Eastern Conference that featured a pair of 60-win juggernauts.
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Haliburton slayed one of those giants, the weary Cleveland Cavaliers, in five games. He is in the process of defeating the New York Knicks, who disposed of the hobbled Boston Celtics in six games. Leading comeback after comeback after comeback, making game-saving shot after game-saving shot, Haliburton has forced us to wonder: Where does he belong among the 10 best players in the league? That is a hell of a leap for a playoff run. But after watching him post a 32-12-15 triple-double with zero turnovers against the Knicks, who could call him anything but one of the two most impactful players of this postseason?
3. Jalen Brunson, New York Knicks
Were the scores switched in their series, Brunson might hold that second spot over Haliburton, since he has been every bit as special. He, too, has led comebacks and sank game-winners. The NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year has played like it, scoring 144 fourth-quarter points in these playoffs — an average of nine per game and a total of 36 more than the NBA’s next-most productive player (Gilgeous-Alexander).
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Like SGA, Brunson finds his way to wherever he wants, which is most often the 3-point line, the free-throw line or that floater that feels like a prayer but finds the bottom of the net more often than not. To have his offensive arsenal as a 6-foot-2 former second-round draft pick really is as impressive as it gets.
4. Anthony Edwards, Minnesota Timberwolves
What else can we say but Edwards ran into a buzzsaw in the Western Conference finals, losing in five games to Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder. It was a terrible matchup for him, as Oklahoma City had Lu Dort, Cason Wallace, Alex Caruso and a seemingly endless array of point-of-attack defenders to throw at him. They were everywhere, making him feel as though he were being double-teamed, even when he was not.
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He was also getting double-teamed — a lot.
Still, Edwards averaged 25.3 points, 7.8 rebounds and 5.5 assists in the playoffs — at 23 years old. Here is the complete list of players to average a 25-8-6 at so young an age through three rounds in NBA history: LeBron James, Luka Dončić and now Edwards. That is it. Oh, and Edwards beat both James and Dončić in the opening round of these playoffs. He defeated Curry’s Golden State Warriors, too. He is a giant slayer.
We need to remember this: With back-to-back Western Conference finals appearances — in this Western Conference — Edwards is on pace to walk among the greats. No need to rush him. He has already made a leap, and he will take the next step soon enough, so long as the Timberwolves keep weapons around him.
5. Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets
It feels weird to put someone who has not played for an entire round in this spot, but Jokić’s Nuggets pushed the Thunder further than anyone else, taking the title favorites to seven games in the Western Conference semifinals. He was absurd in that series, averaging a 28-14-6 and twice eclipsing 40 points.
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Even now, with another round in the books, only Brunson, SGA and Edwards have score more points in these playoffs than Jokić; only Karl-Anthony Towns has grabbed more rebounds; and only Haliburton and Brunson have delivered more assists. Jokić is the best player in the world, and he performed his part.
6. Pascal Siakam, Indiana Pacers
7. Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder
8. Karl-Anthony Towns, New York Knicks
9. Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland Cavaliers
10. Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics
Honorable mention: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks; Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors; Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder; Julius Randle, Minnesota Timberwolves.
