The Oklahoma City Thunder took care of business again on Thursday night with a comfortable 118-103 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals. Now up 2-0 in the series, the Thunder are two wins away from their first trip to the NBA Finals since 2012.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named the 2025 NBA MVP on Wednesday, officially ending a months-long debate about whether he or Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić would win the honor. It turned out to be rather anticlimactic, as Gilgeous-Alexander received 71 of a possible 100 first-place votes.
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Prior to Thursday’s game, Gilgeous-Alexander received the Michael Jordan trophy in front of an adoring crowd inside the Paycom Center. He then delivered a masterful performance that showed exactly why he joined Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook as the only players in Thunder history to be named MVP.
Gilgeous-Alexander matched his playoff career-high with 38 points, adding three rebounds, eight assists and three steals. He made 12 of his 21 field goal attempts, and 13 of his 15 foul shots.
This was the fifth consecutive 30-point game for Gilgeous-Alexander, and his ninth during this postseason. If you include the regular season and the playoffs, this was his 58th 30-point game this season, which is tied with Durant for the most in a single season in franchise history.
Last season during a postgame interview, Gilgeous-Alexander gave a quote which not only summed up his style of play and unconventional rise to stardom, but also has become the focal point of countless TikTok edits.
“My whole life is consistent,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
That trait was on display yet again Thursday, as Gilgeous-Alexander scored at least eight points in all four quarters. He never gave the Timberwolves a break, and by the fourth quarter Jaden McDaniels was so fed up that he just shoved Gilgeous-Alexander in the back on a drive, which earned him a flagrant foul.
The Timberwolves are a great defensive team, and in theory should have one of the best units to throw at Gilgeous-Alexander, but there’s little anyone can do when he’s operating at the level he was at in Game 2. There will be more complaints about his trips to the free throw line, but he also hit a number of absurd shots.
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About the only mistake Gilgeous-Alexander has made recently was not getting coach Mark Daigneault one of the watches that he presented his teammates for helping him win MVP.
“[Shai] made the statement that everyone loves watches and I was like, well, not everyone,” Daigneault joked on Thursday.
The good news for Daigneault is that if Gilgeous-Alexander keeps playing like this, he’ll soon deliver him an even better gift than a watch — a trip to the NBA Finals.
