Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Bulls guard Coby White have been named the NBA’s Players of the Month for the Western Conference and Eastern Conference, respectively, the league announced today (via Twitter).
Gilgeous-Alexander continued to bolster his Most Valuable Player case in March by averaging an eye-popping 34.7 points per game on a scorching-hot .517/.413/.929 shooting line across 14 contests. The Thunder won 13 of those 14 games, with Gilgeous-Alexander also contributing 7.4 assists, 4.3 rebounds, 1.1 steals, and 1.0 block per night.
The Oklahoma City star has now been named the West’s Player of the Month three times this season, having also won the award for October/November and December. He’s the only player in either conference to have been recognized as a Player of the Month more than once in 2024/25.
As for White, he has taken his game to another level since the Bulls traded leading scorer Zach LaVine to Sacramento ahead of the trade deadline. In 15 March games, the sixth-year guard put up 27.7 PPG, 4.7 RPG, and 3.7 APG with a .495/.379/.878 shooting line, leading Chicago to a 9-6 record.
White was named Player of the Week for the Eastern Conference on both March 17 and March 24, becoming the first player this season to earn that honor in consecutive weeks.
Asked on Friday about the defensive impact of big men vs. wings in relation to Luguentz Dort‘s Defensive Player of the Year case, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault didn’t fully engage in that debate, but he argued that Dort has been the standout and the constant of the NBA’s top-ranked defense (Twitter video link via Joel Lorenzi of The Oklahoman).
“We have a lot of really good defenders, but he’s anchored consistently what’s been the best defensive league numerically to this point in the season, by a long shot,” Daigneault said.
The gap between the Thunder’s 106.1 defensive rating and that of the No. 2 Magic (109.5) is greater than the difference between Orlando and the No. 12 Heat (112.5).
For his part, Dort tells Mark Medina of Sportskeeda that while he’s focused on winning games rather than winning awards, he would be honored to make an All-Defense team or to be named Defensive Player of the Year.
“I don’t play for that. I want to win,” Dort said. “And I want to do everything I can to look good for my teammates. But it’s always good to get rewarded for that. So if my name is up there, I’ll be good.”
Here’s more on the Thunder:
In speaking to Medina, Dort was more interested in advocating for teammate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to earn MVP honors than to make his own case for award recognition. Thunder forward Jalen Williams conveyed a similar sentiment while talking to D.J. Siddiqi of Basketball Insiders. “I think he’s the MVP,” Williams said of SGA. “Obviously I’m his teammate, so I’m very inclined to say that. From what I see, the amount of Michael Jordan comparisons and the accolades and all that, I think it would be a very big disservice to him if he’s not the MVP, just based on what he’s been able to accomplish this year.”
Williams returned to action on Thursday after missing seven games due to a right hip strain and was effective in his first game back, contributing 20 points, five rebounds, and four assists in 29 minutes as Oklahoma City set a franchise record with its 61st regular season win, Lorenzi writes for The Oklahoman. However, a pair of Thunder regulars – Alex Caruso (low back soreness) and Jaylin Williams (left hip stiffness) – did leave the game early due to injuries, Lorenzi notes (via Twitter). It’s unclear if either player will have to miss any additional time as a result of those ailments — Rylan Stiles of Thunder On SI tweets that Caruso and Williams have been listed as questionable for OKC’s matchup with Indiana on Saturday.
The Thunder are losing multiple members of their scouting department to college programs, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype. As Scotto details, amateur scout Corey Evans is expected to be named the general manager at the University of Cincinnati, while fellow scout Andrew Slater has left the team to take the GM position at North Carolina State.
With a matchup against the injury-riddled Sixers on Wednesday, the Thunder have chosen to give Most Valuable Player candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander a break. The team has announced that SGA won’t play, listing rest as the reason, ESPN relays. It won’t impact Gilgeous-Alexander’s eligibility for the MVP — he’s already played 66 games, one more than needed to qualify for postseason awards.
Speaking of Dort, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault told The Oklahoman’s Joel Lorenzi (Twitter link) that he deserves consideration for defensive awards such as All-Defensive Team and Defensive Player of the Year. “I think his time has come for that. I think he’ll get that recognition this year. … we have the best defense in the league statistically and he’s anchored that the entire season,” Daigneault said. “The amount of 30-point games we’ve given up is the lowest in the league by any metric. He’s guarding most of those guys.” Dort has appeared in 62 games and needs to play three more games to qualify for those awards.
Forward Deni Avdija admits he was blindsided when Washington traded him to the Trail Blazers. “It was nighttime at my place (in Israel), and I woke up. I saw I got traded, and it was very hard for me,” he told Josh Robbins of The Athletic. “All the friendships that I had with the guys there, the city, the fans — it all just disappeared in a second. But everything’s for the good. I feel like I found a nice home in Portland.” Avdija has ramped up his production this month, averaging 20.9 points, 9.6 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game in March. “We’ve let him have a lot more responsibility with the ball, and he keeps proving to get better and better at it,” Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said. “He’s like a one-man fast break when he gets the ball. Some of these things, I didn’t even know about when we got him, because we only played him twice a year, so I didn’t know that much. But he’s been a pleasant surprise. The fire that he plays with, I think, takes our team to another level.”
Jazz coach Will Hardy has given Walker Kessler the green light to shoot three-pointers. “I’m very, very appreciative of him to give me the opportunity to work on it,” Kessler told Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune. “And I know, and I believe in myself to know that I can do that. I need to get back in the rhythm of how to do it, because it’s been a long time since I’ve really done it in volume.” Kessler, who will be rested against the Wizards on Wednesday, has taken 11 outside shots in his last two appearances but knocked down just one.
The NBA is investigating the Thunder and the Sixers for possible violations of the league’s player participation policy, sources tell Shams Charania of ESPN.
According to Charania, the NBA is looking specifically at the Thunder’s March 7 game vs. Portland, in which the team sat its entire starting five: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (rest), Chet Holmgren (lower leg contusion), Jalen Williams (wrist sprain), Luguentz Dort (patellofemoral soreness), and Isaiah Hartenstein (nasal fracture re-injury). Cason Wallace (right knee contusion) also missed the game, which wasn’t part of a back-to-back set.
While Holmgren sat out Oklahoma City’s March 5 contest too, the other five players who missed the Portland game were available on both March 5 and March 9.
Gilgeous-Alexander is the only Thunder player who meets the “star” criteria as defined by the player participation policy, but there’s a precedent for teams being penalized for sitting several “non-star” starters in the same game — the Nets were hit with a $100K fine last season for making a similar move.
Still, Rylan Stiles of SI.com (Twitter link) and Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link) are among the reporters to question the necessity of investigating the Thunder for their approach to the Portland game, given that they’ve had a strenuous post-All-Star schedule and still won the game by 18 points. Marks suggests that the league should be focused more on lottery-bound teams who may be flaunting the policy in an effort to improve their draft odds.
The Jazz, one such lottery-bound team, were fined $100K two days ago for a player participation policy. The Sixers, who have also seemingly pivoted to prioritizing lottery position in recent weeks, ruled out 11 players for Friday’s game vs. Indiana.
According to Charania, the league is looking at the Sixers due to the recent absences of Paul George (knee/back/finger) and Tyrese Maxey (back/finger). George has missed the past five games, while Maxey has been out for the past six, though head coach Nick Nurse said after Friday’s loss that Maxey should return at some point during Philadelphia’s upcoming six-game road trip (Twitter link via Derek Bodner of PHLY Sports).
The league may determine that the absences of George, Maxey, and the rest of the inactive Sixers players are legitimate, but if the club is determined to have violated the player participation policy, it could face a fine of $250K. That’s the amount for a second violation, and the 76ers already received a $100K fine earlier this season.
The NBA’s top two MVP candidates split a pair of games in Oklahoma City on Sunday and Monday, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander‘s Thunder securing a 24-point win in the first game and Nikola Jokic‘s Nuggets responding with a 13-point victory in the second end of the back-to-back.
In between those two contests, according to Fred Katz and Tony Jones of The Athletic, Nuggets coach Michael Malone broached the subject of having Jokic, who is dealing with elbow and ankle injuries, sit out on Monday. The Nuggets center’s reply? “Hell no.”
After Jokic led Denver to a victory on Monday with 35 points, 18 rebounds, and eight assists, his coach made the case that the star big man deserves his fourth Most Valuable Player award.
“Obviously, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a great player, and if he wins his first MVP, he’s deserving of that,” Malone said. “My thing is this: If you didn’t know that Nikola won three MVPs, and I put Player A and Player B on paper … the guy that was averaging a triple-double, the guy that is top-three in the three major statistical categories, things that no one has ever done, he wins the MVP 10 times out of 10. And if you don’t think so, I think you guys are all bulls—ting.”
Asked by ESPN’s Tim MacMahon if team record should factor into the equation, Malone pointed out that the Nuggets were the No. 1 seed in the West in 2023, the only year of the last four in which Jokic wasn’t named MVP. However, Malone added that he won’t be upset if Gilgeous-Alexander wins the award and that he simply feels the need to advocate for his guy in the midst of another historic season. As for Jokic’s two cents on the MVP race?
“This is my third or fourth year in a row, so I’m really — I don’t know. I cannot control it,” the Nuggets star said of the debate. “Obviously, I think I’m playing the best basketball of my life. So if that’s enough, it’s enough. If not, the guy (Gilgeous-Alexander) deserves it. He’s really amazing.”
Here are a few more notes from around the Western Conference:
The Oklahoma City Council has signed off on the next step toward the Thunder‘s new arena, approving contracts with a pair of construction companies who will partner to build the new venue, according to a a press release. Prairie Surf Studios, which currently occupies the space where the arena will be located, is scheduled to be demolished this spring. After that, the plan is to begin construction on the new building in 2026 and complete it in 2028.
Less than two weeks after recording the first triple-double of his NBA career, Pelicans forward Zion Williamson had another one on Tuesday, racking up 22 points, 12 assists, and 10 rebounds in a win over the Clippers. While New Orleans is well out of this season’s postseason race, Williamson’s excellent all-around play in recent weeks has been an encouraging sign for his development, notes Brett Martel of The Associated Press. “When he’s in high-level conditioning, like he is, he’s really tough to guard and he’s doing it all,” head coach Willie Green said. “He’s rebounding. He’s defending.”
The Lakers got off to a terrific start in the Luka Doncic era, reeling off eight consecutive wins from February 20 to March 6. However, as John Hollinger of The Athletic writes, the underlying numbers suggest it will take some more time for the star guard to build chemistry with his new teammates. Doncic’s shooting numbers as a Laker so far (.399 FG%, .322 3PT%) are well below his usual rates, while his turnover rate (4.2 per game) is up.
Gilgeous-Alexander won for the Western Conference, while Young claimed the East’s award. It was the second Player of the Week honor this season for each of them.
The presumed frontrunner for the 2024/25 MVP award after finishing as the runner-up last season, Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 44.0 points, 6.7 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 1.0 steal and 1.3 blocks on .540/.400/1.000 shooting in victories over Memphis, Houston and Denver last week. He missed one game, which Oklahoma City also won (against Portland).
The 26-year-old superstar leads the league in scoring with a career-best 32.9 PPG on elite efficiency for the West’s No. 1 seed. The Thunder have all but wrapped up the best record in the conference, leading their closest competition — the Lakers and Nuggets — by 12 games.
As for Young, he helped guide Atlanta to a 3-1 record last week, averaging 24.5 PPG, 13.0 APG and 2.8 RPG. He struggled a bit with efficiency, shooting just 39.0% from the field, including 20.0% from three-point range, though he did convert 96.7% of his 7.5 free throw attempts per contest.
The Hawks currently hold a half-game lead on both Orlando and Miami for the No. 7 seed in the East.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander prevailed over Nikola Jokic in Sunday’s battle of MVP favorites and the Thunder displayed why they’re headed for the No. 1 seed in the West, writes Joel Lorenzi of The Oklahoman. The MVP contest is considered to be a two-man race, and Lorenzi notes that SGA and Jokic were relatively even through three quarters. But Gilgeous-Alexander finished strong, posting nine points in the fourth quarter while making several clutch shots to end up with 40 points, eight rebounds and five assists.
“It’s been very fun,” he said of the season-long competition with Jokic. “Most of the appreciation comes from, honestly, my teammates. No matter how good of a basketball player I am, if we don’t check the win column as much as we do, the conversation wouldn’t be the conversation.”
It was important for the Thunder to be able to prove themselves in a nationally televised game against one of the NBA’s elite teams. The Nuggets are viewed as legitimate title contender after winning a championship two years ago, while there are still questions about Oklahoma City despite its 53-11 record.
“We have greatness among us,” Alex Caruso said. “When we play at our highest level, we’re a great team. It’s just about doing it consistently, and matching the pedigree play-after-play with some of these top teams. From the beginning of the game today, (Denver) came in like they were playing against the top team in the West. We came in like it was a noon game against the Nuggets on Sunday. …. When we play at an elite level we’re, in my opinion, the best team in the world.”
There’s more from the Northwest Division:
Warriors forward Draymond Green is among those who have expressed doubt about the Thunder as true title contenders, per Zach Kram of ESPN. “There’s a certain seriousness that it takes to win in this league, and there’s a certain fear you have to instill in teams in order to win,” Green said on his podcast earlier this season. “I just don’t know if they’re instilling that fear in teams.” Kram lists 22 reasons why Oklahoma City should have earned the league’s respect by now.
Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert was able to return Sunday after missing 10 games with a lower back injury. He was a game-time decision and was cleared to play less than an hour before tip-off, according to Kent Youngblood of The Star Tribune. “I always try to work on the root of the problem to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Gobert said. “Playing with pain is part of the game. But there is pain that keeps you from moving, or that can get worse. Right now, I feel like I’m strong. I feel balanced.”
Trail Blazers swingman Matisse Thybulle is moving closer to making his season debut, tweets Sean Highkin of Rose Garden Report. Thybulle will practice with Portland’s G League affiliate this week as part of his reconditioning and could be cleared to play on the upcoming homestand.
Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic concluded Friday’s overtime game against the Suns with the league’s first-ever 30/20/20 game, having totaled 31 points, 21 rebounds and 22 assists.
In some ways, the three-time MVP’s history-making stat line is almost unsurprising. Jokic continues to be on the forefront of award discussions while putting up video-game level stat lines every night.
The 30-year-old big man is averaging career highs of 28.9 points and 10.6 assists per game, while his 12.9 rebounds per game would be the second-best mark of his career. He’s doing this on an incredibly efficient .577/.439/.818 shooting split. His 43.9% three-point percentage and 4.4 attempts from deep per game are also both career highs.
And while Jokic’s stats might be unsurprising after three MVPs and six All-NBA appearances, it does not mean they should go overlooked. This kind of production is what fans read about in history books and resembles something of an old Wilt Chamberlain stat line.
Being an MVP isn’t all about individual statistics, however. Being the league’s most valuable player means leading a winning situation and making one’s teammates better. Jokic fulfills this criteria, having helped the Nuggets overcome a relatively shaky start to the season. Denver won nine straight from late January to late February and has emerged victorious in 14 of its last 17 games.
Christian Braun is having a season worthy of the Most Improved Player award and Russell Westbrook is proving to be a nice fit, along with other contributions up and down the lineup from the Nuggets’ starters and role players. Jokic has good players around him, but there’s no doubt he’s helping set them up for success.
Despite Jokic’s historic achievements, he’s still trailing Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in NBA.com’s most recent MVP ladder. Entering Friday, Gilgeous-Alexander appeared to be the runaway favorite for the award.
Gilgeous-Alexander, by the way, is absolutely deserving of the praise. He’s averaging a league-leading and career-high 32.8 points along with 5.1 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game. His 1.8 steals per night are second to only Dyson Daniels and he has posted an impressive .526/.378/.898 shooting line.
As we wrote Thursday, Gilgeous-Alexander’s efficiency is off the charts. His true-shooting and usage percentages are career highs, and he ranks first in the league among guards in the former category.
The Canadian superstar finished second in MVP voting last year and may very well come away with the award this year. He has become the NBA’s surest bet to score 50 points on a given night, having done so four times in the last seven weeks after having previously never accomplished the feat in his career.
Like Jokic, Gilgeous-Alexander accomplishes the two-pronged test of winning games and helping his teammates. The Thunder own the league’s second-best record at 52-11, sitting atop the Western Conference. Oklahoma City has only dropped two games since the start of February, winning 15 of its previous 17.
What’s more, the Thunder are doing this in the face of multiple injuries to key players. Marquee free agent addition Isaiah Hartenstein missed over 20 games due to injury this season while star second-year center Chet Holmgren has been limited to just 18 appearances. Lockdown defender Alex Caruso, acquired via trade, has also missed over 20 games.
There’s no doubt multiple Thunder players like Jalen Williams, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins, to name a few, deserve individual praise. But Gilgeous-Alexander’s presence and elite offensive production are certainly helping bring out the best in those players as well.
Beyond the two hottest names in Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander, it’s easy to forget other players are worthy of being thrown into the conversation as well. Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s 30.8 points and 12.1 rebounds per game should not be overlooked. Jayson Tatum, Karl-Anthony Towns and Evan Mobley are also putting up tremendous numbers on contending teams. But all signs point to Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander being the top two in voting.
As NBA.com’s Shaun Powell writes, the Nuggets and Thunder play each other for the final two times this regular season on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening in back-to-back games. The results of those two contests could help sway voters in one direction or another. Premier matchups between the league’s best tend to go the most-noticed among fans, so it will be interesting to see if Jokic continues to close the perceived gap in the race. For what it’s worth, Basketball Reference’s 2024/25 NBA MVP tracker gives Jokic a 65.1% chance to win the award.
Regardless of what happens, it will be interesting to see if the clash between Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander ends up as close as Jokic’s first MVP win over Joel Embiid in ’21/22, the tightest race in recent memory. Both Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander are worthy of the honor and are putting up generational-type seasons.
That leads us to today’s question: Who should win the ’24/25 MVP award? Head to the comments to share your pick between Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander or to let us know if you believe another player should come away with the award.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is fresh off his fourth 50-point game in the past seven weeks and currently appears to be the favorite for the league’s Most Valuable Player award. As Fred Katz of The Athletic writes, an unmatched motor and a strong summertime workout routine helped Gilgeous-Alexander take what used to be an unconventional route to superstardom (none of the top three presumed MVP vote-earners were top-10 picks).
“He’s ahead of his time,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Intuitively, he’s where the scientific research is, which is you wanna be making decisions. You want randomness in your workouts. You want variability. You want interweaving in the workout. He kinda does that naturally.”
Gilgeous-Alexander is breaking through the trend of high-usage players seeing efficiency taper off. His 64.5% true shooting percentage and 34.6% usage percentage are both career highs and lead most guards in the league.
“It’s like LeBron [James] in his prime, Giannis [Antetokounmpo], the speed of [Ja] Morant, the speed and power of [Russell] Westbrook; he’s a great athlete, but he’s not an overpowering athlete, where those guys are,” Daigneault said. “And yet, he gets to the same places on the floor as they do. And to me, that says it all about the skill.”
We have more from the Northwest Division:
Jazz rookie big man Kyle Filipowski is coming off two of the best games of his career, scoring 25 points on Monday and going for 23 and 13 rebounds on Wednesday. Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune explores whether Filipowski is better suited to be playing the four or the five for the Jazz moving forward. Larsen opines that, while Filipowski isn’t the strongest interior defender, he’s probably best suited for the center position. “The responsibility between a four and a three on offense sometimes [doesn’t differ] very much,” head coach Will Hardy said. “The responsibilities between four and five are very different, and so Flip has had to deal with a lot of change throughout the season … He deserves a lot of credit, because that’s a hard thing. We have a lot of guys who are trying to learn their responsibilities at one position, and Flip’s doing it at two.”
Jaden McDaniels offensive emergence is key to the Timberwolves‘ playoff push, writes Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. In his last 12 games, McDaniels has averaged 19.2 points and 3.0 assists per game — in his first 52 games, he put up just 11.0 PPG and 1.7 APG. The forward’s three-point volume has also gone up — he launched a season-high nine outside attempts on Wednesday. He’s also on a different level now as a rebounder than he ever has been. “He can do a lot of different things, and he works his butt off,” teammate Julius Randle said. “We need him to play with that confidence because it gives us a whole different level as a team.”
Scoot Henderson is continuing to emerge as a more consistent player, but Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report (Substack link) doesn’t see the former No. 3 overall pick returning to the starting lineup soon. Because the Trail Blazers are still in contention for a play-in spot, a shake-up might not make sense at this juncture. If Portland is eliminated, the club may switch things up.
In the same article, Highkin explores the Trail Blazers‘ three options with Chauncey Billups this summer. Billups has shown he’s grown as a coach with Portland’s turnaround, Highkin writes, so they could either pick up the fifth-year option he has for next season, sign him to an extension, or mutually allow him to look for other opportunities.
Although the Jazz were missing several regulars and only lost by seven points, head coach Will Hardy wasn’t happy with what he saw from his team on Sunday at home vs. New Orleans. As Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune (subscription required) relays, Hardy had plenty to say after a 128-121 loss in which Utah gave up 76 points in the paint.
“Everybody wants to play more, and then you get a chance to do it, and you go out there and you don’t execute, that’s frustrating,” Hardy said. “… The frustrating part is that there’s so much opportunity on our team right now, and all of these young players are getting an opportunity to show us who they are, what they are, and that opportunity needs to be met with the desperation that it deserves.”
None of the 10 Jazz players who saw minutes on Sunday are older than 26 years old, while their oldest starter in the game was 24-year-old KJ Martin, so an already young team was even younger in that game vs. the Pelicans.
“No one cares what your résumé was before you got here,” Hardy continued. “I don’t care how many points you scored in high school. I don’t care what you were ranked coming out of high school. It doesn’t matter where you played in college. Doesn’t matter how many wins you got in college. It doesn’t matter how many points you scored in college. Your Instagram followers mean nothing to me. This is a job … this is a profession, and it needs to be treated as such.”
Utah had Walker Kessler and Collin Sexton back in its starting five on Monday against Detroit after they missed Sunday’s game, but the club didn’t fare any better on the second end of a back-to-back set, falling by 28 points at home to the Pistons.
Here’s more from around the Northwest:
The Thunder‘s top two scorers were firing on all cylinders in the team’s past two games, as Jalen Williams poured in a career-high 41 points in Sunday’s win over San Antonio (story via Joel Lorenzi of The Oklahoman) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander racked up 51 in Monday’s win over Houston for his fourth 50-point game since January 22 (story via ESPN.com). “Whether it’s 50, whether it’s 27, whether it’s 17 — as long as we win, I have fun with it,” Gilgeous-Alexander said on Monday. “… Like, you don’t play the game to score a bunch of points. You don’t play the game to get a bunch of rebounds or assists or steals. … You don’t play for anything besides to win, and that’s what it’s all about.”
As the fourth center on the Trail Blazers‘ depth chart behind Deandre Ayton, Robert Williams, and lottery pick Donovan Clingan, Duop Reath hasn’t gotten a chance to play much this season. But he has taken advantage of a chance to play rotation minutes in Portland’s past two games, scoring 20 points in a total of 41 minutes on Sunday and Monday with Ayton and Williams out, writes Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian. “(Reath) was playing great,”Anfernee Simons said after Monday’s win. “Obviously, having not been playing, staying ready at all times, being professional and coming in doing his job when his numbers is called. We all know what Duop is capable of. Each and every time we know we’re going to get the best out of him.”
In a mailbag, Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report (Substack link) considers why the Trail Blazers haven’t “embraced the tank” this season, explores whether it makes sense for Portland to pursue win-now moves this summer, and acknowledges that it may difficult for the team to find a good deal for Jerami Grant on the trade market this offseason.
Gilgeous-Alexander continued to bolster his Most Valuable Player case in March by averaging an eye-popping 34.7 points per game on a scorching-hot .517/.413/.929 shooting line across 14 contests. The Thunder won 13 of those 14 games, with Gilgeous-Alexander also contributing 7.4 assists, 4.3 rebounds, 1.1 steals, and 1.0 block per night.
Gilgeous-Alexander won for the Western Conference, while Young claimed the East’s award. It was the second Player of the Week honor this season for each of them.
In some ways, the three-time MVP’s history-making stat line is almost unsurprising. Jokic continues to be on the forefront of award discussions while putting up video-game level stat lines every night.