The Assassin vs. The Alien: My 2026 NBA MVP vote
The Assassin vs. The Alien: My 2026 NBA MVP vote
Kevin O'ConnorMon, April 13, 2026 at 2:16 PM UTC
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It should have been the easiest MVP decision in years.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the reigning MVP and Finals MVP, and he’s even better this season. He is the best player on the best team, and he has been that for the entire season from the Thunder's absurd 24-1 start all the way to a 64-18 finish to hold on to the top seed.
The case for Shai to win a second straight MVP should be the cleanest, most boring, most airtight argument in basketball. Best player, best team, historic consistency, game winners, defending champion. Pencils down. Go home.
Except, there’s a guy by the name of Victor Wembanyama.
On the night of March 30, SGA had one of his most memorable games of his entire dominant season. He scored 47 points, including 31 in the second half and in overtime to beat the Pistons. But hours earlier, Wemby had 41 points with 16 rebounds in 31 minutes, shooting 17-of-27 while swatting three shots. It was his first of consecutive 40-point double-doubles — the first player in Spurs history to pull that off, a franchise whose annals include David Robinson and some guy named Tim Duncan.
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This is what the MVP race had become in its final month — a nightly game of “Can You Top This?” between a Canadian assassin and a French alien who is doing things that have no historical comparison because no one with his dimensions has ever possessed his skill set.
(Davis Long/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
And there’s a guy by the name of Nikola Jokić, too. A three-time MVP averaging 28/13/11, still at his peak powers offensively, and still playing a version of basketball that nobody else can replicate. Down the stretch, Jokić won the battle against Wemby, scoring 40 points and hitting clutch shots in overtime, including his signature Sombor Shuffle over the outreached arm of Wembanyama. A seemingly impossible task that only Jokić is capable of.
But Jokić will finish third on my ballot. The Nuggets were in the bottom 10 in defensive rating, and Jokić was nowhere near as impactful at getting stops as he was in any of his three previous MVP seasons. Denver had a 115.2 defensive rating with Jokić to 115.7 without him. An MVP is supposed to move that number. He didn't. This regression was largely due to a hyperextended knee in December that eroded his defense. In most years, Jokić would have still done more than enough, but that's the margin on a tight ballot.
Jaylen Brown carried Boston to the 2-seed after key roster losses last summer and without Jayson Tatum for most of the year. He is in consideration for a top-five spot, but he didn’t perform at the level of the aforementioned three. Meanwhile, the NBA will deliver word about the award eligibility status of Luka Dončić and Cade Cunningham. Neither of them will crack the top three, but both had sensational seasons. All of them deserved a cleaner runway to my MVP vote. None got it because of the unprecedented performances of SGA and Wemby.
This has been, without a doubt, the most thrilling and most difficult choice I have ever had to make for NBA MVP in my 10 seasons as a voter. It's come down to a question I've never really had to answer on a ballot before: How much do you trust what the box score won’t tell you? One of these guys carries his team in the most visible way the sport allows. The other carries it in ways the box score doesn't have language for.
The case for SGA: He was even better than last year
Source: “AOL Sports”
