Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Claims Second Straight Kia NBA MVP as Fellow Canadian Steve Nash Makes the Presentation

The Kia NBA MVP award for the 2025-26 season has been awarded to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league announced on Sunday. The presentation came from an unexpected but fitting figure: two-time MVP Steve Nash, himself a Canadian who defined an era of creative, pass-first basketball before retiring. The symmetry was not incidental. Twenty years separate the two Canadians' MVP campaigns — Nash's second award came in the 2005-06 season — but the thread connecting them runs deeper than nationality. Both players rebuilt their teams from lottery afterthoughts into contenders. Both earned the MVP nod as much for their influence on teammates as for their own statistics.

Gilgeous-Alexander's case rested on a season that rewrote the Thunder's franchise record book. He averaged 32.7 points per game, the highest figure for a non-guard-selected MVP since the award's expansion to include all positions in 1955-56. He posted 6.9 assists and 5.4 rebounds while shooting 53 percent from the field and 38 percent from three. Defensively, he contributed 1.7 steals and 1.1 blocks — numbers that reflected his growing willingness to take on opponents' best scorers in critical moments. The Thunder finished the regular season 68-14, the best record in the Western Conference and the second-best mark in the league. In the playoffs, Oklahoma City reached the conference finals before being eliminated by the Denver Nuggets in seven games, a result that generated its own debate about whether team postseason failure should weigh against an individual award.

That debate is not new to the MVP conversation, but it surfaced with particular sharpness this year. Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets — the reigning champion and a three-time MVP — posted a season that in any other year might have earned serious consideration. He averaged 29.5 points, 12.9 rebounds, and 10.1 assists, joining Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook as the only players to average a triple-double for a full season. Jokic's advocates argued that carrying a Nuggets roster stripped of key contributors by injury to the second seed in the West constituted more valuable work than Gilgeous-Alexander's Thunder, which entered the season with a deeper, more talented supporting cast. The voting mathematics do not support a runaway. Gilgeous-Alexander received 89 first-place votes to Jokic's 34, with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic splitting the remainder.

The Nash presentation added a ceremonial weight that the league clearly intended. Nash, who won the award in 2004-05 and 2005-06 with the Phoenix Suns, is one of only 12 players to claim the MVP honor multiple times. He never won a championship — a fact that haunted his legacy during his playing years and that Gilgeous-Alexander's supporters are acutely aware could repeat itself. The Thunder have reached the conference finals twice in the past three seasons without advancing further. Oklahoma City's window is open now, but the Western Conference landscape is crowded with elite teams. The Nuggets remain formidable. The Minnesota Timberwolves have built a contender around Anthony Edwards. The Houston Rockets, after years of rebuilding, finished the season 52-30 and earned a playoff berth.

What makes Gilgeous-Alexander's two MVP awards distinct from recent back-to-back winners is the context of arrival. Giannis won in 2019-20 on the strength of a dominant Milwaukee team that had added Jrue Holiday to a core that already included Khris Middleton. Joel Embiid, the 2022-23 winner, was the beneficiary of a Sixers roster constructed specifically to maximize his offensive skill set. Gilgeous-Alexander's Thunder are young — he is 27 years old — and their supporting cast has been assembled largely through the draft rather than free agency or trade. Chet Holmgren, the 7-foot center drafted second overall in 2022, missed his rookie season with a foot injury and has spent the two seasons since developing into a two-way presence. Jalen Williams, the 2022 sixth overall pick, made the All-Star team this season for the first time. The Thunder's ascent has been patient and deliberate, a product of tanking seasons that produced high draft picks more than blockbuster signings.

Nash's own path to the MVP awards followed a different architecture but a similar logic. He arrived in Phoenix in 2004 after the Mavericks decided not to match the Suns' free-agent offer, a decision that Dallas owner Mark Cuban later called one of his regrets. Nash immediately transformed the Suns from a 29-win team into a 62-win outfit. His pick-and-roll partnership with Amar'e Stoudemire rewrote the rules of how an offense could operate in the half-court. The comparison to Gilgeous-Alexander is imperfect — Nash was a facilitator, Gilgeous-Alexander a scorer — but both players made their teammates meaningfully better and both carried franchises that lacked the veteran infrastructure most contenders rely on.

The broader question is what back-to-back MVPs for Gilgeous-Alexander means for the league's competitive trajectory. Oklahoma City now enters the summer with cap flexibility, draft capital, and a core under contract. The Thunder are well positioned to add a veteran piece or two without disrupting the financial architecture that has allowed them to maintain continuity. Whether that is enough to clear the Nuggets, Timberwolves, and whatever other contenders emerge from the West remains uncertain. The 2025-26 season delivered a compelling MVP race — probably the closest since the 2016-17 award, when Russell Westbrook beat out James Harden in a narrow vote that remains contentious to this day. That the race went Gilgeous-Alexander's way is not the significant story. The significant story is that it went to a player whose team has not yet won the thing that would settle every lingering question about whether the award was deserved. Nash never got that chance. Gilgeous-Alexander still has time.

This publication covered the SGA announcement on the day it broke, noting the Nash presentation as a narrative detail the standard wire framing tended to treat as incidental. The MVP voting breakdown was reported by the NBA's official channels alongside the announcement.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/NBALive/18432