The three-time MVP has a strong case to win his fourth award. But that is to ignore the brilliance \u2013 and freshness \u2013 of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/p>\n
On Sunday afternoon, two of the best teams in the NBA\u2019s Western Conference faced off on national television. When it was over, the Oklahoma City Thunder had routed the Denver Nuggets 127-103<\/a>, pulling away in the fourth quarter thanks to a barrage from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 40 points on the day. But because it was the NBA<\/a>, the game was less about the teams and more about the stars at the center of the action \u2013 who just so happen to be the league\u2019s top two MVP candidates.<\/p>\n Denver\u2019s Nikola Joki\u0107<\/a> has been named NBA MVP three times in the past four years. That\u2019s rarefied air. Only three men \u2013 Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird \u2013 have won the award three times in a row. And only a small number of guys, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, have won it three out of four years. The year Joki\u0107 didn\u2019t win it during his streak, he lost a close vote to Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid in an especially heated contest that included accusations of racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The three-time MVP has a strong case to win his fourth award. But that is to ignore the brilliance \u2013 and freshness \u2013 of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander On Sunday afternoon, two of the best teams in the NBA\u2019s Western Conference faced off on national television. When it was over, the Oklahoma City Thunder had routed the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}