OKC Record as SGA’s MVP case

I want to preface this with the disclaimer that I will not be discrediting Joker’s MVP case with this post- he is an excellent player having an MVP caliber season. But before the OKC-Denver game, I wanted to lay out a case I haven’t seen for why SGA does deserve MVP credit for the thunder’s outstanding regular season record.

If you have not been locked in to OKC over the past 4 years (understandable) and are a fan of another team that just checks in on OKC scores or highlights, you might come to a conclusion like “OKC as a team is so good, they don’t rely on Shai as much for production.” What that misses is that this team has completely taken on SGAs personality, and you can see year over year the individual players and team improve following his lead.

We do not have a super team of role players that came into the league good at everything. Really, Chet is our only true “blue-chip” player entering the league, everyone else is a mix of late lottery, second round, and undrafted players who have bought in every year to playing a certain way on both ends - moving the ball constantly on offense and learning to find the holes in the defense, and most importantly, completely buying in every defensive possession to playing physical at the point of attack and busting ass to help/recover. That takes a toll mentally and physically, which is why it is so rare. This is not a team of 6’8 jaden McDaniels, most of our defenders are undersized. Shai is not close to our best defender, but I am convinced that seeing him commit every night to that style of high-intensity defense is a huge part of what makes OKC so good defensively up and down the roster. If shai is gonna go all out, every single role player better be doing the same, and they have been. This is also why OKC can sit literally all of their starters last night and hold Portland to 89 points and win by double digits.

He is also committed to investing in the improvement of individuals on the offensive end. I love Russ forever, but when he was shouldering the load for our offense, it felt different. It felt like he knew he was our best option on any given possession, so every other player was limited to just a release valve. Shai will openly talk about investing in the improvement of guys like Chet and j-dub, as well as himself, and you can see it on the court. After the loss to the Mavs in the playoffs last year, Shai went on the record that he needs to be better (despite being the best player in that series) and that he needs to work on making sure his teammates are better prepared for the playoffs next year. He then opened this year with another level of effort on defense, a noticeable effort to shooting way more pull up 3-pointers, and giving up the ball to let Chet and J-dub handle more offensive possessions. He was not efficient with the three early in the year, thunder game threads were full of people complaining he was shooting them instead of getting whatever he wanted in the paint. But he was leaning into the discomfort to be better prepared for the playoffs, and you already see it paying off in his three point numbers. J-dub is less efficient than last year in large part because, following shai’s lead, he is leaning into what is difficult for him so that he can ultimately be a better player in the post season.

People just scoreboard watching (I don’t say that as an insult, it’s hard to do anything more than scoreboard watch a team that isn’t your team) can say “the team is so good without shai, therefore hes not as valuable”. I would counter that, ironically, this team is so good with and without shai because of shai’s leadership, and that the same collection of players would not be anywhere near this good individually or collectively in an alternate universe where shai is not on the team. Before the team was even in the playoff conversation, shai and the coaching staff were building a culture of constant individual improvement and constant buy-in on both sides of the court. We are now seeing the results with this regular season success, and it is why the team record remains to me Shai’s strongest piece of evidence for his MVP campaign.