On Wednesday, Denver Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic was announced as the NBA’s MVP for the 2023-24 regular season, making him only the ninth player in league history to win the award thrice. However, despite the center receiving over 80% of the first-place votes, Fox Sports analyst Skip Bayless felt the MVP race’s runner-up, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was more deserving of the award.
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The voting for the 2024 NBA MVP:
Nikola Jokic — 79 first place votes
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — 15 first place votes
Luka Doncic — 4 first place votes
Giannis Antetokounmpo — 1 first place vote pic.twitter.com/eZKozQ9QYB— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) May 8, 2024
On Thursday’s episode of Undisputed on FS1, the veteran analyst gave his reasons for boisterously picking SGA over Jokic as the MVP. He said,
“Top to bottom, [the Western Conference] was star-studded and star-packed. And that cute little college team from Oklahoma City, on the last day of the year, they eke out winning the West? They were the #1 seed. And [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] was obviously the best player on the best team by far.”
Bayless argued that the Thunder’s 17-win improvement from last season was down to SGA’s terrific form. He also posed that the player responsible for taking OKC from 10th to the top in the Western Conference standings in a year is inarguably the league’s ‘Most Valuable Player.’, and should be rewarded for it.
.@RealSkipBayless makes a case that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander should’ve won MVP pic.twitter.com/N4AGYBNwf5
— UNDISPUTED (@undisputed) May 9, 2024
Skip Bayless’s statement does make some sense. After all, finishing as the top seed in a very competitive West is no small feat, and yet, SGA emphatically made it happen.
However, the analyst’s argument falls apart when he suggests that Jokic’s Denver attaining one of the top seeds in the West was not that impressive an achievement compared to the Thunder’s.
The Nuggets improved their record by four wins this season compared to the last, despite Jamal Murray missing 23 regular season games. Further, they finished with the same record as the Thunder, who only finished higher in the table due to a superior head-to-head record.
There’s no denying that SGA had an outstanding season and had a very, very strong case to win MVP. However, Jokic was arguably in a league of his own and deserved to take home the award for the third time in four seasons.
Shaquille O’Neal tells Nikola Jokic to his face that SGA should’ve won the MVP award
As they have for quite some time now, the panel of Inside the NBA had the honor of announcing the winners of the NBA’s awards before immediately having a quick word with the victors.
Oftentimes, this segment goes by with nothing more than congratulations, and words of appreciation. However, things were very different this year, as Shaquille O’Neal drummed up a little controversy while Nikola Jokic was on call to accept his award. He said,
“Joker, as the president of the ‘Big Man Alliance,’ you are the vice president of the ‘Big Man Alliance,’ you know I love you. The best player in the league, I want to congratulate you. I want you to hear it from me first, I thought SGA should have been the MVP. That’s no disrespect to you, but congratulations.”
Jokic defused a potentially awkward situation by thanking O’Neal and quipping that he wouldn’t judge him for his opinion.
Like Bayless, O’Neal felt Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was more deserving of the MVP award than Jokic, which is fair. However, bringing it up at this particular moment wasn’t the classiest move, to say the least.
If it wasn’t for Jokic’s savvy at getting past awkward situations such as this one, this could have been an incredibly unsettling moment right on national television.
