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NBA Legend Sticks Up For Shai Gilgeous-Alexander After NBA MVP Snub
On Wednesday night, the NBA announced the Most Valuable Player Award which saw a surprising result. Not so much in Nikola Jokic grabbing his third honor, but in the fact it was a landslide that neared Reagan in '84 levels.
Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander only earned 15 first-place votes and was tabbed as fourth or fifth on four ballots. Despite his strong case to be made for winning the hardware, the voters went with the safe route in Jokic while four members of the voting media made laughable decisions to not even include him in their top three.
As TNT announced Jokic would be taking home his third honor in four years only broken up by a competitive second-place finish last season, NBA Legend Shaquille O'Neal used a segment to advocate for Gilgeous-Alexander's MVP case.
"I felt [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] deserved it...Hopefully, he uses this to motivate him to win a championship this year... I thought Shai Gilgeous-Alexander one of only a few players to have 30 points 50 times, stat stuffer, great season, his team is No. 1 nobody expected them to be No. 1, I thought Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was going to win it by far," O'Neal said on TNT's Inside the NBA pregame show.
While O'Neal's points were valid, it also dripped with sour grapes of years that the all-time great big man was passed up for the award in a similar fashion as Gilgeous-Alexander. The Oklahoma City star should've been tabbed the MVP over Jokic in many people's eyes including the former Laker-Great who stamped his diatribe with definitively saying who would've garnered his vote.
"Me personally, I would've given [The MVP Award] to Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander]," The former league MVP said of the Thunder superstar.
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RYLAN STILES
Rylan Stiles is a credentialed media member covering the Oklahoma City Thunder. He hosts the Locked On Thunder Podcast, and is Lead Beat Writer for Inside the Thunder. Rylan is also an award-winning play-by-play broadcaster for the Oklahoma Sports Network.