{"id":692956,"date":"2026-04-02T00:54:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692956\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:54:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:54:31","slug":"former-nuggets-coach-picks-shai-gilgeous-alexander-as-mvp-over-jokic-wemby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692956\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Nuggets coach picks Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as MVP over Jokic, Wemby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Malone backs SGA&#8217;s case to win the back-to-back NBA MVP honors.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Malone is all in about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander&#8217;s candidacy to win this season&#8217;s Most Valuable Player award.<\/p>\n<p>\t\tDenver Nuggets \/ Schedule<\/p>\n<p>On NBA Countdown, the former Denver Nuggets championship coach explained his arguments on why SGA deserves to win the back-to-back honors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He\u2019s proven himself to be the best clutch player in the NBA,&#8221; Malone said about Gilgeous-Alexander. &#8220;He\u2019s got five game-tying or go-ahead field goal makes in the last 30 seconds, and he\u2019s got a chance to be the first guard ever to average 30 points per game while shooting 55 percent from the field. You talk about consistency\u201420 points every single night against a defense that is trying to game plan for you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No disrespect to Wemby, Nikola Jokic, and everybody else, but I think SGA is incredible in his ability to impact the game in all shapes and forms. It feels like the discussion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/a\/status\/2039483929573446024\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Gilgeous-Alexander finds his name slipping over Victor Wembanyama in the latest MVP rankings, but the Canadian superstar earned himself the most favorable arguments to ultimately win the race.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">SGA is averaging 31.6 points in 55.3 percent shooting with 6.5 assists, 4.4 rebounds and 1.4 steals across 64 games, leading the Thunder to the top of the NBA standings despite the injury inactivity of co-star Jalen Williams for most of the year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">He also made compelling historic feats of his own, <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/news-242966-shai-gilgeous-alexander-breaks-wilt-chamberlains-legendary-scoring-record.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">notably surpassing the late great Wilt Chamberlain<\/a> for most consecutive games tallying 20+ points.<\/p>\n<p>                                                    <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/plus?utm_source=basketnews_com&amp;utm_medium=bn_plus&amp;utm_id=UA-259273-31&amp;utm_campaign=banners_free_content_for_not_members_bottom_3\" class=\"banners_paid_content_info_block_white banners-paid-content-info-block-white\" data-google-interstitial=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>                                                <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"bn-plus-img img-fluid\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/bn-plus.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                                            Support BasketNews so we could make even better content.<\/p>\n<p>                                                            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                If you like our content, please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=basketnews.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a> and add us as your preferred source. It helps us a lot, and we are committed to delivering you the very latest basketball news.<\/p>\n<p>                                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Malone backs SGA&#8217;s case to win the back-to-back NBA MVP honors. Michael Malone is all in about&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,301,187,3943,6,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-692956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-denvernuggets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nuggets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116332387923241661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}