In mid-December, Denver’s Nikola Jokic had a healthy lead on Gilgeous-Alexander in ESPN’s MVP straw poll, conducted several times over the course of each season by Tim Bontemps.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has sat at the very top of the NBA MVP rankings over the last several weeks. This battle between him, Nikola Jokic, and Giannis Antetokounmpo has been close, but now there is a wide gap between Gilgeous-Alexander and the rest of the field.

Less than 24 hours after he set a new career-high of 54 points in a win, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named an NBA All-Star starter for a second consecutive year.

This stretch of January around Martin Luther King Jr. Day is usually peak evaluation time in the NBA front-office world. It’s one of the milestone points where teams will have full-staff pow-wows and talk things out,

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 33 points and the NBA-leading Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Portland Trail Blazers 118-108 on Sunday night. Jalen Williams added 24 points and eight assists, and Isaiah Hartenstein had 14 points and 11 rebounds to help the Thunder rebound from a home loss to Dallas on Thursday night.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has his 27th 30 point game of the season. Most 30 point games in the NBA. SGA has scored 30+ in 61.4% of his games.Source: Twitter @BrandonRahbar