It’s that time of year again. The time when Nikola Jokic is gearing up to receive another MVP trophy.

It’s clear that Jokic is the best player in the world. Ask anyone in or around the NBA, and they will tell you Jokic. With averages of 29.3 points, 12.8 rebounds, and 10.2 assists, Jokic is very, very close to averaging a triple-double, the first in NBA history by a non-point guard. He’s also in line to be the second player to shoot 55% from the field, 40% from three, and 80% from the free throw line. The first was Chris Mullin.

This season might be the best offensive season we’ve ever seen, and Jokic is also averaging 2.5 steals + blocks per game, the most in his career. If he had been healthy the entire way through, it might have been the best season of all-time.

That’s not the question this year though.

The question is: who is having the most impactful season? The most valuable season? For a lot of fans, players, coaches, and media, the answer this year is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

The Oklahoma City Thunder point guard has been dynamic, leading the NBA in scoring by a significant margin. Averaging 32.9 points, 6.3 assists, 5.1 rebounds, 1.7 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game, SGA doesn’t quite fill up the entire box score like Jokic, but he’s tremendously close. In addition, his shooting efficiency (63.9% True Shooting) is in a similar ball park to Jokic without turning the ball over as much. He has less individual passing responsibility than Jokic does, but he had more scoring responsibility and capitalizes on those opportunities consistently.

SGA is an incredible player, but I can sense that Nuggets fans don’t really care about that. They see the numbers, the impact, the occasionally poor play around Jokic by a Denver Nuggets roster that is shallow in terms of its depth, and most fans can’t accept the idea of SGA being more deserving. I get that.

Many Nuggets fans point to the strength of SGA’s supporting cast as a knock against him. It’s true that SGA’s team is better than Jokic’s team, but it’s probably unfair to SGA to not give him any of the credit for that. The Thunder guard has propped up lineups all season in all combinations. He leads the NBA in total plus-minus at +878 this year. Jokic is second in the entire NBA…at +541. Various other players show up behind Jokic, but it’s pretty clear that SGA is the straw that stirs the drink in OKC, even if he’s surrounded by a gaggle of defenders to help make his life easier.

In the minutes that SGA is on the floor, the Oklahoma City Thunder have an absolutely unfathomable +17.1 Net Rating. With SGA off the floor, the Thunder still have an impressive +4.3 Net Rating in just over 1,100 minutes. That’s still pretty good. The Nuggets quite literally have a +4.1 Net Rating on the season.

With Jokic on the floor, that number jumps to a +10.5 Net Rating when Jokic is on the floor. When Jokic sits, it drops to a -8.2 Net Rating. That over +18.7 points per 100 possessions of difference has often been the reason why Jokic has been so valuable to the rest of the league. He absolutely deserves that credit.

But that gap of +18.7 sounds a lot better if the gap between when SGA was on vs off was a lot wider. Right now, the difference between when SGA is on vs off the floor is +13.8, which shows how singularly impactful he is as well. That’s close enough to the Jokic number that it’s less valuable, at least to me, to discuss minutes when a star is off the floor.

On the floor, the Thunder have been unassailable all year. OKC is putting up historic point differentials as a squad, and at 62-12, they are head-and-shoulders, and then a second set of head-and-shoulders, above the rest of the Western Conference. They’ve been serious, have stayed locked in, and know what their goal is supposed to be and have accomplished it very clearly. Chet Holmgren has also played just 26 out of 74 games this season due to injury, and the Thunder haven’t missed a beat.

In years past, the best player on the best team was an easy way to award the MVP trophy. In recent years, Jokic has completely and utterly torched that narrative because he’s so clearly been the best player in the world that people have had to rethink their way of thinking. I still think he’s the best player in the world this year, but the gap shrunk this year with SGA. It wasn’t anything Jokic did wrong. He got better offensively! He also got slightly worse defensively and the Nuggets have fallen off a cliff on that end of the floor. He’s not entirely absent from those issues, even though it’s a failing of Denver’s roster and defensive coaching that he’s even put into that position.

It’s pretty clear that Jokic and SGA are going to finish top two this year, so let’s see where they rank among the last five years of Top Two MVP finishers in a host of metrics:

Jokic won the award in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2023-24. In retrospect, every number says that he should have won over Joel Embiid in all three seasons, and it seems like the voter fatigue really caught up with Jokic in that third straight MVP caliber season. 2022-23 should have absolutely gone to Jokic, and we would be talking about a four-time MVP right now.

Order was restored again in 2023-24 vs SGA, but already, SGA was starting to put up more of a fight in those metrics than Embiid ever could.

Now, this season, SGA is straight up leading Jokic in four of those five categories. Jokic is no longer the advanced stats king at the top of the mountain. SGA is right there with him and has put together quite an impressive season.

Remember how betrayed Nuggets fans felt about Jokic not winning MVP the year they were the top seed when it was clearly Jokic’s best season to that point? That’s how Thunder fans feel about SGA this season. He’s put up incredible per game numbers, matched efficiency with Jokic, and even matched or exceeded the advanced metrics. It’s really the first time in the last five years that this has happened while Jokic has been in the league. Nobody else has deserved to win it over Jokic more than SGA does right now.

For that reason, it looks like SGA is going to win the award. This isn’t some token MVP being handed out. Nuggets fans can complain at they want about grifting and free throws and having a better team and whatever. It just doesn’t matter. It’s felt like this was OKC’s year for some time now, and SGA is the leader of their squad. They’re far and away the best team in the West, and to me, they’re the best team in the league.

It does NOT make SGA a better player than Jokic. Again, nobody serious disputes that Jokic is the best player in the world. Still, it might make SGA more impactful in this specific season.