The Oklahoma City Thunder are halfway to an NBA championship repeat. Their best player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has already earned his own individual repeat by winning the league’s MVP award for the second year in a row.
It puts him into an extremely rare NBA club that is full of Hall of Famers and future slam-dunk Hall of Famers.
He is on his way to being included in that group.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s back-to-back MVP’s continues Hall of Fame path
Winning the MVP award is a massive (and rare) accomplishment for any player. In the history of the league, only 36 different players have won even one.
Winning two of them is even rarer, with Gilgeous-Alexander being just the 16th player to ever win at least two.
Winning them in consecutive years is the type of thing that is limited only to Hall of Famers and the biggest giants of the game.
With his win this season, Gilgeous-Alexander is just the 14th player to ever repeat.
That includes four other active players (LeBron James, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry) and nine retired players.
The retired players list includes only Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.
All nine of the retired players have already been inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame.
The four other active players all seem like locks to join them.
Gilgeous-Alexander is now also on that path, especially since he already has one championship ring and a very good chance to add at least one more in his career, perhaps even as soon as this season.
He finished the 2025-26 regular season averaging 31.1 points per game (his fourth year in a row averaging at least 30 points per game), 6.6 assists per game 4.3 rebounds per game.
He finished ahead of both Jokic and Victor Wembanyama this season.