NBA Playoffs: Double-Double MVP Awards for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander?
In American football betting, there is a modern ‘trick,’ or rather, strategy, for Super Bowl betting.
Effectively, it surmises that the winning team’s quarterback is likely to win Super Bowl MVP, so they back that market at higher odds than the team itself to win.
It’s not foolproof, but it would have been proven correct in seven of the last Super Bowls, provided you had backed the right team, of course.
Which brings us to Shai-Gilgeous Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder. The OKC is not in the Finals yet, but is a red-hot favorite to get there and win a second consecutive championship. And, as you might expect, SGA is the favorite in the NBA MVP betting with DraftKings for the Finals.
His odds are slightly more generous to win MVP than OKC is to win a championship, but the margins are tight, so it does tell you that the sportsbooks are sold on this idea of a double-double award, winning back-to-back MVP Regular Season and Finals MVP accolades.
SGA already in fine company
Fourteen NBA players have won back-to-back Regular Season MVPs, and a total of 11 different players have won the Finals MVP and Regular Season MVP in the same season, but only two players have done the double-double in consecutive seasons – Michael Jordan (1991/1992) and LeBron James (2012/2013) – so that is some exalted company for SGA to keep.
Some players were unlucky: Larry Bird did the double in 1984 and 1986, thus not in consecutive seasons. We should also point out that Jordan completed the double four times, winning both in 1996 and 1998.
Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit here, as nobody has crowned the MVP or Finals winner yet.
Moreover, we should note that plenty of fans are still not sold on the idea of SGA being truly elite. There’s been a bit of a movement on backing Nikola Jokic, claiming that the Serbian leads (broadly) on stats and efficiency, and that SGA’s win was more closely tied to team success than individual prowess.
Yet, that is the nature of basketball fans, and most with some sense would agree that the best and most influential player on the NBA’s most dominant team deserves the accolade.
READ MORE: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2nd MVP in a row for the Thunder’s player
What comes next for OKC star?
Indeed, some of the speculation now over SGA is what happens next. He has been the most “consequential” player in the NBA for the past two seasons, even if some sections of fans and punditry believe Jokic is the superior player over recent years.
Those players to whom we made comparisons with SGA – Jordan, James, Bird – were the most consequential players over longer periods, more than a decade. So, there is a long way to go to really get into that company, even if the accolades are starting to rack up.
And it’s worth remembering that success can be fleeting. Victor Wembanyama is the player that most use as the consensus as the next generational star of the NBA.
He’s five years younger than SGA, and he is on an incredible trajectory. Already considered the league’s best defender, Wemby has the goods to dominate on a scale not seen since Jordan. The big caveat, of course, is that it is all speculation for now.
Injury, loss of form, or some other misfortune could derail the Frenchman’s ascendency.
Yet, for now, SGA will only have one thing on his mind: Winning the NBA Championship. Whether he can do that is yet to be determined, and whether the trick of backing the franchise star in the betting markets will bear fruit remains to be seen.
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