Did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander DESERVE to win the MVP? | Gary Parrish Show

Did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander DESERVE to win the MVP? | Gary Parrish Show

As expected, the NBA announced last night that Shay Gilis Alexander, Oklahoma City star, is your 2025 MVP. We’ve talked about the likelihood of this happening for a while. Ben and I, I don’t want to speak for you. We both knew this were was coming. I don’t believe either of us believes that Shay Gilis Alexander is the best player in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should have an issue with him winning a regular season award in a regular season where he did play for the best team and did have an incredible season. Are you okay with Shay Gilis Alexander defeating Nicole Joic for MVP? Yeah, I’m fine with it because we’ve talked about before like, you know, we if you were going to give it to the best player in the world every year that just was, you know, the consensus best player in the world, then LeBron James would have won a million MVP. They had like 15 MVPs. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m fine with it. He had they had the best record going away and he was the best player. So, yeah, I’m good. I’m fine with it, too. Like, this is this is the way we do this. Yes. And if we want to change the way we do it, then we can have that conversation. If you just want to say, “Hey, every year, I don’t care about nothing except if we were having a draft for the season, who would you take number one to play this one season for you, who would be the number one pick?” If you want to do it like that, then we could just call the best player in the world, the most valuable player every year, and whatever. Yeah. But the way we traditionally do this and not only in basketball but in baseball and the NFL and it is often who is one of the great players who happen to be on the greatest team. It’s not necessarily greatest player in the league, but one of the greatest players in the league who happens to be on a great team. That is the Derrick Rose MVP and I think that is clearly the SGAA. Yeah. Uh MVP. I do not believe if Oklahoma City uh didn’t lead the NBA in wins or set all sorts of regular season records, I do not believe Shay Alexander would have won by this margin and he might not have won at all. But team success does factor into this stuff and and it did factor into it here. He got 71 first place votes. Uh Jokic got 29. So every first place vote either went to Shaggy Alexander or Nicola Joic. And Giannis Anthony Kmpo Milwaukee Buck finished third in the voting. Um I will say this, the numbers are historically elite for Chotis Alexander. Even if you want to say I don’t think he’s the best player in the world, because I don’t think he’s best player in the world. I don’t even know if he’s a top two or three player in the world. But he did have an unbelievable regular season. Here are the numbers. 32.7 points per game on 51.9% shooting, 6.4 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 1.7 steals, 1.0 blocks per game. I read this this morning. It stood out. Now, I understand you’re just sort of chopping up some arbitrary numbers and letting it spit out what it spits out, but still, what I’m about to tell you is true. The only other player in NBA history to average at least 30 points on 50% shooting, plus five rebounds, five assists, at least 1.5 steals, and at least one block per game in a season. Only one other player has ever done that. You want to guess who it is? Start at the top. Okay. Say what was the stat line again? Shaill Alexander this season. Yeah. Averaged at least 30 points on at least 50% shooting. Y at least five assists, at least five rebounds, at least 1.5 steals, and at least one block per game. He did that this season. Only one other player in the history of the NBA has ever done that in a season. Start at the top. I’ll say Michael Jordan. That’s right. Michael Jordan is the only other player who has ever done that. Michael Jordan did it twice in his career. in 1988 and in 1991. And those are the two years where he won his first two MVPs. So, what I’m about to tell you is true. Literally everybody who has ever had the statline that Shay Gildis Alexander had this season has won the MVP because only two men have ever had that stat line. It’s Michael Jordan and Shay Gildas Alexander. Combine that again with the fact that OKC won more games than anybody else in the NBA and 18 more games than Denver, which is Nicole Yach’s team. Um, broke the record for point differential in the NBA. Again, take your best LeBron James teams, your best Michael Jordan teams, your best Magic Johnson teams, your best Larry Bird teams. They never beat people as badly as consistently as the Thunder did in this reckless season. You throw all that in a pot, mix it up, pour it out. You get a shake Alexander MVP, don’t you? Yeah. So, seven straight, seven straight non-Americans have won MVP in the NBA. Bennett, as an American, how you feel about that? As a red-blooded American, how you feel about that? I mean, I respect that it’s an international game, but it does kind of sting a little bit. Does it sting? It stings a little bit now of these four teams remaining like you know and and they all four have really good guards like three of them are Americans. So maybe no maybe next year. I bet you somebody said that last year and the year before and the year before. But we look up every time and you know who’s winning the MVP? An international player. A non-American. Yeah. This used to be our game. This used to be our game. It was invented here. It was invented here. Mhm. But I think by a non-American, I think Dr. Naymith is Canadian. Is Naymith a Canadian? I think I learned that live on a podcast one time. Get out of here. I know it’s weird. I know it’s weird for you, but we should uh he’s from Ohio. He’s a Scottish Canadian American physical. He was born in Canada. He was born in Canada. Got a province. Is Alante a province? I don’t know. I don’t know. See, my map’s only coming from the US. Sorry. This is usually where Kyra comes in and helps us. Yeah. From looking stupid. I don’t know where the provin he’s from. He was born in Canada. Dr. I got you. Okay. But he invented our great game here in the United States. This was our game for a while, Bennett. This was our game for a while. But now, seven straight years a non-American has won MVP. And two straight years a non-American has been the number one pick in the NBA draft. Thank God for Cooper Flag. We’ll get that fixed. The first NBA MVP was Bob Pettit in 1956. Okay, Bob. Shouts to Bob Pettit. The first 38 MVPs in the NBA were American. Mhm. All 38 without exception. We didn’t get our first non-American MVP until 1994. That was two years after the Dream Team. But now we’ve had seven straight MVPs that have been non-Americans before 2019. So this doesn’t even go back far. You ready? There were only four before 2019. Only four non-Americans who had ever won an MVP and it was Hakee Elijah. I was going to say Hakee’s got Oh, you want to try it? Try it. Okay. I was going to Isake the 94 one? Yes. Yes. Okay. Uh Hakee. Uh and this is before what year? 2000 what? Before 2019. And I don’t want to trick you, so let me tell. There were four non-American MVPs before 2019, but only three different people. One guy won it twice, which might help you. One guy won it twice. Okay. Okay. Hakee. Um, Steve Nash. Steve Nash won it twice. Born in South Africa. Nationality is Canadian. Canadian. So it’s Hakee, one MVP. Steve Nash, two MVPs. And then you got to account for the Dirk. It’s Durk. That’s right. Ding ding ding. Bennett. Ben, I’m always goofing on you. I’m always goofing on you about them state capitals. You knocked that out of the park. I’m proud of you for getting that right. Thank you. Okay. So, it was Hakeiman, Steve Nash twice, and Dirk Nitzky. In all the years of MVPs from 1956 through the 2018 season, we had four non-Americans. Since then, it’s seven. Joic twice. Yic three times. Oh yeah, Joic three times. Embiid Shay uh Greeky freaky. Oh yeah, it’s Jokic three times, Giannis twice, Embiid once, Shay Gilis, Alexander once. Seven straight non-Americans MVPs past two number one picks in the draft. Uh non-Americans, that’s Victor Wyama from France, Zachary Rishet from France. Do you have a theory? Why have we lost our grasp on our sport? Why are the best players in the world, at least the best player in the world, at least the MVP of the season, let’s make it factually correct. Why is the MVP of the NBA season for seven straight years been a non-American? Do you have a theory? I do have one. Well, I mean that, you know, we we just talked about how it’s typically going to the best player on the best team. Like those teams are all were all really good. Um, so that obviously plays a big factor in it. I don’t think you can win an MVP without being on at least a good team, right? Like even in college basketball, this is a true thing. You could lead college basketball to circle back to why SGA over Joic. His there’s reasons, but the main reason is he was on a much better team, the best team in the league. Because if you just start doing a statistical individual thing, you could get to Jokic very How about this? If Denver and OKC had the same record, you might go Jokic. If Denver had a better record, you would probably go team success mattered here. I think perhaps flipped it in SGA’s favor, but that’s not unique to the NBA. In college basketball, you could lead the nation in scoring and or lead the nation in peer, but if you do it for a bad team, not only will you not be a wooden award winner, you’re not an all-American. You’re not even an all-American. You just we don’t even pay attention to you. Like, you better be on a relevant team. Mhm. PJ Hagerty would not have been a second team all-American if Memphis missed the NCAA tournament. He just would have just been a like maybe got some votes for third team and Memphis’s team success helped him get the individual accolades and that’s what’s happened here. Um here’s my theory. We as a country are terrible at developing basketball players. Yeah, I was gonna and I I will I would I could branch it out to baseball because I’m seeing that up close. We’re not good. We’re not doing this the right way. And I want to be clear like my little guy, he’s got incredible coaches. Like his head coach played in the SEC, you know, like they they the coaches know what they’re doing, but we there’s an imbalance to everything. And it’s especially true in basketball and we saw it in our city this weekend. Do you know what the imbalance is? We play way more than we practice. We play way more than we practice. And that is not the way other countries do it and is not the way we should do it. My son plays 8-year-old baseball. Mhm. We might have a hitting practice one day a week, a normal practice another day a week, and then we get to the weekend and we’ll play six games. We will play three times as many games as we have practices. And it’s fun and it’s just sort of the way everybody does it. It’s just like, but it’s not good if you are actually trying to develop the best of the best. Now, let me be clear. We ain’t trying to I ain’t trying to make my kid into a big leager. I just like watching him have fun. Yeah. And learn. And you know, I’m sure there’s an Austin Riley out there somewhere, but I don’t know who it is. And it’s probably none, right? Mhm. If you’re doing this stuff every day to try to make your son Austin Riley, you are bananas. But if you’re doing this every day to try to just give your son uh an opportunity to grow at something and focus on something and create real relationships and friendships, like some of my best memories growing up are like, you know, soccer team stuff and baseball team stuff. So, if you’ve got it all like for the right reasons, then this is all fine, whatever. But if we were actually trying to develop baseball players, the best way we could develop them just in the spirit of we’re going to take a million little baseball players and start working with them because we know there’s unique talents out there somewhere and we want to work with them in a way that will maximize what they are. It’s more practice, less play. Mhm. And in basketball, if this CBL event that was in Memphis this past weekend was coming up this weekend, we could tell Devin, hey, if you’re out there, just randomly take your your camera and ask coaches of these AU teams, these EBL teams, how much do you practice compared to how much you play? They practice a few times and then they get on a plane and they fly to Memphis and they play 50 games in a weekend. We play all the time, practice almost never as American sports things. And you know what they do in Europe? They practice. They drill work all the time. There was a incredible story at this point, probably 15 years ago in the New York Times about uh a youth soccer developmental program in like Denmark or whatever. And it was just sort of highlighting, illustrating the difference in the way that this was about soccer, how they developed soccer players as opposed to the way we develop soccer players. You know how we develop soccer players same way we develop baseball players and basketball players. We practice a little bit and we go play in tournaments every weekend. We just go play every weekend. In European countries, you know what they do? They start out just playing like little neighborhood soccer and they literally like, you know, evaluate and they look for people who are just a little different. Oh, this fell here, he’s a little taller, he’s a little faster, he’s a little quicker. And at a very young age, they’ll start isolating them. They’ll like literally put them inmies. So when they identify the Jason Tatum of soccer at the age of nine or 10, they this this young man is invited to live in an academy and yeah the school work and all that’s done but they are practicing in the mornings they are practicing in the afternoons small group it’s a lot of just touching the ball just touching the ball to each other they might get to a point where they play a game a week but they are practicing training twice a day and maybe playing once a week once once every two weeks, but training multiple times a day. That’s the way they do soccer. It’s now the way they do basketball. You know how we do soccer and basketball? We train a little bit and then we just travel, travel, travel. Yeah. Oh, there’s another tournament this weekend. Let’s go play seven more games this weekend. And it has caught up to us in terms of the development of of prospects. they are developing players in other countries in ways that are more beneficial. And I don’t think it’s as simple as that entirely. That’s like that’s not 100% of the issue. A part of the issue is just like the game is bigger all around the world now than it’s ever been. And 30 years ago, you didn’t have kids in basically every country in the world playing the sport 40 years ago, 50 years ago. But now we do. And so part of it’s that. But I do think that the developmental process, the approach to training, the lack of practices relative to the number of games, I think that’s a big big reason, perhaps the biggest and uh might be a minute before we get an American winning an MVP again. Bennett, the next American to win MVP of the NBA, and then we’ll move on. Who do you think it’ll be? John Moran. Wouldn’t that be nice? Who would that’s that’s gonna be my future MVP. Who would be the next American? In all likelihood, it’s who will be the next American MVP? It it’s probably got a good chance of being one of these other three guys because if if the Pacers, the Knicks, or the um or the Timberwolves, if one of those three have like one of the best records next season, then it’s going to be one of those guys. And like the Pacers and the Knicks both are going to have a really good chance to to be at the top of the East next year. Um especially when you consider those Boston injuries. Do you know and PR is not the end all beall? Yeah. But do you know which American led the NBA in PR this season? I want to be clear. An American did not lead the NBA in PR player efficiency rating. Nicole Joic led the NBA with a 32.12 per then it was Shay. Then it was Giannis. Next was an American. Who is the American with the highest per in the regular season this season? You will not get this. It will make sense once you say it out loud, but you won’t get it. Uh East or West? Can you check? West. West. Uh, was it? Oh god, I He only played 30 games, so it’s a little skewed. I don’t even want to struggle. He only played 30 games. Zion Williamson. Oh, Zion Williamson had a PR of 27.43. I believe Zion Williamson still has the greatest the best PR in the history of college basketball. his one season PR was like the greatest of all time or at least the greatest since we’ve been registering those numbers. Um, and he was the he had the highest PR among American players in the NBA this regular season. I think the answer if we were if we asked a the betting market to put numbers on it, say Anthony Edwards. It’s Anthony Edwards. Yes, it’s probably Anthony Edwards. Yeah. If if if the next MVP is an American, it’s probably Anthony Edwards. The Gary Paris Show live weekdays at 10:00

It’s official: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won the 2025 NBA MVP Award.

GP and Bennett dive into the numbers behind SGA’s incredible season, what made him a worthy MVP winner, and what it says about the MVP Award itself.

Plus, they discuss the fact that another non-American player won MVP for the seventh consecutive year. Why is that?

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