LEXINGTON, Ky. — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is in the middle of a dream season with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

It’s on track to end with an honor that would make Kentucky basketball history.

Somewhat surprisingly — given the Wildcats’ place in the pantheon of college powers — UK has never produced an NBA Most Valuable Player, an award that has been around since the 1955-56 season.

Dan Issel — the program’s all-time leading scorer in both college and the pros — never did it. Issel’s most celebrated years came in the ABA, where he earned one first-team all-league honor, finishing second in MVP voting to Kentucky Colonels teammate Artis Gilmore that season.

Anthony Davis — the greatest player of the John Calipari era — has never done it. Davis has earned first-team all-NBA honors four times, but he’s never finished better than third in the MVP voting.

While he’s still among the top players in the league, Davis will turn 32 years old later this season, and his MVP window seems to have passed. No player older than 32 has won the award since Karl Malone did it at age 35 in 1999, and the league is stacked with youthful talent.

Gilgeous-Alexander is one of those younger stars — he turned 26 in July — and his recent run of excellence with Oklahoma City has him positioned as the front-runner to become the first Wildcat to be crowned the NBA’s MVP later this year.

To start this week, ESPN’s betting service had elevated Gilgeous-Alexander to the favorite to win MVP honors at -150 odds. Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic (at +130, or a little shorter than 3-2 odds) was next on that list.

No other player in the league had shorter odds than 20-1 (Giannis Antetokounmpo), and Jayson Tatum (40-1) was the only other option at shorter than 100-1, an indication of the two-player battle this MVP race has become as the NBA nears the midway point of its season.

Gilgeous-Alexander has been tremendous from an individual standpoint. He’s averaging 31.3 points, 5.6 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 2.0 steals through 35 games. (He’s also tied for fourth in the NBA Defensive Player of the Year betting odds, though San Antonio Spurs sensation Victor Wembanyama appears set to run away with that award.)

In addition to Gilgeous-Alexander’s two-way excellence, his team has the best record in the Western Conference by a wide margin. The Thunder are 30-5 this season, seven games up on the second-place Houston Rockets to begin the week.

Oklahoma City also has a huge regular-season game Wednesday night, when they’ll face the Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. If the Thunder win, they’ll tie the Cavs for the NBA’s best record.

Both teams are hot going into that one. OKC has won its last 15 games. Cleveland will bring a 10-game winning streak to the nationally televised matchup.

While the Boston Celtics — the reigning NBA champions, currently second in the Eastern Conference standings — remain the betting favorites to win the league title again this season, the Thunder are second on that list. And they’re clear favorites to come out of the West and make the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012, the franchise’s only trip that far in the playoffs since moving from Seattle after the 2007-08 season.

Last year, Gilgeous-Alexander led OKC to the top record in the Western Conference, the Thunder’s first playoff appearance in four seasons and first victory in a playoff series since 2016, when Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were on the team and in their prime.

After that campaign, Gilgeous-Alexander was a distant second in NBA MVP voting — the highest finish for a former UK player — behind Jokic, who averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists per game and was one year removed from leading the Nuggets to the title.

Jokic, winner of three of the last four NBA MVP awards, has put up even better numbers this season — 31.5 points, 13.0 rebounds and 9.7 assists per game heading into Tuesday night’s matchup with the Celtics — and his NBA player efficiency rating is ever so slightly ahead of Gilgeous-Alexander’s, but Denver sits well behind the Thunder in the standings, and the former Wildcat has overtaken Jokic as the MVP favorite.

Gilgeous-Alexander, who played for Kentucky during the 2017-18 season — beginning as the backup point guard to more-celebrated recruit Quade Green before taking over the starter’s role for good 16 games in — already has four games with 40-plus points this season, three of them coming in the past two weeks.

He’s shooting 3-pointers at a higher rate than ever — 6.0 attempts from deep per game, up from 3.4 last season — and hitting at 36.0%, his best rate in four years, another wrinkle to an offensive game that is often unstoppable. (His current 2-point shooting rate is 58.9%, a career high.)

Sometime in the next week or so, Gilgeous-Alexander will score his 10,000th NBA point. He’s at 9,905 heading into Wednesday’s game, and he’ll become only the 14th former UK player in league history to hit the 10,000 mark.

At just 26 years old, he still has a long basketball future ahead of him. And it appears that the best of his time on the court is just beginning.

____

©2025 Lexington Herald-Leader. Visit at kentucky.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.