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The first two months of the 2025-26 NBA season set up what could have been the greatest MVP race of all time. Nikola Jokić is currently on pace to set new single-season records for PER, BPM and Win Shares per 48 minutes. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ranks eighth, third and second all-time in those respective metrics, but is ahead of Jokić in EPM for the second consecutive season, which is relevant as EPM is the metric with by far the strongest predictive history when it comes to MVP. 

Looking for more straightforward measures of excellence? Jokić currently leads the NBA in both rebounds and assists while Gilgeous-Alexander's Oklahoma City Thunder are still on pace to go 70-12. Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging slightly less than one point per minute, which only Wilt Chamberlain and Joel Embiid (in just 39 games) have ever accomplished. Jokić is a couple of free throws shy of a 60-40-90 shooting season, which the NBA has never seen before. These are two of the greatest individual seasons of all time through two months.

And yet, as things sit now, the MVP race between them is probably over. On Monday, Jokić suffered a knee injury that, in the moment at least, appeared potentially catastrophic. He was thankfully spared the worst outcomes. A hyperextended knee will keep him sidelined for at least a month, but it won't cost him the season. It will, however, almost certainly cost him a chance at a fourth MVP award.

Jokić hasn't missed a game yet this season, playing in all 32 of Denver's contests to date, but let's say he's out until the end of January. The Nuggets have four back-to-backs in their January schedule, loading their slate with 18 total games between now and the beginning of February. That's the exact number of absences it takes to remove a player from award eligibility. If Jokić returns on Feb. 1, ironically against the Thunder, or any later, he's out of the MVP race. If he comes back sooner but misses games later on due to caution or other injuries, he'll fall out of the race. At this point, the odds of him playing 65 games are nearly zero.

That doesn't explicitly guarantee Gilgeous-Alexander wins MVP. He could get hurt too. But the gap between Jokić, Gilgeous-Alexander and the eligible field is vast. Take EPM, the MVP predictor stat. Gilgeous-Alexander leads the league at +10.1. Jokić is second at +9.7. Giannis Antetokounmpo, who himself is almost certainly going to be ineligible having missed 13 games thus far, is third at +9. Nobody else is even a +6.

Gilgeous-Alexander has the eighth-highest BPM of all time. The next best mark from this season belongs to Victor Wembanyama, who's ranked 115th. Luka Dončić is in third place for PER... at 95th all-time to Gilgeous-Alexander's third. I could give you 100 guesses and you'd probably never land on which current player comes the closest to Gilgeous-Alexander's second-place all-time Win Shares per 48 minutes ranking. It's Mark Williams... all the way down at 117th. In other words, there's a vast statistical canyon here. Gilgeous-Alexander is the NBA's second-leading scorer on the league's best team with all of the metrics in his favor. If he plays 65 games, he's going to win MVP.

And that puts him in pretty rarified air. There are only 15 multi-time MVPs in league history, and of those 15, just 10 have reached two MVPs through their age-27 season: Bob Pettit, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić. Not bad company to keep.

He would have two immediate obstacles to claiming a third. The first is history. No one since Larry Bird has won three straight MVPs. Not Jordan. Not James. Not Jokić. As we learned during Jokić's attempt at a third trophy, narratives swing hard against prospective three-peaters. And if Gilgeous-Alexander doesn't get his third next season, it gets far harder from there. Every MVP since James in 2012 has been between the ages of 24 and 28. The 2027-28 campaign will be Gilgeous-Alexander's age-29 season. The Thunder have already claimed back-to-back No. 1 seeds and are well on their way to a third, so it's possible that, by then, they're simply over the regular-season grind as an organization.

But this is still a historically dominant scorer playing on a team that figures to be atop the league practically indefinitely. He's going to factor into most of the MVP races until the end of his prime and, as Jokić's injury this season shows, it doesn't take much to clear the field in the era of the 65-game minimum. Odds are, there's another MVP for Gilgeous-Alexander in here somewhere. The more he claims, the more unimpeachable his legacy becomes. There are nine three-time MVPs in history, five four-time winners, three five-time winners and a lone six-timer.

For now, he's set up to win just his second trophy, but at this age and with this team, there's not really an upper-limit at play here. If he can make it through the next three months and change intact, Gilgeous-Alexander will already have more MVP trophies than Kobe Bryant. He'll match Stephen Curry, the player he's seemingly succeeded as the NBA's best point guard. And while championships are not assured, the Thunder are as well-positioned to compete for them moving forward as any team ever has been. 

It's too early to really get into all-time rankings where Gilgeous-Alexander is concerned, but there are very, very few players who have ever accomplished what Gilgeous-Alexander is poised to do by the end of this season. We're watching an all-timer here, and if there's a silver lining to Jokić's injury, it's that it may well put Gilgeous-Alexander's greatness into perspective. He may be neck-and-neck with Denver's three-time MVP, but this year at least, he's head and shoulders above everyone else. For the next month or so, he will somewhat definitively be the NBA's best player and this spring, there's a trophy waiting to reward him for that.