Back-to-Back but Still Underrated? SGA's 2025-26 by the Numbers

The best regular season in the league, again

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did not have a down year. He averaged 31.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 6.6 assists a night, shot 55.3 percent from the field and 87.9 percent from the line, and posted a 66.5 true shooting mark that would be absurd for a volume scorer at any position. Oklahoma City went 64-18, the best record in basketball, and Gilgeous-Alexander became the 14th player in NBA history to win back-to-back MVPs.

By any normal measure, that's a career year layered on top of a championship. The Hardwood Index price says otherwise.

Games

68

Minutes

33.2

Points

31.1

Rebounds

4.3

Assists

6.6

Steals

1.4

FG%

55.3

3P%

38.6

FT%

87.9

TS%

66.5

Win Shares

15.2

Then Wembanyama happened

Oklahoma City came into the playoffs as the top seed and the defending champion, and they ran into a San Antonio team built around Victor Wembanyama that simply wouldn't go away. The Western Conference finals went the distance. Gilgeous-Alexander shot 40 percent or worse from the field in four straight games at one stretch, including a 15-point, 6-of-18 night in a Game 6 blowout loss that snapped his string of dominant playoff performances. He answered with 35 points and 9 assists on 12-of-21 shooting in a win-or-go-home Game 7, and it still wasn't enough. San Antonio closed it out 111-103, sending the Spurs to their first Finals since 2014 and ending Oklahoma City's bid to become the first repeat champion since Golden State's run from 2015 to 2019.

Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren struggled to generate consistent offense without the ball in Gilgeous-Alexander's hands, and San Antonio's depth, from Cason Wallace's fourth-quarter scoring on the losing end to Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle contributing minutes on the winning one, tilted a series that came down to a single possession in Oklahoma City.

A season Gilgeous-Alexander himself isn't satisfied with

Gilgeous-Alexander has been candid that he views the season as unfinished business rather than a triumph, MVP trophy included. He's also said he won't push for any roster changes this offseason, leaving those calls to general manager Sam Presti.

Two MVPs in a row and a 64-win season used to be the whole pitch. This year it's a footnote to a Game 7 loss. That tells you where the ceiling actually is for a player at this level. The regular season stopped being the story a long time ago.

What it means for the market

For Hardwood Index readers, this is the clearest example on the board of a market that prices championships, not stat lines. Gilgeous-Alexander's regular season was, statistically, one of the best any guard has ever put together. None of it moved the price the way seven games against Wembanyama did. A back-to-back MVP who loses in the conference finals is worth less to this market than a single MVP who wins it all.

Bottom line

The gap between Gilgeous-Alexander's stat line and his price is the whole story going into next season. He's 27, still improving his efficiency every year, and locked into Oklahoma City on a three-year extension, so the sample size problem that hangs over younger trade candidates doesn't apply here. What applies instead is a simpler question: can he and this roster get back past San Antonio? If Oklahoma City resets and wins it in 2026-27, this dip reads as a blip in a Hall of Fame prime. If Wembanyama's team wins again, the market may start treating conference finals losses as the new normal for this era of Thunder basketball, no matter what the box score says.