Rob Mahoney

And this is going to be the first time in that stretch of time that it has felt like the best player in the league has been somebody else.

It's an incredible thing, and especially an incredible thing for a guard to snare that away from him, given everything that Jokic can do, the advantages he has baked in as a rebounder and everything else.

But

Shea's just been unbelievable.

And I think it's it's a worthy time to tip your hat in that sort of back to back capacity based on what he and the Thunder have built.

I think they're adjacent.

They're mostly overlapping in most seasons in terms of who has had the best season and who is the best player.

And I think MVP for me is more the former.

Who has had the best comprehensive NBA season of anyone in the league?

And that answer, I think, is Shea.

Because...

We've talked peaks and valleys.

We've talked consistently.

It's just going to be those are the watchwords with Shea all the time because he hasn't had even those blips of a moment from someone like Nikola Jokic, who is setting as high a standard as basically anyone in the league.

And yet even he has his rashes of turnovers.

Even he has his stretches where it's like, you know what, defensively, he just has not really been there for a lot of the good chunks of the season, even relative to the guy he's been in previous MVP campaigns.

And so there's just like no...

There's been no flicker at all in Shea's performance that like, oh, he's not an MVP worthy player.

Oh, he's not the best player in the league running for months on end.

He just had it every single step.