Shai Gilgouse-Alexander was recently voted the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the NBA for 2024/’25 season. Before said campaign had even tipped off, his coach at the Oklahoma City Thunder, Mark Dagenhault, was the defending holder of the equivalent gong among coaches.
With the duo just after masterminding and conducting the Thunder’s annexation of a sensational NBA Championship victory on Sunday night/Monday morning, Irish time, chances are the two accolades will stay exactly as is in the short term at least.
So you’re probably thinking the team with the best player and the best coach win the Championship, right? Well yes, that’s how it played out in the end, but to pigeonhole a summation of the entire season – or even the Finals themselves – thus would be akin to doing an analysis of the Aintree Grand National from the elbow home or the US Masters from the final putt on the 18th green.
Such has been the degree of tumult in the season just concluded it’s hard to know where to begin. Between high profile coaches like Mike Malone (Denver Nuggets) and Taylor Jenkins (Memphis Grizzlies) being unjustly defenestrated from their positions, blockbuster trades such as Luca Donkic to the LA Lakers and hefty suspensions doled out to Ja Morrant and Bobby Portis during the season.
Or perhaps even more fundamentally than all of the aforementioned, the gargantuan progress made by the admittedly ultimately vanquished Indiana Pacers in getting to such a stage at all.
Granted, they do have a coach with a winners’ ring tucked away in Rick Carlisle, but any patroller of sidelines is only as good as those they send over the whitewash. Furthermore, when players become household names, it underlines the fact that, collectively, they are making progress sufficient enough to render them noteworthy in terms of the bigger picture.
Hence, the likes of Ben Mathurin and Pascal Siakam, Tyrese Haliburton and Andrew Nemhardt and Miles Turner gradually, yet steadily became the epicentre of the most epic conclusion this observer can recall to an NBA season in more than quarter of a century of being properly attuned thereto.
In the end, though, it literally did boil down to the factors referred to at the start of this piece. Not only SGA and the coach, of course, but others such as Ludoguentz Dort, Isiah Hartenstein, Jalen Williams and Alex Carruso.
Now that the season has concluded, though extremely rapidly thereafter, maybe it’s only natural to turn attention to when it all tips off again towards the end of October.
Specifically, who will be where. As in, will LeBron James go again? Stephen Curry? Al Horford? Klay Thompson? Chris Paul? Or James Harden?
Then, there are what could be even more intriguing curiosities with regard to coaching positions. The season just concluded saw the grizzly old veteran of the coaching circuit Greg Popovich hang up his whistle and stopwatch after succumbing to stroke.
Will Steve Kerr stay with the Golden State Warriors, Eric Spoelstra in Miami, Tom Thibadeau in New York? Only time will tell.
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