Chris Mannix says there is no wrong answer in this year's MVP vote, and he has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on top of his ballot for the third straight year. He said the race is crowded enough that six players can make strong arguments for first-place votes, a rare spread in a league where the vote usually narrows fast.
Gilgeous-Alexander has built a clean statistical case to match the reputation. He has averaged at least 30 points in every full month he has played this season, shot at least 52% from the floor in those months and posted a career-best 6.6 assists per game while turning the ball over 2.2 times a night, his fewest since his second season. Mannix said that combination gives Sga plenty of evidence to support an MVP case even in a field that includes Nikola Jokić, Victor Wembanyama, Jaylen Brown, Luka Dončić and Cade Cunningham.
Jokić remains a force in his own right, with Mannix saying the Denver star is putting up absurd numbers that top what he produced in any of his MVP seasons. Wembanyama, meanwhile, is a fair choice because he is already an inimitable defender and his offense is catching up quickly. Brown, Dončić and Cunningham are also, in Mannix's view, easy players to argue for, which is why he said this year's ballot has more legitimate first-place possibilities than most.
The wider picture helps explain that view. Since 2009, only once — in the ’22–23 race between Jokić, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo — have more than two players collected double-digit first-place votes, and Mannix says this year could resemble that kind of split. Oklahoma City only sharpened the argument for Gilgeous-Alexander, starting 18-1 before Jalen Williams played a minute. That kind of start makes it harder to dismiss a season that has been built on efficiency, scoring volume and control of the offense.
There is also a procedural wrinkle around the vote itself. Mannix said he was speaking without an official ballot because the NBA had still not sent one while sorting through eligibility grievances. Even so, his position is clear: he would vote for Gilgeous-Alexander again, and he has done so two years running already. In a race with real cases for multiple stars, that kind of consistency may be the most revealing clue about where the vote could land when it is finally decided.
