Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won the NBA Clutch Player of the Year Award on Tuesday, taking home the Jerry West Trophy after a season that kept the Oklahoma City Thunder in constant late-game fights. He finished with 96 first-place votes, one second-place vote and one third-place vote for 484 total points.
Jamal Murray and Anthony Edwards were the other finalists, but neither received a first-place vote. Gilgeous-Alexander became the fourth different winner in four seasons, following Jalen Brunson, Stephen Curry and De'Aaron Fox.
The award goes to the player judged best in the final five minutes of a game when the score is within five points, and Gilgeous-Alexander had the numbers to make the vote look routine. Oklahoma City finished 64-18 and went 24-10 in clutch games, while Gilgeous-Alexander went 20-7 in those situations. His 6.5 points per clutch game led the NBA among players who appeared in more than one such game, and he scored 175 clutch-time points in just over 125 clutch-time minutes.
He also shot 51.5 percent from the field and 35.1 percent from deep in clutch time. He made 27 go-ahead or game-tying shots inside the final two minutes of regulation or overtime, the second-most in the league behind Tyrese Maxey, and hit 63.4 percent of those attempts. He led the NBA with 17 go-ahead makes and shot 58.6 percent on go-ahead shots.
One night stood out even in a season full of late possessions. On March 30, Gilgeous-Alexander scored 21 of his 47 points between the fourth quarter and overtime in a win over the shorthanded Detroit Pistons without missing a shot. That came after Oklahoma City opened the season with back-to-back overtime games, a sign of how often the Thunder would be tested late.
Gilgeous-Alexander said the job of a player in these moments is simple: help the team win late. He added that winning is what he is after most of all, and that belief was reinforced years ago when Jerry West, then a consultant with the LA Clippers, was among the earliest to see his potential when the Clippers drafted him 11th in 2018. West, the trophy’s namesake, died in 2024 at age 86. For Gilgeous-Alexander, the vote was less a surprise than a summary of the season he just lived through: the Thunder needed closing time, and he kept showing up for it.
