This stretch of January around Martin Luther King Jr. Day is usually peak evaluation time in the NBA front-office world. It’s one of the milestone points where teams will have full-staff pow-wows and talk things out,

After the Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Washington Wizards in a 136-95 blowout win, All-Star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander weighed in on his place in the Most Valuable Player conversation. During his postgame media availability, Gilgeous-Alexander addressed being an MVP candidate.

In mid-December, Denver’s Nikola Jokic had a healthy lead on Gilgeous-Alexander in ESPN’s MVP straw poll, conducted several times over the course of each season by Tim Bontemps.