Watching a fellow Canadian like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander be announced as this season's NBA MVP left Steve Nash brimming with pride.
And then the moment got better.
Nash — until now, the first and only Canadian player to win the MVP award — was someone that Gilgeous-Alexander identified in his MVP acceptance speech Wednesday night as one of his basketball inspirations.
“It means the world," Nash, the 2005 and 2006 MVP, said Thursday in a video conference with a small number of reporters. "I don’t need it. And at the same time, there’s no better feeling than watching these guys thrive and them saying you had an impact on them. That makes it all worthwhile and special. And I don’t know if there could be very few compliments higher than that.”
Gilgeous-Alexander — the NBA's scoring champion — got 71 of a possible 100 first-place votes to win the award, one that he'll formally receive Thursday night before he and the Oklahoma City Thunder play host to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
He was the best player on the best team, a club that went 68-14 in the regular season and set an NBA record for point differential.
“This is a very special moment for me,” Nash said. “I genuinely get super excited to see his success. He’s really probably my favorite player to watch and let’s hope he continues on this trajectory and continues to rack up seasons like this and represent himself and his country and his team the way he has been. He’s phenomenal.”
Gilgeous-Alexander was just a little kid, 5 or 6 years old, when Nash won his MVP awards. But he was long touted as Canada's next great one — the basketball version, that is — and now he has officially delivered.
Like Nash, Gilgeous-Alexander is also a cornerstone of Canada's national program. Gilgeous-Alexander led Canada to a bronze medal at the 2023 World Cup, a finish that qualified the team for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and it would seem likely that the 2028 Los Angeles Games are on the Thunder star's radar as well.
There were 25 Canadian-born players to score in the NBA this season, including seven — Gilgeous-Alexander, Jamal Murray, RJ Barrett, Shaedon Sharpe, Bennedict Mathurin, Andrew Wiggins and Dillon Brooks — who had more than 1,000 points. No country outside of the U.S. had more 1,000-point scorers than that.
“He set the foundation,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of Nash. “He was the first Canadian basketball player I knew of. And without seeing guys go to the NBA from Canada, it wouldn’t have been as much of a dream as it was for us as kids growing up."
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press
