MVP, Sixth Man and DPOY: Answering the biggest NBA Awards questions - ESPN

As the 2024-25 NBA regular season winds down, teams turn their attention to the postseason. Others began strategizing for the lottery.

The NBA regular-season awards are also right around the corner, with the biggest storyline being which Western Conference superstar will claim MVP.

It appears there are no clear winners for any of these major awards, with Defensive Player of the Year wide open and Sixth Man of the Year up for grabs.

NBA insiders Zach Kram, Tim MacMahon, Chris Herring, Jamal Collier and Tim Bontemps answer some of the biggest questions surrounding the league's biggest regular-season awards, including their picks.

Zach Kram: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on pace to become the 10th player in NBA history to win the scoring title while leading his team to the league's best record. Eight of the previous nine players who did so won the MVP; the only exception was Michael Jordan's second-place finish in 1996-97, when Karl Malone won the award in a massive upset. But Gilgeous-Alexander has also broken Nikola Jokic's seemingly ironclad grip on the top of the advanced stats leaderboards. Even the all-in-one metrics that factor in Jokic's league-leading on/off differential, like estimated plus-minus and LEBRON, say SGA has been a slightly more valuable player this season.

Tim MacMahon: There isn't a single valid knock against the cases of Jokic or Gilgeous-Alexander, but you can only pick one. Michael Malone and Denver Nuggets fans don't want to hear this, but if it's even, I'd go with the guy who hasn't won the award yet over the three-time MVP, mainly because the former's team has a double-digit cushion in the West standings. Gilgeous-Alexander leads the league in scoring by 352 points and with a plus/minus of 911 —