[People] Qualified MVP enters the division finals, comparing with O Neal this year?

Sports Weekly All-Media Reporter Li Hui

NBA Officials Still Have Not Announced the Final MVP of this Season, but Everyone Knows That Thunder Star Shay Kyrgyz Alexander Will Win This Award. This will be the 27-year-old Alexander's First MVP in his career. In the just-passed Western Conference Semi-Finals tiebreak, he scored 35 points, led the team to eliminate the Nuggets led by three MVP Jokic, and entered the Western Conference Finals for the first time in his career.

There is no doubt that this season is the season where Alexander made a substantial breakthrough. He achieved zero breakthroughs in both MVP and Western Conference Finals resumes, but Alexander was obviously dissatisfied with this, and the outside world's expectations for him are not just about reaching the Western Conference Finals.

So far in the playoffs, Alexander's performance has been mixed in the outside world. Judging from the basic data, Alexander is still doing relatively well. He averages 29 points and 6.4 assists per game, and he can rank in the top 7 in the league in both data. Among them, he is also the highest average score per game for the remaining players of the four teams in the division finals. In the semi-finals, his 35 points were enough to win recognition.

But fans who have watched the game will definitely feel this way: Alexander can do better. Compared with the regular season, Alexander in the playoffs was not efficient. His shooting percentage was only 47.8% and his three-point shooting percentage was only 29.3%. The latter was Alexander's past shortcomings. He consciously increased his three-point shooting in the regular season and achieved good results. However, in the playoffs, Alexander's performance outside the three-point line still made him prone to trouble. In addition, in the series with the Nuggets, Alexander also delivered a poor performance of 7 of 22 shots in a single game. In the fourth quarter and the last moments of overtime in G3, he was completely lost and became his "biggest black spot" in the playoffs this year so far.

If Alexander is required by the standard of an ordinary All-Star, his performance in the playoffs this year is excellent, but Alexander is obviously not ordinary. He is about to become the MVP and the MVP+ scoring champion, and he is trying to become another player after Curry to win the MVP and the championship in a single season. In this case, Alexander obviously needs to do more. It is worth mentioning that if Alexander can lead the Thunder to win the championship this season, he will also become the first single-season scoring champion + MVP+ championship since O'Neal in 2000. This will be a great achievement that will make Alexander among the historical superstars.

To do this, Alexander still has two levels to pass. The first is the Western Conference Finals. His opponent will be Anthony Edwards, two new generation defenders, who once again showed different characteristics in this year's playoffs. Alexander's advantage is stability. He rarely has poor performances, and his score is basically hovering 25-35 points. In comparison, although Edwards does not have that strong stability, his scoring explosive power is more prominent. With a somewhat incredible data, Alexander averaged nearly 30 points per game in the playoffs, and has never scored 40+ in a single game in his career, and Edwards has done this three times. Judging from the characteristics of the two games, Alexander's biggest "disadvantage" at present is his lack of explosive scoring power, which has a lot to do with his excessive pursuit of rationality. However, looking back at the history of the NBA, in some important games, superstars often need a little "unreasonable".

Therefore, such a Western Conference Final battle is destined to be a difficult challenge for Alexander. The Timberwolves can compete with the Thunder in terms of lineup structure and defensive strength. Although Edwards does not have such excellent regular season performance, his career playoff performance is even better than Alexander. Whether the Thunder stars can perfectly realize the value of the MVP as they wish and continue to win the opportunity to compete with O'Neal and Curry will give us the answer in the next two weeks.