Leaning against a wall inside Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena on Monday afternoon before facing Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Cup final, Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered a message to this season’s MVP voters.

“Nothing matters in this game if you don’t win,” Gilgeous-Alexander, the leader of the top team in the Western Conference, told ESPN. “And the award is finished being selected before the playoffs are finished, so those games don’t go into it. So I think it should matter a lot.

“There’s so many talented guys in the league, so many guys that can put up numbers, but winning is what sets you apart, and it’s been that way in the past. It’s what’s made the greats the greats — because they win. And the guys that don’t win, it’s always a knock on them.”

As this season plays out, winning — Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder are likely to do a whole lot of it between now and when the media submits award ballots in mid-April — certainly could help determine another tightly contested race for the NBA’s top individual honor.

But as ESPN’s first NBA MVP straw poll reveals, OKC’s loss to Antetokounmpo and the Bucks in Tuesday’s Cup final showed how quickly voters can change their minds and how narrow the margins could become.

The straw poll was originally conducted in a roughly 24-hour period leading into the NBA Cup final. But after Antetokounmpo’s dominant performance with 26 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, 2 steals and 3 blocks while Gilgeous-Alexander had 21 points but shot 8-for-24 and had more turnovers (3) than assists (2), ESPN reached out again to all 100 voters.

As it turned out, 29 voters chose to alter their ballot, which resulted in Antetokounmpo more than doubling his first-place vote total and significantly narrowing the gap between him and Gilgeous-Alexander in second. Antetokounmpo’s jump created a massive lead over Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum in fourth and Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic in fifth.

But once again, Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic leads the way.

After winning three of the past four MVPs, the big man is in position to match LeBron James and Bill Russell as the only players in NBA history to win the award four times in five years. Jokic would become just the sixth player to have that many, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (6), Michael Jordan (5), Bill Russell (5), Wilt Chamberlain (4) and James (4).

In the straw poll, Jokic took home 57 of the 100 first-place votes and 829 total points. That placed him, for the third straight time in this poll, ahead of Gilgeous-Alexander, as the Thunder guard racked up 24 first-place votes and 677 total points.

The tenor of the race, through one third of the 2024-25 season, is clear: Jokic, Gilgeous-Alexander and Antetokounmpo have clearly separated themselves from the rest of the contenders, so much so that it will likely take an injury to extend the race to any player further down the list. (This was the first time in the past six seasons that the opening straw poll saw just three players receive at least one first-place vote, and the three stars accounted for 82.6% of the total vote.)

Jokic entered Thursday averaging 30.9 points, 13.3 rebounds, 9.9 assists and 1.8 steals per game while shooting 55.8% from the floor and a career-high shattering 48.9% from 3-point range. Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP winner in 2019 and 2020, is leading the league with 32.7 points on more than 61% shooting from the field with 11.5 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 1.8 blocks per game. But while both are putting up scorching numbers to almost single-handedly carry their teams back into contention after slow starts, Gilgeous-Alexander has been the talisman for the 20-5 and first-place Thunder.

“Obviously, it’s a goal of mine,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who is averaging 30.3 points on 51% shooting with 5.5 rebounds, 6.3 assists, 1.9 steals and 1.0 blocks, of chasing his first MVP award.

“[It’s a] dream come true for the little kid inside of me 20 years ago, but you can’t fast-forward to it. You have to earn it. That’s what I’m focusing on.”

With the caveat that the 65-game requirement to be eligible for season-ending awards could always wreak havoc with these rankings later in the season if injuries occur, it appears it will be difficult for those further down the list to catch up. Take Tatum and Donovan Mitchell for example.

Mitchell’s MVP case centers around being the best player on the best team. But despite Cleveland’s NBA-best 23-4 start, the guard sits in sixth. Tatum, meanwhile, has now landed somewhere between fourth and sixth in each of the past six straw polls, dating to the midway point of the 2022-23 season.

New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant, Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, Los Angeles Lakers big man Anthony Davis, San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards and Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant all received scattered votes.

Jokic, on the other hand, is looking to snap a four-year trend of MVP straw poll leaders fading in the race as the season goes on. Last season, Embiid led the first poll before injuries made him ineligible heading into the February 2024 update. That was preceded by Tatum finishing fourth in 2023, Curry sliding to eighth in 2022 and James fading to 14th in 2021.