How Thunder's Alex Caruso is making an unprecedented case for Western Conference Finals MVP

Caruso's case recalls the Andre Iguodala Finals MVP debate, but the Thunder sixth man would be an even more unlikely winner

May 27, 2026 at 2:13 pm ET • 5 min read

How do you feel about Andre Iguodala's 2015 NBA Finals MVP award? It's a bit of a basketball litmus test, a way to measure someone's philosophical bend when it comes to awards. I bring this up because, 11 years later, we're watching a very similar story unfold in the Western Conference Finals.

Stephen Curry was, fairly decisively, the best player on the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors. Statistically, his 2015 NBA Finals series was, at least by his standards, merely decent. He averaged 26 points and six assists. He shot 44-39-89 and averaged just shy of five turnovers per game. He had one notably poor game, a 5-of-23 shooting night in a Game 2 loss that served as the highlight of Matthew Dellavedova's career. The act of defending Curry was so exhausting that, after Game 3, he had to go to the hospital. 

That sums up Curry's impact on the series nicely. He may not have been at his best statistically, but his presence defined the terms under which the series was played. Cleveland had to throw everything it had at him defensively. That opened up the floor for everyone else. One such beneficiary? Iguodala.

Golden State's then-sixth man averaged 16 points on 52% shooting from the field and 40% shooting from 3. More pertinently, he was the primary defender of LeBron James, who averaged 36 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists in the series, but did so while shooting below 40% from the floor in part because of Iguodala's efforts. The decision to start Iguodala in Game 4 ultimately swung the series. And combined with the decision to play Draymond Green at center, it has become one of the most famous in-series adjustments in NBA history as the Warriors went on to win in six games.

Victor Wembanyama laid an egg in the biggest game of his life, and now the Spurs are on the ropes

Brad Botkin

So, what makes a series MVP? Is it the best overall player? James would win that debate, and he received four votes. Is it the best player on the winning team? Because that would obviously have been Curry, yet he received no votes. The winner was the player who stood out the most within the context of the specific series. Iguodala got seven votes and the trophy.

That brings us to this year's Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs. The best player in the series has probably been Victor Wembanyama. For the series, the Spurs have won Wembanyama's minutes by 42 points. His defensive impact is immeasurable. He scored 74 combined points in San Antonio's two wins to this point. Still, he probably isn't a serious candidate for the award unless San Antonio wins the series. James was in the mix in 2015 because he nearly singlehandedly led the shorthanded Cavaliers to a historic upset. Wembanyama's Spurs are the healthier of the two teams, and, frankly, his Game 5 performance was a relative stinker as the Thunder took a 3-2 lead.

The best player on the Thunder is very clearly Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He's the two-time reigning MVP. He's lifting a Thunder offense that is currently without its second- and third-best shot-creators in Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell. San Antonio's game plan for much of the series has revolved around slowing Gilgeous-Alexander down, though they've doubled him less as the series has progressed. He's the single player that makes the Thunder go, as Curry was for Golden State in 2015. 

But he is not having a great statistical series, at least, again, by his own standard. He's averaging 26.2 points on 39-33-96 shooting. He's made up for his lackluster shooting from the field with nearly 10 assists and 10 free throw attempts per game, but the Thunder haven't even won his minutes, playing San Antonio evenly with him on the floor (at least thus far).

You know whose minutes Oklahoma City is winning? Alex Caruso's. And he put himself firmly in the conversation for Western Conference Finals MVP on the heels of his performance in Game 5 on Tuesday night.

The case for Alex Caruso as Western Conference Finals MVP

The Thunder are plus-42 with Caruso on the floor in the series and minus-33 when he sits. The Spurs opened this series hoping to "hide" Wembanyama by letting him guard Caruso. The theory was that Caruso was a weak enough shooter that Wembanyama could hang by the rim and blow up any and all Oklahoma City drives. Well, Caruso has attempted 31 3-pointers in this series and made 18 of them. Among players who attempted at least 30 3-pointers, that is tied for the hottest five-game shooting stretch any player has ever had in conference finals history.

The Spurs are scoring 117.4 points per 100 possessions when Caruso is on the bench and 99.6 when he plays. And then there's the shooting. He has spent at least 25 partial possessions guarding each of San Antonio's five best players: Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, De'Aaron Fox and Devin Vassell, according to NBA.com tracking data. All five are shooting below 50% from the floor with Caruso as their primary matchup, and they are collectively 13-of-40 with him as the primary defender. He has recovered four loose balls defensively in the series while racking up five blocks, seven steals and 13 deflections.

Caruso has been Oklahoma City's best defender in this series and he's having one of the best shooting series any player has ever had in playoff history. He's even chipping in quite a bit as a playmaker with Williams and Mitchell out, racking up 11 combined assists in victories in Games 2 and 5. We are witnessing one of the greatest series from a role player in NBA history. 

Still, there is no precedent for Caruso winning this award.

The conference final MVP awards are still relatively new, but we can use Finals MVP as a barometer here. Caruso has not started a single game in this series. No Finals MVP (of our relatively small batch of conference final MVPs) has ever come off the bench for an entire series. Between 1982 and 2015, NBC Sports found only 13 total occurrences of a Finals MVP even coming off the bench for a game, with three belonging to Iguodala. Every Finals MVP in history has averaged at least 30 minutes per game in the series. Caruso is not even averaging 25. We've had unorthodox series MVP winners. Iguodala and 1981 Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell come to mind. We've never had anything like a possible Caruso victory.

If the Thunder do indeed close out this series, and if Caruso and Gilgeous-Alexander continue to perform at roughly the same levels, voters will be forced into the most extreme possible version of the Iguodala vs. Curry dilemma. Is it even possible for a role player, even an apex role player, to be more valuable than a star? The answer across 82 games is almost certainly no. The answer across the six or seven games that comprise this specific series may very well be yes.