NT stole liberally from IBM's OS/2. And that is largely what it was crafted on. Whatever else they did to attempt to model other parts after VMS isn't surprising; but, I wouldn't say it's based on VMS.
It would make sense that it had some things based on OS/2. Microsoft wrote OS/2 initially, not IBM.
But read the article I linked to. NT has much more in common with VMS, since the lead designer on both OS's were the same person.