He’s the most valuable player. The scoring champion. And now, an NBA champion along with NBA Finals MVP.
All in one season.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has entered one of the game’s most elite clubs.
The 26-year-old Canadian is atop the basketball world now in almost every way imaginable. Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder captured the NBA title on Sunday night, beating the Indiana Pacers 103-91 to win the finals in a seven-game thriller.
He becomes the fourth player in NBA history to win MVP, Finals MVP, a scoring title and play for a champion in the same season. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it once, Michael Jordan then did it four times, and Shaquille O’Neal was the last entrant into that fraternity — until now.
“A lot of hard work, a lot of hours in the gym,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “This isn’t just a win for me. This is a win for my family. This is a win for my friends. This is a win for everybody that was in my corner growing up. This is a win for the fans, the best fans in the world.”
The title caps a season where the Thunder won 84 games, tied for the third most by any team in any season in NBA history. Gilgeous-Alexander finished the season with 64 games of at least 30 points. The only other players to score 30 points that many times in a season: Wilt Chamberlain, Rick Barry, Elgin Baylor, Bob McAdoo, James Harden, Jordan and Abdul-Jabbar.
It is amazing company. With due respect to those legends, Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t care. The Thunder are NBA champions. That’s more than enough for him.
“Focusing on just being the best version of myself for this basketball team, for whatever it takes, for however many games it is, however many possessions is needed, however many moments,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Ultimately, I’m just trying to stay in the moment. I think that’s what’s gotten me here. That’s what has helped me achieve the MVP award, achieve all the things I’ve achieved. It’s helped this team win basketball games.”
This was not a sneak attack up the ladder of superstardom. Gilgeous-Alexander has been climbing those rungs for years.
He’s one of only two players — Giannis Antetokounmpo is the other — to average at least 30 points per game in each of the last three seasons. He led Canada to a bronze medal (over the United States, no less) at the World Cup in 2023, been an All-Star and first-team All-NBA pick for three years running, played in his first Olympics last year, and just finished a season where he posted career bests in points and assists per game.
He scored 3,172 points this season, including playoffs, the ninth-most by any player in NBA history.
Oh, and he’s a champion now.
“He’s getting better every year in just about everything,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “I think he’s really improved as a playmaker. … And then he’s an unbelievable scorer, and incredibly efficient. We lean into that. He leans into that. He’s learned when teams load up on him and they overcommit, to get off it early, and I think that’s reflected in the way we’ve played offense throughout the course of the season.”
Opponents have no choice but to marvel at how Gilgeous-Alexander does what he does. He’s not a high-flying artist like Jordan, not an unstoppable force of power like LeBron James, not a 3-point dazzler like Stephen Curry. He looks like he’s playing at his own pace much of time, largely because defenses have few ways to slow him down or speed him up.
“Shai, he’s so good,” Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton — who suffered a serious lower leg injury that knocked him out of Game 7 in the first quarter — said during the series. “He’s so slippery in between those gaps. He splits screens, like, I don’t know how he’s doing that. … He’s a really tough cover.”
Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of basketball in Oklahoma City, is rapidly becoming one of the faces of the NBA — his jersey is now one of the highest-selling — and it’s no secret that he is the icon for fans in Canada now. It used to be Steve Nash, the first Canadian to win NBA MVP.
Now, Nash has help.
“You can only imagine and get excited about all the kids around the world, but in particular Canadians that will be affected so positively, whether they’re basketball players or not, by the way he carries himself, by the way he executes and commits to his profession,” Nash said. “It’s remarkable and he’s an amazing example for everybody out there, not just kids.”
There’s no question Nash had some impact on Gilgeous-Alexander’s rise in the game. Another great who did: Kobe Bryant.
There are parallels: similar body types, even similar ways they answer questions. Bryant famously said “job’s not finished” when asked about his Lakers getting within two wins of a title one year; Gilgeous-Alexander had a similar moment after the Thunder got to three wins in this series, saying “we haven’t done anything.”
They have now.
“He is probably my favorite player of all time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of Bryant. “Never got the chance to meet him. With me, with kids all across the world, his influence has gone through the roof. He’ll be remembered forever because of the competitor and the basketball player he was. Yeah, I’m hopefully somewhere close to that as a basketball player one day.”
He’s not there yet.
But Gilgeous-Alexander got one day closer Sunday, when he reached basketball’s mountaintop for the first time.
“It means everything,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We rose to the moment. And here we are.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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