Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of the Thunder’s rebuild whom the NBA is ‘respecting’ more and more
OKLAHOMA CITY — It was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s worst game of an otherwise quietly strong season.
He could not get to the rim. He didn’t have room to shoot, and when he did, the shots certainly didn’t go in. He especially couldn’t get anything going in the third quarter, where he has been his most dangerous.
It was the toughest night of Gilgeous-Alexander’s season, and the Miami Heat made it so. The Oklahoma City Thunder was on the second night of a back-to-back, was blown out in both games, and against the Heat, Shai finished with just 10 points on 2-of-11 shooting. He was shut out in the third quarter by steely defender P.J. Tucker, which is noteworthy because Gilgeous-Alexander is third in the NBA in scoring in the third quarter (and 15th in second-half scoring). Four of the Thunder’s six wins this season have involved comebacks of 16 or more points.
It was a bad night for Gilgeous-Alexander, Monday night was, and in the modern NBA, a night like that could be a recipe for disaster if, say, you’re a journalist with an interview scheduled with Gilgeous-Alexander postgame. But he held to his commitment and met me outside the Thunder locker room for a walk and talk anyway.
“It is tough not being as competitive as you want to be,” he told me as we walked the bowels of the Thunder’s Paycom Center.
Gilgeous-Alexander, 23, is the face of the Thunder’s audacious rebuild. Not only because he is their best player, or that the ink is drying on his five-year, $172 million contract extension, but also because when Oklahoma City traded for him in July 2019, it received, count ’em, seven first-round picks. Trading away an All-Star in his prime, like Paul George, and getting that many picks back is a signal of a tear-it-down-and-build-it-back-up project, a project that was delayed a season because the other mega deal OKC swung in 2019, shipping out Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul and four more first-rounders, somehow still resulted in a playoff berth.
For two seasons, on two different teams, Gilgeous-Alexander was a young, promising starter on playoff teams that did not ask him to do too much. His rookie year, with the Clippers, he played point guard, but the ball was taken out of his hands at the end of games. And Year 2, playing next to Paul, he was actually the Thunder’s leading scorer, averaging 19.0 points per game, but the offense ran through Paul, and Gilgeous-Alexander learned volumes playing next to him.
Only now, with Paul long gone and Oklahoma City making clear where it is organizationally, has Gilgeous-Alexander slipped out of the limelight of the postseason and to the relative quiet of rebuilding in one of the NBA’s smallest markets, in middle America. It was a disappearance made harsher by a foot injury that limited him to just 35 games last season. He was out of the lineup for good beginning March 24, and the Thunder promptly lost 26 of their remaining 29 games to close the campaign. OKC was 19-23 before Gilgeous-Alexander went down.
That part — the losing — he concedes, has been hard, but he and the organization that has invested in him share an abundance of patience. He also said he is enjoying being the focal point of Oklahoma City’s offense, being asked and counted on to score as though each win or loss depends on it. Because it does.
“Yeah, absolutely. It’s something I’ve dreamed about as a kid,” he told me. “Everyone wants to be that guy, you know what I’m saying? With high pressure comes great rewards.”
Through 15 games, including the Thunder’s 101-89 win at Houston on Wednesday, Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 21.1 points, 5.1 boards and 4.6 assists per game. He was, no surprise, better against the Rockets than he was against the Heat, with 15 points, seven boards and nine assists, which tied a career high. If nothing else good happens this season, and that won’t be the case, he already has his iconic moment — bombing that 3 from the Lakers logo at half court in the closing moments of a 19-point comeback win at Staples. He’s taking more shots (17.9) than he ever has and nearly two more 3s per game than ever before — which is by design. He spent the summer working on a stepback 3-pointer, and that’s helped the part of his game that was already his strongest.
With opposing defenses having to pay more attention to him as a shooter, he is driving to the basket more than any player in the league (22.5 times per game), taking the second-most shots and points (behind only Ja Morant) and getting to the foul line more than anyone off those drives. He also drilled down on a midrange jumper, and it’s paying off to the tune of 8.8 points per game on pull-up shots, which ranks him in the top 20 in that category.
“I love to drive and put pressure on the defense, and I think that’s how the best offense is generated,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s something I pride my game on.”
But when I asked him what he liked most about how he is playing this season — keep in mind, just because he is shooting more often, the ball isn’t necessarily going in more (he’s shooting .412 for the season) — he thought about it for a few seconds.
“I would say how comfortable I’ve become shooting the ball,” he finally said. “I feel like that’s added a level of … another layer to my game. Teams are higher on pick-and-rolls, double teaming, guarding me closer, sending more help, which ultimately is respecting me as a player.”
The Thunder have unearthed some other keepers, beginning with Luguentz Dort, who plays next to Gilgeous-Alexander and has shown himself to be a staunch defender in Tucker’s mold. Dort was undrafted and playing on a two-way contract, but by the 2020 playoffs, in the Disney bubble, he was locking horns with the Rockets’ James Harden in a series that went seven games. Dort is averaging a career-best 18.4 points and 4.6 rebounds per game starting on the Thunder’s wing.
Oklahoma City also feels strongly about its rookie guard Josh Giddey, who has been facilitating the offense and allowing Gilgeous-Alexander to play off the ball. Giddey is averaging 9.4 points and 5.9 assists, and on Nov. 10 became the youngest player since LeBron James in 2003 to finish a game with at least nine points and nine assists (he posted 12 points and nine assists that night in a win over New Orleans, then added nine and nine against the Heat this week). Darius Bazley, a 6-8 forward in his second full season as a starter, is averaging 10.6 points.
Derrick Favors and Mike Muscala are on coach Mark Daigneault’s bench, but he mostly turns to a cadre of young players whose names are largely unknown to casual NBA fans and who have both the time, and the need, to show they can hack it in the league.
“We control our own destiny every night,” was how Gilgeous-Alexander put it. “And it’s also a process to ultimately be a champion. You have to go through it, and multiple teams have. No different for us.”
If all goes well, at some point, the Thunder will be playoff contenders and Gilgeous-Alexander will be a driving force behind that. Assuming this team is not yet ready for that, one might turn to the personal accolades a star player on a young team might be able to reach. As you might expect, Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t have much to say in the way of boasting about any All-Star or All-NBA prospects, telling me that if it’s something he dwells on at all, the dwelling comes during the offseason.
The West is guard dominant, with the likes of Stephen Curry, and Luka Doncic, and Paul and Devin Booker, and Damian Lillard, and Morant, and Donovan Mitchell among his competitors. The likeliest path for him would be a proliferation as a scorer, ticking his average upward by several percentage points. He’s scored 20 or more points in eight games so far this season and is one of only eight players league-wide averaging at least 20 points, five rebounds and four assists with fewer than three turnovers per game.
“If it happens it happens. If it doesn’t, it sucks, and I am going to keep working,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, as the last of the Heat players boarded the bus for the airport, and he set course for the SUV that would take him home after a rare, tough night on the court for him, personally.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of the Thunder’s rebuild whom the NBA is ‘respecting’ more and more
OKLAHOMA CITY — It was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s worst game of an otherwise quietly strong season.
He could not get to the rim. He didn’t have room to shoot, and when he did, the shots certainly didn’t go in. He especially couldn’t get anything going in the third quarter, where he has been his most dangerous.
It was the toughest night of Gilgeous-Alexander’s season, and the Miami Heat made it so. The Oklahoma City Thunder was on the second night of a back-to-back, was blown out in both games, and against the Heat, Shai finished with just 10 points on 2-of-11 shooting. He was shut out in the third quarter by steely defender P.J. Tucker, which is noteworthy because Gilgeous-Alexander is third in the NBA in scoring in the third quarter (and 15th in second-half scoring). Four of the Thunder’s six wins this season have involved comebacks of 16 or more points.
It was a bad night for Gilgeous-Alexander, Monday night was, and in the modern NBA, a night like that could be a recipe for disaster if, say, you’re a journalist with an interview scheduled with Gilgeous-Alexander postgame. But he held to his commitment and met me outside the Thunder locker room for a walk and talk anyway.
“It is tough not being as competitive as you want to be,” he told me as we walked the bowels of the Thunder’s Paycom Center.
Gilgeous-Alexander, 23, is the face of the Thunder’s audacious rebuild. Not only because he is their best player, or that the ink is drying on his five-year, $172 million contract extension, but also because when Oklahoma City traded for him in July 2019, it received, count ’em, seven first-round picks. Trading away an All-Star in his prime, like Paul George, and getting that many picks back is a signal of a tear-it-down-and-build-it-back-up project, a project that was delayed a season because the other mega deal OKC swung in 2019, shipping out Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul and four more first-rounders, somehow still resulted in a playoff berth.
For two seasons, on two different teams, Gilgeous-Alexander was a young, promising starter on playoff teams that did not ask him to do too much. His rookie year, with the Clippers, he played point guard, but the ball was taken out of his hands at the end of games. And Year 2, playing next to Paul, he was actually the Thunder’s leading scorer, averaging 19.0 points per game, but the offense ran through Paul, and Gilgeous-Alexander learned volumes playing next to him.
Only now, with Paul long gone and Oklahoma City making clear where it is organizationally, has Gilgeous-Alexander slipped out of the limelight of the postseason and to the relative quiet of rebuilding in one of the NBA’s smallest markets, in middle America. It was a disappearance made harsher by a foot injury that limited him to just 35 games last season. He was out of the lineup for good beginning March 24, and the Thunder promptly lost 26 of their remaining 29 games to close the campaign. OKC was 19-23 before Gilgeous-Alexander went down.
That part — the losing — he concedes, has been hard, but he and the organization that has invested in him share an abundance of patience. He also said he is enjoying being the focal point of Oklahoma City’s offense, being asked and counted on to score as though each win or loss depends on it. Because it does.
“Yeah, absolutely. It’s something I’ve dreamed about as a kid,” he told me. “Everyone wants to be that guy, you know what I’m saying? With high pressure comes great rewards.”
Through 15 games, including the Thunder’s 101-89 win at Houston on Wednesday, Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 21.1 points, 5.1 boards and 4.6 assists per game. He was, no surprise, better against the Rockets than he was against the Heat, with 15 points, seven boards and nine assists, which tied a career high. If nothing else good happens this season, and that won’t be the case, he already has his iconic moment — bombing that 3 from the Lakers logo at half court in the closing moments of a 19-point comeback win at Staples. He’s taking more shots (17.9) than he ever has and nearly two more 3s per game than ever before — which is by design. He spent the summer working on a stepback 3-pointer, and that’s helped the part of his game that was already his strongest.
With opposing defenses having to pay more attention to him as a shooter, he is driving to the basket more than any player in the league (22.5 times per game), taking the second-most shots and points (behind only Ja Morant) and getting to the foul line more than anyone off those drives. He also drilled down on a midrange jumper, and it’s paying off to the tune of 8.8 points per game on pull-up shots, which ranks him in the top 20 in that category.
“I love to drive and put pressure on the defense, and I think that’s how the best offense is generated,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s something I pride my game on.”
But when I asked him what he liked most about how he is playing this season — keep in mind, just because he is shooting more often, the ball isn’t necessarily going in more (he’s shooting .412 for the season) — he thought about it for a few seconds.
“I would say how comfortable I’ve become shooting the ball,” he finally said. “I feel like that’s added a level of … another layer to my game. Teams are higher on pick-and-rolls, double teaming, guarding me closer, sending more help, which ultimately is respecting me as a player.”
The Thunder have unearthed some other keepers, beginning with Luguentz Dort, who plays next to Gilgeous-Alexander and has shown himself to be a staunch defender in Tucker’s mold. Dort was undrafted and playing on a two-way contract, but by the 2020 playoffs, in the Disney bubble, he was locking horns with the Rockets’ James Harden in a series that went seven games. Dort is averaging a career-best 18.4 points and 4.6 rebounds per game starting on the Thunder’s wing.
Oklahoma City also feels strongly about its rookie guard Josh Giddey, who has been facilitating the offense and allowing Gilgeous-Alexander to play off the ball. Giddey is averaging 9.4 points and 5.9 assists, and on Nov. 10 became the youngest player since LeBron James in 2003 to finish a game with at least nine points and nine assists (he posted 12 points and nine assists that night in a win over New Orleans, then added nine and nine against the Heat this week). Darius Bazley, a 6-8 forward in his second full season as a starter, is averaging 10.6 points.
Derrick Favors and Mike Muscala are on coach Mark Daigneault’s bench, but he mostly turns to a cadre of young players whose names are largely unknown to casual NBA fans and who have both the time, and the need, to show they can hack it in the league.
“We control our own destiny every night,” was how Gilgeous-Alexander put it. “And it’s also a process to ultimately be a champion. You have to go through it, and multiple teams have. No different for us.”
If all goes well, at some point, the Thunder will be playoff contenders and Gilgeous-Alexander will be a driving force behind that. Assuming this team is not yet ready for that, one might turn to the personal accolades a star player on a young team might be able to reach. As you might expect, Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t have much to say in the way of boasting about any All-Star or All-NBA prospects, telling me that if it’s something he dwells on at all, the dwelling comes during the offseason.
The West is guard dominant, with the likes of Stephen Curry, and Luka Doncic, and Paul and Devin Booker, and Damian Lillard, and Morant, and Donovan Mitchell among his competitors. The likeliest path for him would be a proliferation as a scorer, ticking his average upward by several percentage points. He’s scored 20 or more points in eight games so far this season and is one of only eight players league-wide averaging at least 20 points, five rebounds and four assists with fewer than three turnovers per game.
“If it happens it happens. If it doesn’t, it sucks, and I am going to keep working,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, as the last of the Heat players boarded the bus for the airport, and he set course for the SUV that would take him home after a rare, tough night on the court for him, personally.
