Being the MVP in an NBA-winning season for your team would be the pinnacle of most athletes’ careers. For Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, it was just a window of opportunity to explore what else he’s capable of. Now, that’s greed in the way it’s described in the good book, but for hoopers looking to become legends of the game, it’s a prerequisite.
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Shai has already talked about how he didn’t like the way they won the championship last season. He doesn’t believe the OKC lifted the trophy by playing their best basketball.
It should be noted that they had the league’s best net rating, best defense, and third-best offense. Of course, upon further digging, you’d realize they got real close to being knocked out by Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets.
In the Finals as well, OKC seemed to be pushing against an immovable object in the Indiana Pacers, but when Tyrese Haliburton got injured, they caught a break. Perhaps it was karma for how well they had performed throughout the regular season. But Shai doesn’t want to rely on divinity to do the job for him.
“As a player, I don’t think I was as good in the postseason as I was in the regular season. Now, it naturally happens when you play a team seven times in a row, and they get to scout (you) seven times in a row … But I feel like I could have been better, so I try to control that. And then that mentality just trickles over to the team stuff,” he told the New York Times.
This season, Alexander is already averaging 33.3 points, 6.3 assists, and 5.4 rebounds per game, putting him right back in the MVP conversation. Still, the Canadian star believes he’s nowhere near his peak yet and has a long way to go to reach his full potential.
“There’s just so many areas of basketball [I can improve], I feel like, especially at my position, having the ball as much as I do,” he says, adding details about his game like a connoisseur who aims to taste everything the game has to offer.
The OKC star asserts that there were different levels to scoring. “There’s the complete other side of the ball. There’s scoring in transition. There’s just so many sides and parts to the game that the greatest players have mastered,” he passionately details.
“There’s just so many angles and ways that you can give yourself and your team an edge to win a basketball possession, a quarter, and then ultimately a game. So until I kind of get my grips on all of those, which will probably be a long time, I’d say pretty far away,” Shai added, talking about how far he was from his ultimate ceiling.
Perhaps, one day, he will have mastered it all, every aspect of the sport, that already wants to adorn him as a great. Poetic as it is, it will be a nightmare for every team that goes up against him.
