Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is having a dream season. MVP, scoring champion, best record in the league — and now, just two wins away from basketball immortality as he looks to lead the Oklahoma City Thunder to their first-ever NBA championship. With his dominant performances, he’s officially entered the superstar conversation. And with that title comes a wave of hypotheticals and what-ifs.
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Shai’s father, Vaughn Alexander, recently sat down with Overtime to answer a few of those hypotheticals. One of the most common debates surrounding today’s stars is how they’d fare in the ’90s — an arguably tougher era of basketball, without many of the advantages players benefit from today. Vaughn, however, is confident. He believes that if Shai were dropped into the ’90s, he’d be a player comparable to Michael Jordan.
Of course, Vaughn acknowledged that his son can’t be exactly what Michael Jordan was — he even called the Bulls legend the true GOAT. But he believes that Shai’s style of play is similar enough that, if placed in that era, SGA could very well put up Jordan-esque numbers.
“Well, a lot of guys used the midrange more at that time. He’d be blending in as a kind of type of like Mike. Not putting him in Mike’s class, you know Mike’s the GOAT, but that’s what Mike used to do. Mid range, 5-6 threes a game, that’s what Shai does,” he said.
His mention of the mid-range does have some backing to it. Mike and Kobe Bryant, who were classified as some of the most lethal mid-range players in the league during their primes, developed their game to ensure they could always get a shot off, no matter the coverage.
Shai has done something similar. He’s mastered the angles of the mid-range to such an extent that he either makes the shot or gets fouled in the process.
Even the stats indicate that Shai is lethal from inside the paint. In Jordan’s 1996–97 season, he shot 40.7% from midrange. Shai, over this season, has shot a mind-blowing 47.9%. It’s not just that he has a solid, Mike-esque midrange game — Shai is shooting nearly as well as Jordan did at his peak, with MJ’s best reported mark hovering around 53%.
SGA may not be Mike, but the numbers align, the efficiency is similar, and if the Thunder go on to win the title, their all-time single-season legacies could end up looking remarkably alike. However, it will surely not be enough to spark a full-blown comparison.
