Former UK star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is now an established NBA star. (Oklahoma City Thunder Photo)
Former Kentucky guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is having another outstanding season for the Oklahoma City Thunder and is one of the leading candidates for Most Valuable Player honors midway of the season.
The Oklahoma City point guard is averaging 32.5 points, 6.1 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game this season and shooting 52.3 percent from the field. Only in his seventh season in the league, he has scored 10,530 points and handed out 2,198 assists. He’s pulled off 2,103 rebounds and also has 634 steals and 346 blocks in 439 games.
At the all-star game, he was asked about possibly being one of the future faces of the NBA as players like LeBron James and Steph Curry near the ends of their careers.
“It’s cool. It’s something that we as players normally kind of don’t really have full control over. That’s literally for the world to decide, and whoever the world gravitates to is going to become it naturally,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
“Now, it’s something that would obviously be — it’s not really like a title, it’s more of an opinion, but it is something that is for sure surreal. If you’re in that conversation, if you’re amongst those guys, you are a very, very, very good basketball player and will probably go down in history, and to be in that conversation is a blessing.”
James and Curry have both won NBA championships. Gilgeous-Alexander has not. He knows he needs a title to elevate his status as one of the league’s top players.
“You play the game to win, and at the end of the day, all that really matters. If you don’t win, or in my mind if you don’t win, you lost and if you lost, you failed,” the Oklahoma City star said. “Now you learn through those failures and losses, but ultimately, I wake up in the morning to win, and if I don’t succeed in that in my career, I will have never accomplished what I wanted to.”
