SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At first glance, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has everything an NBA star could want at the moment.
A Larry O’Brien trophy from Oklahoma City’s title run in June. The Michael Jordan trophy — aka the MVP award — from that same season. And after a 132-101 win over the Sacramento Kings, his team boasts a league-leading 9-1 record that is quite remarkable considering the Thunder’s second-best player, Jalen Williams, has yet to play after undergoing offseason wrist surgery.
But to hear the 27-year-old reflect on how the Thunder got here during his postgame press conference on Friday night, when he admitted that he was displeased with the way the team reached the NBA’s mountaintop, was to realize that Gilgeous-Alexander still wants a whole lot more.
“Honestly speaking, I didn’t like the way we won, if that makes sense,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, whose Thunder survived a seven-game series against Denver in the second round and beat the Indiana Pacers in seven games in the Finals. “I didn’t think we won an NBA championship playing our best basketball. That was the first time we’d been that far in the playoffs, so it was a learning experience for us.
“But it takes another level of focus, discipline, assertiveness, aggression, to be who we were in the regular season, and do that throughout the postseason.”
Who they were, to review, was a historically great group that went 68-14 while posting the league’s best net rating (by a massive margin over Boston), the league’s best defense (with Orlando a distant second) and the third-best offense. Then came the playoffs, when Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets came so close to knocking them out and the Pacers did the same before Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles tendon tear in the first quarter of Game 7 changed everything.
“We were definitely more dominant in the regular season than the postseason,” Gilgeous-Alexander continued. “So yeah, that was the biggest thing for me. And for me, as well — 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.”
Does it ever.
As these first 10 games have shown, Gilgeous-Alexander is more than capable of carrying the kind of load that only the all-time greats can endure. Not only is he producing offensively at a similar level to what he did last season — 33 points, six assists and five rebounds per game so far — but he’s receiving rave reviews for the attention to defensive detail that has Oklahoma City dominating on that end again.
They currently have the league’s top defensive rating (104.8 points allowed per 100 possessions), with Detroit (109.6) in second place. And again, that’s without Williams, who was named to the league’s All-Defensive Second Team last season.
That two-way ability is an X-factor of sorts when it comes to the MVP discussion, as only Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama can stake a similar claim among the current crop of candidates (which is subject to change, of course). Add in Gilgeous-Alexander’s early lead on the narrative front, with the Thunder maintaining a 73-win pace despite being down an All-Star in Williams, who was one of 13 players to average at least 20 points, five rebounds and five assists last season, and you start to see how the reigning MVP could wind up taking home that hardware again. Williams’ timeline to return is expected to be reevaluated next week.
Yet the most frightening part for the rest of the Association, and the thing that has the Thunder so confident that their best is yet to come, is that Gilgeous-Alexander has an obsession with improvement that isn’t going away. He often talks about his own game as if it’s an out-of-body experience, with Gilgeous-Alexander expressing a deep curiosity about how great he can ultimately become. When I asked him to assess the distance between this current state and his proverbial ceiling, the answer was enough to make you wonder where his ascension might end.
“I would say pretty far away,” he said. “There’s just so many areas of basketball, I feel like, especially at my position, having the ball as much as I do. … I’m the point of attack offensively. There’s playing without the ball. There’s different levels of 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.
“I’ve heard coaches talk about playing against (former NBA All-Star Rajon) Rondo, and it’s almost like you’re playing against a coach on the floor. He knows all your plays, and he knows what you’re going to do next, and things like that. 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.”
So no, as it turns out, he’s not the slightest bit satisfied.
“That’s what makes him really special (as a) superstar,” said Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein, who had a monster performance (33 points, 19 rebounds and three blocks) against the Kings. “It’s really easy to follow him. He puts in a lot of work. He puts the team first at all times, and I think that’s what makes him an amazing leader.
“He might not be talking all the time, but … his (because of his) actions, we all follow. He’s been amazing in that sense since I got here. You don’t see that with a lot of superstars, and you have to give him a lot of respect.”
No arguments here.