{"id":210117,"date":"2025-10-13T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210117\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T11:59:09","slug":"shai-gilgeous-alexander-on-his-nba-rivals-fashion-secrets-and-why-he-wants-to-retire-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210117\/","title":{"rendered":"Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on His NBA Rivals, Fashion Secrets, and Why He Wants to Retire Young"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI pick up a basketball to be the best. If you\u2019re asking me if I want to be better than Kobe, of course I do,\u201d Shai says. \u201cWhether I get there or not, we\u2019ll find out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off court, the ambition is equally singular: Already considered the league\u2019s best-dressed player, he\u2019s looking to nurture his upstart Converse line into an Air Jordan\u2013esque global concern. And he\u2019s one of the few players who could authentically carry the style mantle for years to come. Most importantly, since he and his wife, Hailey, welcomed their son, Ares, last year, he\u2019s learning to balance that hunger for greatness with the responsibilities that come with being an active and present father.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamily, friends, hoops, fashion\u201d is how he ticks off the priorities. \u201cEverything else just gets in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

SGA lives in a Gilmore Girls\u2013y town just outside Hamilton, on a quiet, leafy street along the banks of Lake Ontario. When I roll up to his place at half past noon, he\u2019s in the driveway finishing his second workout of the day: 90 minutes with his strength trainer, Nem Ilic, who\u2019s currently making him Sisyphus a weighted sled back and forth past his matching black G-Wagon and Range Rover. \u201cCouple more sets and I\u2019ll be right there,\u201d he says, ushering me through the immaculate gym in the garage and into the house.<\/p>\n

Inside, it smells delicious; SGA\u2019s private chef is grilling meat and boiling pasta for lunch. The family dog, a floppy-eared Doberman named Echo, rises from a vast white couch in the living room and pads over to me for some head scratches. Propped against a wall, next to Ares\u2019s toddler-size electric car, is a street sign for \u201cShai Gilgeous-Alexander Way\u201d\u2014given to him, along with the key to the city, by Hamilton\u2019s mayor in August. The space is airy, comfortable, charmingly domestic. It feels less like the opulently curated homes in Architectural Digest and more like visiting your richest friend\u2019s house in high school.<\/p>\n

\"Shai<\/p>\n

That was by design, Gilgeous-Alexander explains, as we settle in at his dining table to talk. He\u2019s shirtless and wearing another pair of Thunder shorts, blue this time, his post-lift torso wiry and chiseled like a muscle-bound Gumby. \u201cI like smaller cities,\u201d he responds, between sips of a protein shake, when I ask why a stylish young superstar who just signed a four-year, $285 million contract extension isn\u2019t living in Miami or LA or even just half an hour up the road in Toronto. Growing up in working-class Hamilton\u2014the Newark to Toronto\u2019s New York, as the writer Eric Koreen once put it\u2014and playing in Oklahoma City has primed him for a quieter way of life. \u201cI can walk around here freely. It\u2019s mostly older people walking the dog. I was just in the NBA season for 10 months, and we were all over the place\u2014fans 24\/7, on a flight, off a flight. In my offseason, I want the absolute opposite, so I just hide out here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI pick up a basketball to be the best. If you\u2019re asking me if I want to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,726,43125,5275,590,22821,85,20116],"class_list":{"0":"post-210117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-gq-sports","12":"tag-magazine","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-onecolumn","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-textbelowcentergridwidth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}