Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: The secret routine of the new NBA champion

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the man of the moment in the NBA.

Foto: Getty Images

In the midst of the celebrations for the NBA title of Oklahoma City Thunder, all the ovations led Shai Gilgeous-Alxander. And more than one remembered the words of the Canadian, when he was chosen as the most valuable player (MVP) of the regular season: “I could not have done it without my classmates. The amount of victories we add is, probably, the reason why I won the MVP.”

The OKC star, the new owners of the ring, has just closed one of the most imposing seasons in the recent NBA history: MVP of the regular season, MVP of the conference finals, MVP of the NBA finals, champion ring and top scorer of the year.

With just 26 years, Shai already shares his name with legends such as Shaquille O'Neal, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the only ones who had achieved that feat before him.

Oklahoma was an overwhelming team this season. The figure is as overwhelming as symbolic: 68 wins and just 14 losses, with a difference of +12.9 points per game, the best collective brand of the entire modern era. It was not a team of flashes or gusts. It was a constant, patient, invincible machinery. From October to June, the Thunder dominated each section of the season and confirmed their reign in epic finals against Indiana Pacers, with A seventh game resolved by hierarchy, character and defense.

The title has a special flavor. It is the first since the franchise moved to Oklahoma, although it has the 1979 championship in its records, when they were still the Seattle Supersonics. However, this time, the ring came with a completely new identity: that of a young, athletic and self -taught team. A team built without shortcuts or star transfer. A team that trusted its process, opted for development and harvested humbly.

Shai, the great OKC star has a secret method

In the center of that project was always Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. His style – a mixture of elegance, control and fierce – challenges the modern logic of the game. In a NBA obsessed with triple, the PACE-And-Space and efficiency statistics, Shai opted for the pause. For the middle distance. For reading. It attacks as a chess player in full average game: it measures the rival, forces him to move on his board, pushes him towards wrong decisions. He punishes him without hurry.

That type of basketball is not improvised. It is cultivated. He trains. Dwayne Washington, an unorthodox coach, was key in his training. Together, they explored the court as a map of invisible triangles. They did not repeat plays, they deciphered patterns. There were no systems, they studied geometries. Each space was a door; Each pause, a trap. The rhythm was everything: inhale before dripping, exhale when throwing. Shai was not created to run. It was designed to think.

“Today, while everyone tries to play basketball, he plays chess,” summarized his coach with a phrase that became mantra. The impact was so deep that it is still reflected in its routine: controlled breathing, surgical decisions, an impossible tempo to disturb. Gilgeous-Alexander not only dodges rivals: the hypnotize.

The MVP mentality was sown from a young age. Every Saturday, he took the subway in Toronto with Washington. They walked through the Vitrinas of Holt Renfrew – the luxury made showcase – and returned without purchases, but with a clear teaching: everything is working working.

At 15 he crossed the border to study in the United States. His passage through Kentucky was brief but decisive. In his only university year it was already evident that his head was ahead of his feet.

That ethic of effort has family roots. His mother, Charmaine Gilgeous, was an Olympic athlete at the 1992 Barcelona Games, where he represented Antigua and Barbuda in the 400 meters flat. He trained at five in the morning and returned home with his legs surrendered, but never before preparing breakfast. Shai grew seeing her run between her work shifts and the track, and understood that talent is not enough without sacrifice. From it inherited the discipline, resistance and habit of converting fatigue into routine. At home, success was not a goal: it was a consequence of daily work.

The road to the top of the MVP

He was selected in the 11th position of the 2018 Draft by the clippers, but his destiny changed with a turn as brutal as providential: the transfer that took Paul George to Los Angeles also sent Shai to Oklahoma. For many, it was just one more movement in a long reconstruction. For Sam Presti, the general manager was the beginning of a master plan.

In 2020, with the world in pause for the pandemic, Shai locked himself to work. Not in elite facilities, but in community gyms. Twelve hours of rigor: weights, bands, shooting, reading. When the league returned to the Orlando bubble, he was already another.

Chris Paul was his silent mentor. He taught him how he leads. How it is observed. How is heard. And when he left, Shai inherited the helm. He sustained it firmly. He did not impose his voice, he imposed his example. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave. Thus led a team in which Chet Holmgren emerged as the wall that everyone expected, in which Jalen Williams was consolidated as an ideal squire, and in which everyone played at the rhythm of a different MVP, of those who do not look for lights, but victories.

Statistically, its season was historic: 32.7 points, more than six assists per game and more than 54% in field shots. Only Michael Jordan had signed such a combination. What made Shai an incomparable figure was its emotional impact: its serenity in chaos, its body language without stridency, its ability to raise those around it. He won the MVP by numbers, yes, but also by meaning.

Oklahoma City Thunder not only won the championship. He built it. He dreamed it, planned and executed it. He did it with humility, with work, with vision. While other franchises pursued stars, they sowed culture. Now, with a young, disciplined and ambitious nucleus, they look to the future with more hunger. This ring is a confirmation, but also a warning: Oklahoma was not a surprise. It was the best team from day one until the last.

And Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the boy who grew up with his mother's example, today aspires to the great peaks. It is already history. But the best, surely, is yet to be written.

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