Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s past losses are driving him to two potentially huge wins

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When Shai Gilgeous-Alexander addressed his Canadian teammates inside that somber Paris locker room in early August, their hopes of medaling for the first time since 1936 dashed in a quarterfinals loss to France at the Olympics, there was a brutal lesson being learned — again — that he would carry forward.

“It’s a terrible feeling, obviously,” Gilgeous-Alexander said to his basketball brothers while sitting at his locker, as captured in Netflix’s “Court of Gold” documentary about the men’s basketball tournament in Paris. “I think for me, personally, I might have overlooked the opportunity a little bit. Like, once the game was over, I realized it’s another four years until we get this opportunity (again). That’s a long f—ing time. So for me, and I’d advise the rest of you, to remember what this feels like.”

The scene provides a fascinating look inside the psyche of one of the NBA’s best young stars and, perhaps, its next MVP. The honesty and humility with which he assesses his mindset, coupled with his choice to share that truth with the group, reveals the probing process of a player who is constantly trying to find the next angle both on the court and off. To solve the proverbial puzzle. In that moment of regret, he was talking to himself more than anyone else.

It’s seven months later, and the Oklahoma City star who has led the Thunder to one of the league’s most dominant regular seasons of all time, with the league’s youngest roster no less, is less than an hour removed from the Thunder’s latest one-sided win. The 26-year-old guard whose mindfulness is such a staple of his celebrated aura, and who had just spent much of his postgame news conference in Sacramento emphasizing the power that comes with remaining present, agrees to entertain a premise about the past — and the forthcoming playoffs — from this reporter (who was trying his hand at armchair sports psychology).

The idea, conveyed to Gilgeous-Alexander as he stood inside a Golden 1 Center hallway, is that his experience in France ending so painfully surely intensified his appetite for hoops destruction in the upcoming playoffs. To pour even more salt in that wound, the possibility also is raised that the Thunder’s failures in the 2024 playoffs — when they fell to the Dallas Mavericks in six games in the second round after earning the Western Conference’s top seed — might also qualify as the kind of flameout that leaves a scar and eventually, like the Olympics, inspires new growth.

Gilgeous-Alexander unpacks the moments in his mind, deciding for himself whether there’s a through line on the logic. His answer comes with the same sort of self-awareness that was so apparent that day inside Bercy Arena in Paris.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Gilgeous-Alexander, whose Thunder (63-12) have won 10 consecutive games and 16 of their last 17, told The Athletic. “In that instance, I’m thinking like, ‘We’re a bunch of NBA players (on Team Canada). We’re supposed to be in the Olympics. We’re supposed to medal.’ I don’t think anything of it. I think I’m gonna be back here in four years in L.A. But knock on wood, I could be injured and not be in the Olympics, and then four years from then, I could be out of my prime, and there’s someone better than me, and I never get a chance to go to Olympics again.

“I think losing that game (to France) really showed me like, ‘Now I have to wait another four years for this.’ (And) that showed me like, you don’t ever want to take things for granted, because nothing in life is promised. Like (Thunder) coach (Mark Daigneault) said a couple weeks ago, this group that we have today could be the best group of players I ever play with. You think, ‘Oh, we’re all 25 or under, so we have a whole runway in front of us.’ But you never know what happens.”

As Gilgeous-Alexander explained, the spirit of that last statement has many layers to it. There’s the elephant-in-the-room historical context, as the Thunder know as well as any organization that the runway isn’t always as long as it might appear for teams with dynamic young cores. Their famed trio of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden famously led an NBA Finals run in 2012, only for Harden to be traded to the Houston Rockets before the following season. Durant and Westbrook couldn’t bring the Thunder back to that finals peak.

“Yeah, exactly,” Gilgeous-Alexander said about the comparison of Thunder eras.

More than that, it seems, the Daigneault statement that Gilgeous-Alexander referenced was born out of a genuine appreciation for what they have right now rather than any sort of prediction of the roster construction to come. And not only is that stance justified, given the historical nature of this team that currently boasts the largest point differential of all time (13.3 points per game), but it’s in line with the stay-in-the-moment ethos that is clearly a driving force in their success.

“We think about bigger-picture things, but at the end of the day, the way that you accomplish your goals, the way that you win a basketball game, is by stacking,” said Daigneault, who is in his fifth season at the Thunder helm. “So we just try to root back into the next possession. We try to root back into today and be incredibly present together and allow the compounding effect of that to win the day. And that’s how we’ve been in this position. We didn’t set up at the beginning of the season and say we wanted to win 60 games, but we stacked to that point, and that’s where we are right now. So anything we continue to accomplish from here on out is going to be the result of how we play the next possession, how we attack the next day. We’re going to stay on that track.”

Mark Daigneault and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander have led the Thunder to one of the best NBA regular seasons of all time. (Matthew Hinton / Imagn Images)

Let the moments shape you, but never leave that space where every competitive fiber of your being is focused on the latest task at hand. Enjoy the wins, and learn from the (rare) losses, as a group. That’s the shared goal, anyway. And while it might all sound like a Ted Talk, there’s an authenticity behind this leadership approach, from Gilgeous-Alexander on down, that makes it hard to question.

It’s there in those goofy postgame interviews where there is a concerted effort for all of their players to share the spotlight and the joy that comes with it. It was there after the win over the Kings, when Gilgeous-Alexander, en route to handling his media duties, stopped to grab an energy drink out of the cooler for Isaiah Hartenstein as if he were a locker room attendant. Before departing, he asked around to make sure everyone else was good too. It was one of those little things that, to a star player’s teammate, can be so big.

From this vantage point, the affection and admiration that Gilgeous-Alexander’s teammates clearly have for him gives off Stephen Curry/Golden State Warriors vibes. It’s that deft understanding of inclusivity with all members of the organization that can be so powerful.

“Throughout my career, there’s always a village,” Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters in his news conference. “Obviously I’m having success in this league, (but) I wouldn’t be having success without so many people. … If (my teammates) aren’t as good as they are, and don’t help me be the player I am, I don’t care if I average 40 (points). If we have 12 wins every year, no one cares, you know what I mean? I understand that, and they’re just as important to me as my skill development or my numbers.”

Gilgeous-Alexander’s we-over-me mindset has been there all along when it comes to the MVP race, too, with his focus firmly on the collective at a time when he could be pounding his chest about the remarkable season he has had.

As one person close to Gilgeous-Alexander shared, he was (not surprisingly) disappointed last season when he took second in MVP voting behind the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić. Not only had he averaged 30.1 points, 6.2 assists, five rebounds and two steals — marks previously reached by just five other players — but also he did it on the West’s top team. The advice that was given by the confidante at the time, while wise, was easier said than done: Just go do it again.

Alas, he has been even better instead.

It takes a whole lot of hoops heroics to earn comparisons to the one and only Michael Jordan, but Gilgeous-Alexander’s season (league-leading 32.8 points, 6.4 assists, 5.0 rebounds) is indeed on par with some of MJ’s best. But it’s the similarity in their profiles that makes that conversation so intriguing, as SGA (who is the same height as Jordan, at 6-foot-6, but about 20 pounds lighter) also has managed to set an MJ-esque defensive tone for this group that has the league’s best rating on that end (by a mile).

If you dig a little deeper on the numbers, accounting for the manageable minutes that Gilgeous-Alexander has played because of the Thunder’s dominance, you get an even more accurate sense of his true impact. He has scored 34.6 points per 36 minutes, which is fifth all time. Wilt Chamberlain hit that mark only once. He has my vote.

But again, winning the MVP debate simply isn’t at the top of Gilgeous-Alexander’s list of priorities. Amid all these questions about whether these Thunder are mature enough to make the next step, with him sending a loud and selfless message to his group that winning the whole damn thing is all that truly matters, that’s the most impressive part.

All of which is to say that these Thunder, with Gilgeous-Alexander leading the way, appear to be very much for real.

Near the end of our brief but revealing chat, we discussed the 2024 postseason and whether, as was the case in Paris, he had any similar misgivings about his level of focus and engagement. Gilgeous-Alexander wasted no time in confirming that was the case.

Never mind that he had been a one-man wrecking crew against the Mavericks in the second round. The deed didn’t get done.

“I definitely wasn’t (present enough),” he said. “I definitely wasn’t. The Olympics helped me with that for sure. I was locked in, still trying to win — obviously — but I just didn’t see it through that lens. And that’s what life does. The experiences in life help you see things differently and help you grow. And I think that that’s definitely what I got from this summer.”

Like it or not for the rest of the league, there might be another growth spurt coming.

(Top photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)

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