Tramel: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is yet another too-good-to-be-true Thunder superstar
The Shai-Hey Kid showed up at All-Star Weekend wearing a leather jacket that warmed Oklahoma hearts.
A kaleidoscope of colors. Blue, orange, red and turquoise.
On the front: “Thunder” spelled out with lightning bolts through the letters.
On the back: “Oklahoma City” boldly stacked, below the “OKC” logo.
On the sleeve: Native American shield from the state flag.
If Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is trying to steal our hearts, mission accomplished. If he’s trying to steal our money, just market those jackets, he’d sell half a million by Christmas. If he’s trying to steal our innocence, well, sorry, that ship sailed a few Independence Days ago.
SGA continues to amaze. Sustained but rapid growth into an NBA superstar. Consummate leader, forever saying and doing the right things. Signed on for the long haul, through summer 2027, and didn’t even demand a player option for that last season.
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Heck, even when SGA gets injured or sick (COVID protocol), like now, it comes at just the right time. His absence over these couple of weeks is going to make a big difference come draft lottery night.
Truth is, Gilgeous-Alexander seems too good to be true. And if there’s one thing Oklahoma City knows, it’s a too-good-to-be-true superstar.
Kevin Durant once was TGTBT. For eight years, the Too Good part trumped To Be True part. Then the script flipped. What’s done is done, and each person gets to feel about Durant the way they want.
But Durant and OKC made beautiful music together for eight seasons, and eight seasons is Old Testament years in the modern NBA.
So I’m all in on taking my chances with another TGTBT star.
I hit Mark Daigneault with the SGA-seems-too-good-to-be-true theory. I barely got the words out before Daigneault responded.
“He’s too good to be true.”
Daigneault said it quickly and he said it assuredly.
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The Thunder coach quickly went on to hail the character and qualities of many of his players, because touting the collective is in the Thunder DNA. And probably the Thunder does have more than its share of Boy Scouts. That’s on the organization’s check-list for ideal prospects, along with long arms and springy legs.
But Daigneault’s quick endorsement of the TGTBT label was telling. He didn’t have to think about it.
“Part of the reason why it’s too good to be true, is because he doesn’t separate himself out,” Daigneault said of SGA, “even with all the temptations and all the attention and status and money, and all the stuff that could tempt you to separate yourself.
“And really, there’s nothing in the NBA stopping players from doing that. You’re kind of at the mercy of whether they want to. Fortunately for us, he’s on that track. He’s already checked a lot of those boxes. And yet, he wants to do it inside the team. He wants to do it inside the organization, he wants to be part of something bigger than himself.”
Listen, I realize, everyone is too good to be true until they’re not. Durant taught us that. So no one knows what the future will bring the SGA/Thunder relationship.
But it looks promising. Frankly, more promising than the Ja Morant/Memphis Grizzlies tandem, which ought to be one of the NBA’s best stories but now comes with multiple grimaces.
Morant is a superstar himself and a year younger (23) than SGA. His team is further up the food chain than is the Thunder, past the promising-rebuild phase and into contender status.
But Morant keeps finding trouble. After a Grizzlies-Pacers skirmish earlier this season, a Pacers security guard reported that a gun was flashed toward the Pacers team bus, coming from a vehicle containing Morant and his entourage.
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The Washington Post reported last week that Memphis police reports show that 1) A mall security guard says he was threatened by Morant; and 2) a 17-year-old boy says he was assaulted by Morant and Morant’s friend after a pickup basketball game at Morant’s house that went off the rails.
The Grizzlies’ brass can’t be sleeping that well at night. The Thunder brass sleeps quite fine, thank you. It slept well when Durant was the face of the franchise.
Don’t confuse Durant and SGA as soulmates. Their paths were different. In youth basketball culture, Durant was a phenom at an early age, and he was an 18-year-old national sensation at the University of Texas. Everyone saw Durant’s stardom coming.
SGA, not so much. He was a fine prospect. He also was the sixth-ranked prospect member just in Kentucky’s 2017 recruiting class. His ascension has been stair-steps. Good rookie with the Clippers. Really nice player in Thunder Year 1. Budding star in Thunder Year 2. Star in Year 3. Now superstar in Thunder Year 4.
Gilgeous-Alexander has come to his status — NBA celebrity, all-star, fashion maven — more mature than did Durant. What exactly that means, I’ll leave to the sociologists and psychologists. But it seems good for OKC.
SGA’s rise relieves fears. Some Oklahomans worried that NBA coaches could conspire to not vote Gilgeous-Alexander onto the all-star team, though he obviously was deserving. Some say that scenario played out in 2018, when Paul George was not initially named an all-star but was added when DeMarcus Cousins was injured.
The theory? Plant the seed that SGA (or George) couldn’t thrive in Oklahoma and he might get happy feet. PG13 ended up making first-team all-NBA in 2019, and two months later still requested a trade. Which brought SGA to the Thunder, so rose petals all around for George.
The all-star-voting coaches rewarded SGA, as they should have, and he’s likely to make all-NBA next month, unless he misses most of the rest of the season. Those numbers — 31.0 points a game; shooting 50.7% — are too big to ignore.
And if SGA is the least bit disenchanted with OKC, he has a funny way of showing it, wearing a gaudy Thunder jacket at the fashion show that is the All-Star Game, one more reason to claim that the Shai-Hey Kid is too good to be true.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a too-good-to-be-true Thunder superstar
