Shai Gilgeous-Alexander downplays career-high 45 point explosion

11/12/2024 01:35 PM

The Oklahoma City Thunder recently lost rising star F Chet Holmgren to a pelvic fracture expected to sideline him for 8-10 weeks. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is no stranger to stepping up when his team needs him most. He hasn’t missed a beat after being unanimously selected to the All-NBA 1st Team last season and reached a new career-high point total on Monday night by scoring 45 against the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Thunder hosted the Clippers for their first game after Holmgren went down and Gilgeous-Alexander, as if he were trying to reassure the home crowd that things would be alright, absolutely exploded in a 134-126 win. The career-high 45 points were the main course on a stat sheet so stuffed you would think he was preparing for another Thanksgiving in the United States. But if you’ve followed the Thunder’s star guard over the years, you could have guessed that he was not going to bask in his own accomplishments postgame.

Gilgeous-Alexander was asked about topping his previous career-best of 44 points (reached twice last season) after the win and couldn’t have been more nonchalant about it.

“It didn’t feel special,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It didn’t feel like I did something I’d never done before. Just felt like another basketball game. I felt like I should have had more, missed some easy shots, but [that’s] the game.”

The emerging superstar put the cherry on top when he added that he “felt like [he] should have had more,” but missing some easy looks kept him from a higher point total.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is Playing MVP Level Basketball for the Thunder

Gilgeous-Alexander also recorded three rebounds, nine assists, five steals, and two blocks on Monday. He has been an integral part of what the Thunder have accomplished so far this season as they sit atop the Western Conference standings with a record of 9-2. But Oklahoma City’s goal isn’t just to be a good team. The goal is also to be a better team than last year when they were eliminated in the Western Conference Semi-Finals by the eventual championship runner-up in the Dallas Mavericks.

The team’s two major offseason additions in Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein will certainly help. But Hartenstein has yet to log a minute for Oklahoma City and Caruso, as usual, is already finding ways to impact games but hasn’t yet settled into his new situation. The guard, while praised primarily for his elite defense on and off the ball, is shooting 30.9% from the floor to start the year. This means the injury sustained by Chet Holmgren exacerbates the importance of Oklahoma City finding ways to improve that are already in the building.

Many, including me, thought that the Thunder’s lack of experience would plague them in the 2023-24 NBA postseason. Some flipped their chameleon-like ability to change their identity as a team into a weakness, arguing that they didn’t have a true identity to lean back on in times of trouble. But what hurt the Thunder more than anything was their lack of insulation for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the offensive side of the ball. It’s not that Gilgeous-Alexander needs support to look like a number-one option in the NBA, it’s that any NBA superstar needs a little help from his friends to make close to — and eventually across — the finish line.

Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren both put up playoff stat lines that are impressive for players of any age, forget players as young as them (23 and 22, respectively), but when Oklahoma City needed offense in the halfcourt, the extent to which they were able to impact the game fizzled. Williams is averaging a career-high in scoring this season and Holmgren was beating his mark from last season before getting hurt – two hugely important developments for OKC.

As a result of this in-house growth, Gilgeous-Alexander’s usage rate has declined a tad – from 31.7 to 31.1, per NBA.com. But that’s not a big difference. And his ability to impact basketball games has arguably only improved. Sure, he’s averaging fewer points per game than last season. Sure, Nikola Jokic and maybe even Jayson Tatum should currently be above him on any iteration of a way-too-early MVP ladder. But SGA is up there. And he’s been the version of himself that the Thunder need.

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