Oklahoma City (AFP) – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander believes Oklahoma City’s NBA Finals triumph could be the beginning of a golden era for him and his youthful Thunder teammates.
The Thunder completed a 4-3 series victory over the Indiana Pacers on Sunday, powering to a 103-91 win at the Paycom Center to seal the franchise’s first title since moving to Oklahoma City from Seattle in 2008. For Gilgeous-Alexander, Sunday’s win completed a dazzling season that saw him become just the fourth player in history to win NBA regular season and NBA Finals Most Valuable Player honors as well as the league’s scoring title.
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Perhaps most significantly, the 26-year-old Canadian point guard is the offensive totem of a Thunder team that, with an average age of 25.6, is the youngest to win an NBA Finals title since 1977. Afterwards, Gilgeous-Alexander said the championship represented “a great start” for this Thunder generation.
“We definitely still have room to grow. That’s the fun part of this,” he told reporters. “So many of us can still get better. There’s not very many of us on the team that are ‘in our prime’ or even close to it. We have a lot to grow, individually and as a group. I’m excited for the future of this team. This is a great start. I’m really excited for this team.”
Throughout a regular season campaign that saw them compile a franchise record 68-win season, the obvious bond between Oklahoma City’s players emerged as a feature of their march to the title.
– ‘Just kids playing’ –
Post-game television interviews on-court invariably became joyous, spontaneous team-bonding sessions, with Gilgeous-Alexander joined by several teammates as they celebrated yet another win. “Our togetherness on and off the court, like how much fun we have, it made it so much easier,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It made it feel like we were just kids playing basketball. It was so fun.”
The Thunder’s head coach Mark Daigneault — himself a relatively youthful 40 — said his team had successfully blended steel and selflessness. “They behave like champions, they compete like champions,” Daigneault said. “They root for each others’ success which is rare in professional sports. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it one more time — this is an uncommon team and now they’re champions.”
Gilgeous-Alexander’s Finals-Regular Season MVP double puts him into an exclusive club of only 11 players to have achieved the feat which includes LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Willis Reed. Only three other players — Abdul-Jabbar, Jordan, and O’Neal — have also added the league’s scoring title in the same season.
But for Gilgeous-Alexander, the individual milestones pale in comparison to the collective success. “All the achievements and accolades and things, they don’t even come close to the satisfaction of winning with your brothers and people that you are so close to and want to succeed just as much as you want yourself to succeed,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “That’s been the most impressive and fun part of it — just to know that I have 15 brothers that I just experienced a once-in-a-lifetime experience with. I’ll never forget them, they’ll never forget me.”
© 2024 AFP
