Most players would be celebrating after winning their first NBA championship, but Shai Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t built like most players. Looking back on the Thunder’s seven-game Finals series over the Pacers, the All-NBA guard made it clear that he wasn’t satisfied with how his team got the job done.
“Honestly speaking, I didn’t like the way we won, if that makes sense,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, via The Athletic’s Sam Amick. “I didn’t think we won an NBA championship playing our best basketball. That was the first time we’d been that far in the playoffs, so it was a learning experience for us. But it takes another level of focus, discipline, assertiveness, and aggression, to be who we were in the regular season, and do that throughout the postseason.”
For Gilgeous-Alexander, it wasn’t just about the team. He admitted he wasn’t as sharp individually either.
“We were definitely more dominant in the regular season than the postseason,” he continued. “So yeah, that was the biggest thing for me. And for me, as well — as a player, I don’t think I was as good in the postseason as I was in the regular season. Now, it naturally happens when you play a team seven times in a row, and they get to scout you seven times in a row. But I feel like I could have been better, so I try to control that. And then that mentality just trickles over to the team stuff.”
Shai holds himself to impossibly high standards, but that’s what has helped him reach such great heights in his young career. Even after winning a championship and taking home NBA MVP honors, SGA believes he and the Thunder have only scratched the surface of what they’re capable of.
This season, ignoring the traditional “championship hangover,” OKC is off to a blazing 9-1 start that has them atop the Western Conference standings. They are on pace for another 60-win campaign and have never looked better.
As for Shai, he’s doing his part with averages of 33.0 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 6.0 assists per game on 52.3 percent shooting. He hasn’t missed a game yet for the Thunder and has set the tone as their leader on and off the court.
While some fans might believe he peaked last season, Shai sees room for improvement in several areas. Most importantly, he feels the team needs to be more consistent in the postseason.
As a relatively young group, the Thunder are still prone to unfortunate tendencies, including lapses in focus during critical moments. As champions, they proved they can survive those moments, but that doesn’t mean they’ve solved everything.
Even as the defending champs, if the Thunder want to remain competitive in the years to come, they’ll need to tighten up the mistakes and continue learning how to execute better over the course of a full playoff series.
That mindset is exactly why the Thunder are built to last. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t satisfied with just one ring, and neither is his team. They’re chasing something bigger now, and if they keep growing the way he wants them to, this could be just the beginning of something special in Oklahoma City.
