Chris Paul knows most people will question whether he really knew.
The future Hall of Fame point guard played for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2019-20 season, and it was that year Paul formed a tight bond with the team’s current point guard: 2025 NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The two players, separated by over 13 years in age, were inseparable. They would stay late after practice to challenge each other in shooting contests. On road trips, they would eschew nightlife for extensive film breakdowns of upcoming opponents, with the younger Gilgeous-Alexander trying to glean as much information as possible from the veteran Paul.
“I knew that year,” Paul told NBC News when he was asked when he first thought Gilgeous-Alexander had MVP potential, even though SGA was in only his second year in the league during their lone season together. “I just knew how into the game he was and how much he worked at it.”
Gilgeous-Alexander, the 11th overall pick in the 2018 draft, hasn’t had a typical rise to MVP status. He wasn’t a very high draft pick. He was traded after his first season. And from 2021 through 2023, his Thunder teams failed to make the playoffs.
And yet, those who’ve been around him are hardly surprised by his individual success — which has led Oklahoma City to an NBA Finals showdown against the Indiana Pacers starting Thursday night.
“I knew he was going to end up somewhere, for sure,” says Lu Dort, Oklahoma City’s rugged perimeter stopper, who has been teammates with Gilgeous-Alexander since 2019. “Just the way he worked on himself and his game. Shai always had that mindset that nobody could stop him. Based on his work, I knew that he was going to get there.”
Guard Cason Wallace says: “He has a routine. Not everybody has a routine; not everybody works hard. But I’ve seen from day one, from the first week of the season, he has a routine, and he’s very consistent with it.”
Consistency has been a hallmark in Gilgeous-Alexander’s rise. He has averaged at least 30 points per game in each of the last three seasons, shot better than 50% from the field in four of the last five years and always played stellar defense on the other end of the floor.
If anything, it was the team’s overall success that needed to catch up with the player.
“He was averaging 30 when this team wasn’t as good, and then he was doing it while elevating the team at the same time,” Dort says. “When you go from bottom five in the league to No. 1 seed for two straight years, anybody who does that deserves to get MVP.”
Pacers center Tony Bradley, who played for the Thunder in 2021 and will now be lining up against them, says: “Honestly he’s the same player from when I was here; he’s just getting more recognition. Of course, he’s improved since I’ve been with him, but I’ve seen that potential when I was there.”
So what makes Gilgeous-Alexander special? It starts with his competitive nature.
Paul, who treats every contest, from a game of Connect Four to a regular-season matchup in January, like the championship, notices a similar trait.
“Man, we used to go at it in practice,” he says.
The two players would butt heads in everything, Paul says, from drills to one-on-one shooting games as the gym would start emptying out.
“Even the down years that they had, we talked about games every night. Talked about his team. Talked about hooping. I always appreciated that vibe.”
Says Dort: “Any time he has his shoes on and he’s on the court, he’s a pure competitor.”
Though it doesn’t happen as much during the season, in the summers and in training camp, Dort will often line up across from Gilgeous-Alexander in practice. He says neither player holds back the intensity despite being teammates.
“They are real battles,” Dort says. “I mean, I keep saying I’m the only one who can stop Shai. I got the recipe. I’m always going to try to get the best of him, and he’ll try to get the best of me at the same time.”
What makes Gilgeous-Alexander unique, however, is that his competitiveness doesn’t get in the way of his leadership qualities, on or off the court.
Dort, who also plays with SGA for the Canadian national team, is especially close with him. He says Gilgeous-Alexander has a completely different personality off the floor, engaging him in conversations on any topic from fatherhood to music. (“This dude listens to so much music it’s crazy. In the locker room he’s always the one singing. A lot of Drake.”)
The two also share a deep passion for one extracurricular in particular.
“It’s crazy the amount of time we’ve spent shopping together,” Dort admits. “I wasn’t that big on styling at first. When I got close to Shai and I saw how he was going about getting dressed — he was a lottery pick and I was on a two-way (contract) my first year, so we didn’t have the same income, but after that I got on my own wave and started getting into the styling stuff, as well.”
As low-stakes as it may sound, it’s Gilgeous-Alexander’s easy-going nature that helps his teammates be better versions of themselves.
“He makes coming into the building a lot easier on days you don’t want to be here,” Wallace says. “Because you know guys are going to come with it and have great energy.”
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault told NBC News this season: “He’s inside the team. He treats everybody with respect. He’s light-hearted; he’s not cynical. There’s just so many qualities about him that make him magnetic. He’s not getting caught up in anything outside of his bubble in his life. And it’s very impressive.”
Paul, a hoops addict who is constantly watching film, notices the little ways Gilgeous-Alexander picks his co-stars up.
“My favorite part about his game is the trust that he has in his teammates,” Paul says. “If he passes the ball to Lu and he don’t shoot, he goes up to Lu in the dead ball or something and says, ‘Yo, if I pass it to you, shoot it!’ Just about every time, Shai makes the right play.”
Paul, who can speak from experience about trying to be both a team’s facilitator and its top scorer, says the groups that are most successful are the ones whose best players give their teammates confidence. “And that’s the way the Thunder play,” he says.
It can be tricky for Paul, who isn’t exactly known for his buddy-buddy nature on the court, to speak so highly of an opponent. He says it’s difficult to discuss Gilgeous-Alexander’s game without starting to scout him. And still, the fact their relationship has sustained despite their being teammates for only one season during radically different moments in their careers is a testament to the loyalty SGA can engender.
“I’m ultracompetitive, I want to beat these guys every time I play against them, but some relationships are different after the fact,” Paul says. “That year was a very pivotal year in my life. My first year away from my family. Shai will forever be one of my brothers.”
Their bond was evident when Paul surprised Gilgeous-Alexander by showing up courtside in Oklahoma City for Game 2 of the Western Conference finals. That night SGA was finally awarded the MVP trophy.
Of course, a competitive nature and strong leadership go only so far in the NBA. Gilgeous-Alexander has been able to multiply those qualities by adding a relentless work ethic on top of immense talent.
His game is universally described as smooth, and he has a lethal combination of elite footwork and shooting that allows him to put pressure on defenses. With the threat of his stellar 3-point shot, Gilgeous-Alexander uses the lack of space opponents want to give him to continually attack the paint.
During the regular season, Gilgeous-Alexander led the NBA in drives per game and points per game off drives. Want to know why SGA gets to the free-throw line so much? It’s because he never settles.
“I wouldn’t compare him to anybody else in the league, because he’s his own player,” Thunder forward Jaylin Williams says. “His balance is crazy. I don’t know if y’all notice, but sometimes Shai will do a stepback and his knee will hit the ground … but he’ll stay up. His balance to me is one of the best things of his game. It helps him on the offensive and defensive end. It’s really unique.”
As one-of-one as Gilgeous-Alexander is, and with him and his team now taking the game’s most prominent stage, one of the questions emerging during the playoffs (especially among the sports debate types) is whether he can be the face of the NBA.
To Paul, at least, that misses the point.
“The league is so deep now with all these different guys with different personalities,” he says. “So instead of everybody trying to figure out who that is, just celebrate what’s in front of you.”
