There are certain players who seem destined to one day be a superstar in their sport. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t one of them. In every step of his career, from boyhood basketball to NBA player, Alexander started many rungs below where he ended up. Nobody really noticed him until they did.
As a high school freshman in his native Canada, Alexander was cut from the school’s junior team. The problem? His size. In an interview with The Athletic, he said, “I was puny.” The solution? He outworked everyone. Alexander worked and worked and got better and better. He got good enough to transfer to a high school in Tennessee and make himself into a four-star recruit, landing at Kentucky.
As a Wildcat freshman, Alexander started the season sitting behind fellow freshman Quade Green. Once again, he went to work and improved as the season progressed, ultimately declaring for the NBA draft at the end of the season, where he was selected with the 11th pick by the Charlotte Hornets, who then traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Alexander had a nice rookie season with the Clippers, averaging 10.8 points per game. It was a respectable start to an NBA career, but nothing about it screamed future MVP. But, once again, Alexander exhibited an upward trajectory. In the Clippers playoff series against the Golden State Warriors, he averaged 13.7 points a game and led the team with a career high 25 points in Game 4 of the series.
In the off-season, Alexander was part of a blockbuster trade that brought NBA All-Star Paul George to the Clippers in exchange for him, Danilo Gallinari, and a whopping five first-round draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder. George was the star of that trade, and Alexander was just a nice asset that was bundled together with all the draft picks.
Nobody knew at the time that it was Alexander who would become the superstar of that trade. However, season by season, the Thunder reaped the rewards of all the draft picks they had compiled and got better and better. And Alexander did too. Little by little, he and the team climbed rung after rung, culminating with the NBA championship in 2024-25, with Alexander being named MVP of the NBA.
In an ESPN article about Alexander’s rise in the NBA, his Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said, “He wasn’t this good when we traded for him. He’s forged himself into this player.”
Alexander’s work ethic is the biggest factor that can be attributed to his success, but there are a lot of players who work hard. What is the difference between Alexander and the rest of the pack? It has been his consistency in chasing his dream to be the best.
In the ESPN article, Daigneault told the story of visiting Alexander in the off-season and being astonished by his routine. Every day the same thing: a morning text to his crew reminding them that he’d pick them up to go shoot at a local gym, followed by a weightlifting session at his house, and then lunch prepared by his private chef, where he ate the same thing. No variation. Alexander explained the process, “I try to be as strict and as organized as I can. I try to be on more scheduled times.”
Alexander’s desire to be great and dedication to organizing himself to achieve his goals have always been there. The Athletic told the story of 13-year-old Alexander asking his teachers if they could open the school gym at 6 am so he could work out. ESPN wrote that Alexander’s mother said her son has always been set in his routines. If bedtime was 9 p.m., he wouldn’t answer a FaceTime at 8:45 because it was going to mess with his timing. He has always thrived, she said, on structure and order and had no trouble adhering to it.
Alexander credits his mother with his success. A 400-meter runner who represented Antigua and Barbuda at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Charmaine Gilgeous, raised her children to set goals and dream big. She told ESPN about a Saturday afternoon family routine of visiting a luxury department store to window shop. Her message was that they would one day be able to wear the fancy clothes they saw if they set goals and worked hard to achieve them.
Those Saturday afternoons explain Alexander’s work process and his propensity to arrive at every game wearing elegant outfits that can typically only be seen on runways in London, Paris, and Milan. The puny kid has made himself into a superstar.
