TORONTO — What is the toughest job in professional sports to obtain? Not the most difficult one to do, but the most difficult one to, for lack of a better term, be hired to do.
On the playing field, a spot on one of the elite professional soccer teams has to be at the top of the list. In terms of size, there is almost no barrier to entry. Lionel Messi is 5 foot 7, and for many years, he was the best player on the planet. It is the most popular sport in terms of participation in the world, and there is little cost associated with getting started. If you make it to elite status in soccer, you have accomplished something truly in defiance of the odds.
Playing guard in professional basketball is probably right after that. The ultimate possibility for virtually every person who has ever picked up a basketball is to end up as a rotation-level guard in the NBA. Let’s say there’s an average of three of those players on 30 NBA teams — that is 90 spots. There are 18 teams in the EuroLeague, and let’s count two from each of those teams, bringing us to 36. Perhaps 20 other teams in the world are really on that level. That is 40 more really excellent jobs, giving us 166 gigs for basketball players 6 foot 5 and under in the world. You can quibble with the math, but we are in the ballpark.
Well, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 6 foot 6, so perhaps he doesn’t fit here. There is no questioning that with his (comparatively) slight and lanky 195-pound frame, plus the amount of time he holds the ball for the Oklahoma City Thunder, he is a guard. Not only does he have one of those 166 jobs, but he made All-NBA first team last year, made the FIBA World Cup All-Star team in September and is the only player with a remote chance to beat out 7-footer Nikola Jokić for the MVP award this year. He is, in other words, the best of those 166 men who already obliterated the odds. From Hamilton, Ontario, Gilgeous-Alexander was handed the Northern Star Award, given annually to the best Canadian athlete, for his exploits in 2023 before the Thunder beat the Toronto Raptors 123-103 on Friday night.
“It’s hard to put into words, just growing up, seeing guys like Steve Nash get it and seeing how far I’ve come,” Gilgeous-Alexander said Friday morning. “Seeing the award and seeing Steve Nash accomplish things in the NBA seemed so far away as a kid. It almost seemed like it wasn’t possible. But to be here and be able to accomplish some of the things that he’s been able to accomplish is special.”
Feeling right at home 📍🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/Wv16nophOa
— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) March 22, 2024
From the criteria laid out above, it is hard to make a case that anybody except Gilgeous-Alexander should win the award for 2024, too, should all things continue apace.
(Judging athletes across sports is virtually impossible, and there are plenty of accomplishments worth recognizing. It is also an Olympic year, and the award tends to go to a gold medallist in these cases. Appreciating the stark odds Gilgeous-Alexander has faced to get to his place is but one way to look at athletic genius.)
The list of athletes to win the award in consecutive years: figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, alpine skier Nancy Greene Raine, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and sprinter Ben Johnson, who later had his 1988 gold medal stripped for failing a doping test.
Having put Canada into the Olympic men’s tournament for the first time since 2000, inviting the Nash comparison, at least will give Gilgeous-Alexander a chance to get considered once more. The men’s team has medalled just once in the Olympics, in 1936, and has made the tournament only once since NBA players have been allowed to participate, starting in 1992. Canada has enough talent to be a threat to earn a medal, although the tournament should be ultracompetitive, featuring most of the best players in the world, health willing.
“We expect to play good teams,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And we expect to be ready for them.”
That professional job comes first. Gilgeous-Alexander, who will turn 26 between the end of the NBA season and the start of the Olympics, has not played in a playoff game since his second season, given his spot as the foundational piece of the Thunder, who were content to vacuum up lottery balls in his early prime years in order to build around him. Now they are the second-best team in the league, by record and point differential. Expert team-building is a major reason for the Thunder’s leap, but none of that happens without Gilgeous-Alexander at the centre of it.
The playoffs are a different beast, and until you go through it, there will be questions about how any player will perform on that stage. Gilgeous-Alexander has been a metronome this year, averaging 30.8 points per game on 64.4 percent true shooting. Of high-usage offensive stars, only Giannis Antetokounmpo, Domantas Sabonis, Jokić and Joel Embiid — average measurements: nearly 6 foot 11 and 262 pounds — outpace him in that measure, which factors in the added importance of 3-pointers as well as free throws. He averages 8.8 free throws per game, and that will be the number to watch in the changed context of the playoffs, which sometimes feature a more conservative interpretation of what constitutes a foul.
Then again, teams loaded up against Gilgeous-Alexander in the World Cup last year, and that did not stop him from dominating, delivering one of the most dramatic and meaningful quarters in a win against Spain that clinched the trip to France this summer.
“He’s seen everything to see in the NBA,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But he saw full-court pickups, physicality, double-teams (in the World Cup) — he saw all that stuff, which I think changed his developmental environment. (It) gave him different looks, gave him different puzzles to solve, and I thought he benefited from that.”
“It’s the biggest stage of basketball, the best stage of basketball,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “You don’t accomplish what you set out to accomplish, which is winning championships, without going through the playoffs. It’s where it starts, it’s where you really get to find out who you are and what you are as a team.”
That will be followed almost immediately by perhaps the second-best stage of basketball — the Olympics.
“It’s motivating, for sure,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of getting the award Friday. “I’ve gotten here, put in a lot of work, but it’s exciting for me because I want to see how much more work I can put in and see how much more I can accomplish.”
He has the opportunity to put himself in the rarest of air in Canadian sports history.
Notes
• Gary Trent Jr. missed the game with a stiff lower back, meaning every Raptors starter, given full health, was out of the lineup. The last time that happened for the Raptors was May 16, 2021, the last game of the Tampa season. That night, Trent, Kyle Lowry, OG Anunoby, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam were out. Starting: Malachi Flynn, Stanley Johnson, DeAndre’ Bembry, Khem Birch and Freddie Gillespie. Three years later, four of those starters are out of the NBA, while Flynn has played just 156 minutes in 26 games for two teams since being traded by the Raptors at the end of December. The lineup that played Friday night featured three former lottery picks in Gradey Dick, Ochai Agbaji and Kelly Olynyk. So, it has been worse.
• In addition to those three lottery picks, the Raptors also started Bruce Brown, who was in the rotation for a championship team just last year. He had a nice take, finishing over Gilgeous-Alexander early.
Okayyy Bruce 🔥 pic.twitter.com/gaEHCUahKW
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) March 22, 2024
• This was a cool finish from Dick, but the hope has to be that he isn’t being knocked off balance on so many drives at this time next year. It has happened a lot lately. More work in the weight room should allow him to absorb more contact.
Dick had a nice night, finishing with 21 points.
.@gradey_dick with the left 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Ir8gYXKlKU
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) March 22, 2024
• Jontay Porter gets too cute with it sometimes, but he can throw an over-the-top pass very well. He also put the ball on the floor well enough to allow Dick to shake loose on a cut. Porter had eight assists and three turnovers. The Raptors had 27 turnovers, which is simultaneously understandable and unforgivable.
• Garrett Temple had continued not to play by coach’s decision even as injuries and absences piled up. Everyone involved understands why. Trent’s injury pushed Temple into the rotation Friday, and it was good to see him still scrapping. Per TSN’s Keerthika Uthayakumar, it was the first time Temple has played in the first half since Jan. 11.
• On the Mouhamadou Gueye watch, he had an awful turnover, but then blocked Cason Wallace’s windmill attempt.
(Photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander looking to make a play against Toronto’s Ochai Agbaji, center, and Kelly Olynyk: John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
