Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is ‘in the moment’ even as his trophy case grows

SAN FRANCISCO – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander plans to have a pre-written speech in hand when he accepts his Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year award tonight in Las Vegas. That is a much simpler plan for the Oklahoma City Thunder star than when he freestyled during his emotional speech for the 2025 NBA Most Valuable Player award.

“This one I’ll be a little bit more prepared,” Gilgeous-Alexander revealed to Andscape after the Thunder’s 131-94 win over the host Golden State Warriors on Jan. 1. “With MVP, I wanted it to come straight from the heart. I had no speech. I just started talking. But those people, I see every day. I just wanted to give them raw emotion. That is probably why I started crying like that because it was raw.

“But this one I’ll be more prepared. I’m writing it just myself. I’ll write it down and probably have it on a teleprompter.”

Gilgeous-Alexander will be the 71st recipient of SI’s Sportsperson of the Year award, given to “the athlete or team that best represents, in character and performance, the ideals of excellence and sportsmanship.” The 2025 NBA Finals MVP led the Thunder to their first NBA title and a league-best 68 regular-season wins last season. Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 32.7 points, 6.4 assists and 4.6 rebounds last season.

The 27-year-old Canadian will join prestigious previous winners such as Arthur Ashe, Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, LeBron James, Simone Biles, Stephen Curry, Michael Phelps and Billie Jean King.

Those elite winners made it a no-brainer for Gilgeous-Alexander to accept the award despite a demanding section of the season. The award ceremony is sandwiched between the Thunder playing back-to-back games on Sunday and Monday, and another game on Wednesday.

“With the list of people who have won this award, it’s an honor,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Usually, I don’t do this. But it wasn’t really that hard of a decision because of the award, the prestige of it, and what it means. So many great basketball players have won it and athletes in general. The GOAT [greatest of all time] of their sport. To be amongst that list is an honor.”

Thunder head coach Mark Daignault says Gilgeous-Alexander was deserving of the award based on the superstar he is on the court and the humble father he is off it. Gilgeous-Alexander and his wife, Hailey, have a 1-year-old son named Ares.

“The history of the award is a crazy list of athletes that he has added his name to,” Daignault said before the win against the Warriors. “It’s an unbelievable accomplishment. And we’re certainly incredibly happy for him. It’s well deserved. On [the court] is what everybody sees when the lights come on. He’s incredibly impactful. As a winner, he’s incredibly efficient. He uses possessions in an incredibly efficient way. He plays both ends of the floor. He plays in such a way so his teammates can be successful, which allows your team to be pretty good. …

“He really takes a lot of pride in being a good guy, being a great husband and being a good person. He treats everybody with dignity, kindness, respect. All of the things that you want your kids to do, he does. I can’t say enough about him. I always tell people if you spent more time around him, you only gain more respect for him. Sometimes when you see behind the curtain the opinion changes. With him, the opinion changes for [the better]. We’re really happy for him. Congrats to him.”

The award list has grown dramatically for Gilgeous-Alexander over the past six months. In 2025, Gilgeous-Alexander was named the NBA MVP, the NBA Finals MVP, the Western Conference Finals MVP and the ESPY award winner for Best Male Athlete and also Best NBA Player. He said his NBA Finals MVP trophy and his other awards are sitting mostly unbothered in the art room in his home in Oklahoma City.

Gilgeous-Alexander said his awards have given him a mental boost on the floor, but off of it he’s focused on his family.

“They add a level of confidence to my walk and swagger on the court,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But in my everyday life, I don’t really think about them. I’m so in the moment. I honestly don’t even get time to sit and think about them, especially with my son growing so fast. I try to cherish those moments with my wife. Really just be present.

“I really don’t have much time now. I guess I think about it when he’s running around the house, and he opens the door in the room, and I have to get him, and I see them. I’m like, ‘Oh yeah.’ But I really don’t think about them.”

Such a rise to stardom for Gilgeous-Alexander is stunning if you consider he was the 11th overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft and he was traded by the Los Angeles Clippers after his rookie season. The former University of Kentucky star said the first individual award that really meant something to him was being named the MVP of the 2018 Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament after leading the Wildcats to a title.

“I played a pretty good tournament. That was my coming-out party as a collegiate player,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Andscape. “I kind of knew after that I was going to enter the draft.”

Gilgeous-Alexander is now trying to buck an NBA trend by leading the Thunder to a second consecutive championship. The NBA has not had a repeat champion since the Warriors won back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018. The Thunder actually opened this season with a 24-1 start and appeared talented enough to challenge the 2015-16 Warriors’ NBA record 73-9 regular-season record.

The Thunder, however, went through a stretch in December where they lost four of five games, including three to the San Antonio Spurs. Oklahoma City entered Tuesday with an NBA-best 30-7 record but are just 5-5 in its last 10 games.

“[The media conversation is] going to be very loud because we barely lost,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But I’ve had way tougher times as an NBA player. So, I’m not overreacting or anything. But we definitely need to get better. But that is nothing we didn’t already know. We didn’t think we were going to go 81-1 and not lose to anybody, [or] we were going to win the championship with the team we had [last season].

“The league is going to get better. The players are going to get better. The coaches are going to get better. Schemes are going to get better. We knew that and we knew we had to grow. We lost a couple games because we weren’t ready and we weren’t as good as we thought we were. We use those experiences like we have in the past and grow from them.”

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