PARIS – When Kawhi Leonard chose to leave Toronto after one one season and one championship, he had no idea at the time how much his departure would end up influencing the future of Canadian basketball.
In a most positive way.
Leonard agreed to the deal to go home and to sign with the Los Angeles Clippers as a free agent, but his signing was predicated on the Clippers acquiring star forward Paul George in a separate transaction.
Without George in Los Angeles, there would be no Kawhi signing. And so going to Oklahoma City in the trade – along with a pile of draft picks – was first-year player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the 11th draft pick one year earlier whom Leonard clearly had no interest in teaming with the on the apparently contending Clippers.
The deal for George was big news at the time. The inclusion of Gilgeous-Alexander was not.
Five years later, the Clippers have seemingly lost their way, as Leonard’s health kept him off the U.S. Olympic team. George has changed teams again, this time heading to Philadelphia. And Team Canada, back playing basketball in the Olympics and for the first time in 24 years, is headed to the medal round of the men’s basketball tournament. The team led in virtually every way, in body and in deed, with his immense talent and guile — and by the guard that Kawhi wanted nothing to do with in Los Angeles.
“I’m not sure Shai becomes the player he becomes if he doesn’t get traded to Oklahoma City,” said Rowan Barrett, general manager of Team Canada.
As a rookie with the Clippers, Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 10.8 points per game. In the past three seasons in Okie City, his fourth, fifth and sixth in the NBA, SGA has averaged a remarkable 30 points a game and in doing so has become just the second basketball player in history to win the Canadian athlete of the year award. At the same time, he finished second in MVP voting this season and has been a first team all-star at guard in each of the past two seasons.
And now this. The eight-team Olympic basketball playoff tournament is about to begin on Tuesday. Three games to win gold and each the equivalent of the seventh game of a playoff series. It starts with Canada vs. France (2-1). That’s no easy game when a team lacking size has to lineup against Victor Wembayama and Rudy Gobert.
And make no mistake, while the colours may be red and white, and the country may say Canada, in basketball terms, the way the sport defines itself, this is Gilgeous-Alexander’s team. This is his team: Hopefully this is his time.
He is a second generation Olympian, the son of a sprinter who competed for Antigua and Barbuda, and brought her sons up primarily as a single mom, with an Olympic athlete’s discipline in life, and the constant push that the only way of gaining success was by earning it.
The trade to Oklahoma City proved more than fruitful for Gilgeous-Alexander, who was not thought to be a star of any consequence when he was the 11th pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. Among the players chosen before him: journeymen such as Marvin Bagley Jr., Mo Bamba, Wendel Carter Jr, Colin Sexton, Kevin Knox. It wasn’t a particularly special draft: But special came out of it with Luka Doncic and Trae Young, the third and fifth picks selected, and really they are only players of his class playing anywhere close to his level.
But another deal – unrelated to SGA at the time – proved a giant factor in Gilgeous-Alexander’s development from good player to great player and that came with the Thunder’s pickup of future Hall of Famer Chris Paul. Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t sure what he thought of the veteran coming to his team, considering they played the same position.
He saw himself as a point guard. Paul is an all-time great point guard. There was only one basketball team in Okie City. How was this going to work?
The trade didn’t just change Gilgeous-Alexander’s basketball career, it ostensibly changed his life. Paul, 13 years his senior, didn’t just become his basketball mentor, his teammate, but he became part best friend, part father figure.
While here at the Olympics getting ready for the next round, SGA spends more time on the phone with Paul, texting with Paul, exchanging messages with Paul – getting tips. This is part friendship, part conscience, part teacher on Paul’s part. He may be the only two-time gold-medal winner in American basketball quietly – or maybe not so quietly – cheering for his friend, his boy Shai, for Canada to win Olympic gold here.
“We talk all the time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of Paul. “He and I are super close. We really built a brotherhood.”
“So are you taking to Chris here?” Gilgeous-Alexander was asked in the mixed zone after the Canadian win over Spain.
“Yeah,” he said.
“How often?”
“Often.”
“What’s he telling you?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
He said that all with a large smile on his face.
Paul isn’t just close to Gilgeous-Alexander, he’s close to his mom, a social worker, who brought her son up in Toronto and later moved to Hamilton. Paul talks to Shai, Shai talks to Paul’s kids, Paul calls Shai’s mom, who isn’t here at the Olympics: This is one big unlikely family.
Paul taught Gilgeous-Alexander some of what is unteachable about being a point guard. He taught him to succeed playing opposite of him. He taught him how they could share the basketball and both succeed – and once Paul was sent packing out of Oklahoma City, the hybrid point guard position – part distributor, part scorer – became Shai’s all-star persona.
He’s not really a point guard by definition now and he’s not really a shooting guard: He’s somewhere in the middle, and almost impossible to defend.
Yes, Steve Nash, who led Canada to the Olympics in 2000 in Australia but nowhere near the medal round, won two MVP awards as a Canadian in the NBA, But many are of the belief now that Gilgeous-Alexander is playing at a level no Canadian has ever played before.
On a national team comprised mostly of NBA players and with so much expected of it, Gilgeous-Alexander has taken on the role that is similar to Sidney Crosby’s place on the Team Canada Olympic hockey teams and that Connor McDavid is expected to have in Italy in 2026. This is the first trip for Gilgeous-Alexander and the rest of his team. It’s unlikely to be the last.
“There are a lot of numbers in basketball that I like to call bullshit numbers,” said Leo Rautins, the former national team coach and the first Canadian ever selected in the first round NBA draft pick.
“Shai’s numbers are crazy and they’re not the B.S. numbers you sometimes see. He’s a closer. That’s the hardest thing to do in basketball. He closes games. People talk about Doncic and how he plays the game at the own speed. Shai is the same in a different way. He does want he wants when he wants to do it. It’s awesome to watch. His skill set is ridiculous.”
In the apparent Group of Death, in which Canada went 3-0, Gilgeous finished sixth in round robin scoring, second in most fouls drawn, third in blocked shots, second in shooting percentage from two-point range, tied for the lead in most free throws made. He’s not a one-category player. In a tournament with Wembayama, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, SGA is right up in the shots blocked.
And in an NBA that lives and dies on three-point shooting, Gilgeous-Alexander averages more than 30 points a game but takes fewer than four three-point attempts per game, that’s eight fewer than Steph Curry, who he outscores, five fewer than Jayson Tatum, who he also outscores.
This year, Gilgeous Alexander finished second in scoring, second in MVP voting, second in two-point baskets, 2nd in free throws made.
“When you watch McDavid play (hockey), you say: ‘Holy (bleep)’, ” said Rautins. “And when you watch Shai play, you say the same thing. He’s got a lot of tricks in his bag. Do you see the stuff he pulls out? He’s old-school and he’s new wave. He’s got a little of everything.”
“It’s a mentality,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “The skill stuff I just hammer away at. But what makes a great player is how they carry that to the court. How they control fourth quarters and win games.
“LeBron [James] is LeBron because for 20 some odd years he’s controlled games.”
Charmaine Gilgeous brought up her sons to be respectful and to look respectful. She made the point, long before Shai had money, that dressing for success was essential. “You step out of the house, you look the part, you’re representing the family,” Gilgeous-Alexander said a while back. “And that kind of transferred into what it is now.”
What it has become is routine. The routine of training. The routine of family The routine of success. The routine of eating a red apple just before he goes out to play.
Notice the colour. Red. Canada’s colour. It’s Canada’s time.
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