Ten teams passed on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the 2018 NBA Draft when he entered the league out of the University of Kentucky as the 11th overall pick by the Charlotte Hornets, before immediately being traded to the Los Angeles Clippers on draft night. After a solid rookie campaign in which he played in all 82 regular season games and averaged 10.8 points, Gilgeous-Alexander was dealt to the Oklahoma City Thunder as part of a trade that sent Paul George to LA.
What the Clippers did not envision is that the now 26-year-old native of Toronto, Canada would become one of the premier players in the world, winning the NBA scoring title, regular season MVP award and Finals MVP while leading the Thunder to the franchise’s first title on Sunday after defeating the Indiana Pacers 4-3. Gilgeous-Alexander joins Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1971), Michael Jordan (‘91, ‘92,’96, ‘98) and Shaquille O’ Neal (2000) as the only players to ever to attain all three distinctions in the same season.
While the first round of this year’s NBA Draft took place last night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Round 2 is tonight and Gilgeous-Alexander epitomizes the inexact science of scouting, evaluating, projecting and developing players. Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, a three-time NBA MVP and 2023 NBA champion, along with two-time league MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who carried the Milwaukee Bucks to the 2021 title, are other profound examples of front office personnel and scouting departments misclassifying players.
Antetokounmpo was chosen No. 15 in 2013 by the Bucks and in what may be the most egregious overlooking of a player’s potential in the history of the NBA, Jokic didn’t hear his named called in the 2014 draft until being selected by the Nuggets with the 41st pick in the second round. As analytics has become focal in the assessment of players — with categories such as player efficiency rating, effective field goal percentage, usage rate and player impact estimates part of the basketball lexicon — intangibles such as will, desire, selflessness and leadership are seemingly increasingly minimized.
Duke product Cooper Flagg, the presumptive No. 1 pick last night by a majority of basketball analysts and evaluators, is forecasted to someday be an All-NBA player and possible league MVP. Yet, five years from now, similar to Gilgeous-Alexander’s story, a player that today few if any anticipated becoming a future superstar could emerge as one of the league’s best.