Ahmad Nikbeen🦂

Hope is Alive | Isaiah 41:10 | 6Nephew

[Clemente Almanza @CAlmanza1007]

Probably the best moment from what Sam Presti said today. Went scorched earth on all of the SGA narratives that have been bubbling up over the years:

Of all the things that I've talked to Shai about, this is actually one I've never talked to him about. He's probably going to kill me for talking about this, truthfully.

First of all, let me just start with the opposing coaches for one second. The post-game press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage. I mean, we know what that is. It used to be you'd get up there, you'd talk about your own team. Now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team. Again, like they're great competitors, so we know why that's happening, and I don't fault them because I think they may think it works.

So the question is why are they continuing to do it? Because there's financial incentives not to do it. But everyone's competing. Let's also recognize that it's the bully pulpit for competitive advantage, and that's what it's kind of turned into, which is part of competing. We all get that.

Relative to Shai and the narrative on that, he's playing against six people. He's got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media. That's a reality. He's not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one's going to handle it as gracefully because, when they turn it on somebody else, they're not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it.

A couple things more just on the whole topic. We think all the time or we hear all the time about things that people don't like about the NBA, which are inaccurate, but they're narratives that exist on the alternate reality.

One, players don't play defense. Shai's a two-end player. Now, he plays with four or five All-NBA defensive players, so sometimes his defensive ability gets undersold, but he plays two ends.

Second, all NBA players do is complain, bitch and moan and try to intimidate the officials with bad behavior in the games to give foul calls. He's gotten three technical fouls this year. None for complaining. One for waving a towel in support of someone that hit a shot that doesn't play very often. Okay. So he's not doing that.

The other thing is load management. Nobody plays. They take all these games off. Shai plays every night. He missed a bunch of games this year for an oblique strain, and we might give him a night off two or three times a year, maybe. But he plays back-to-backs. He plays heavy minutes. He plays against good teams. He plays against teams that are bad teams. He plays every night. His consistency is well documented. So you can't get him on that.

The next one is all you do is shoot 3s. NBA players, all they do is shoot 3s. Okay. Well, he's brought the mid-range back to an art form. He's transcendent for any generation, any player. That's why like older players love his game.

It's also one of the reasons he gets fouled a lot. Because he plays in the mid-range because we don't call the landing space fouls in the mid-range the way we do at the 3-point line, right, because he's avoiding that oftentimes because there's too many bodies in there. With the 3-point shot, you can see it easily, and I think a lot of times he's trying to avoid that. So he's not a guy that's just launching 3s. So we can check that off the box.

The other one is like these guys are just totally inaccessible. They're in their own world. Well, the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Before the Western Conference Finals Game 7, he's signing autographs.

So we've got a litany of things that generally the narrative is about NBA players that they do wrong. Well, based on those narratives, I don't agree with them, but he would be doing them right. And he doesn't really complain about any of it. So if we're just talking about trying to draw fouls, well, every other great player in the NBA, that's part of the game is drawing fouls.

He drew 415 fouls this year; 11 were challenged. 11. Four of those were overturned. So that's like 2 1/2 percent of the foul calls were actually challenged. Again, that's part of the bully pulpit part of this thing, which I get and it's part of competing.

As far as those fouls, I think in the fouls drawn -- I had this written down here -- he's tied with Embiid for 8 and 9 in terms of number of fouls drawn in the season. 6 and 7 are Jaylen Brown and Wembanyama. So that's kind of the group of players that he's in.

But I understand, if you listen to the narrative, you'd think he's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. He drew a lot more fouls before we got much better, and when we got better, obviously people pay much more attention to him.

We'll have to see where that goes, you know what I mean? We don't know. He'll never say anything about it. And the only thing I'm pointing out is I don't think he's being unfairly handled, I just think, instead of talking about something that we are looking to find as a negative, can we please also acknowledge that he also does a lot of positive things for the game, most of which are the things that people are very unhappy -- not unhappy, but they don't like on social media. And I know that a lot of us live on social media. I would think they would love him for that reason.

This is like the world we live in today. There's a lot of financial incentive to create these things, career ambitions, like I said before. The best thing we can do when those things happen is stay above it.

Now I'm pointing it out now at the end of the season, but we're going to have to stay above it because it's probably not going to change. But he does a lot of good things too.

[ThunderChats @ThunderChats]

“I DON’T NEED IT”

TELL EM, 2 😤

[rio @pilgeousx]

They simply cant neglect greatness forever

[Russ' TD ⚡ @RussFcb]

Dawg Alex Caruso got me in tears man 😭 I haven't seen this before

[Clemente Almanza @CAlmanza1007]

SGA said his wife, Hailey Summers, donated his NBA Cup grand prize money last year. Said he'll do the same this year

[❤️‍🔥Andy Splatz❤️‍🔥 @AndySplatz]

You will not find a better interception celebration in the NFL. The Colts are 😂🤣

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

Shai-Gilgeous Alexander now has the richest annual salary for a player in NBA HISTORY 🤯

SGA's contract has an average annual value of $71.25M 💰 (via @ShamsCharania)

[chet holmgren @ChetHolmgren]

Legacy work

[Thunder Muse @ThunderMuse_]

Our goat.

[𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒆 🌩 @Three_Cone]

This is one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind

[Luguentz Dort 🇭🇹 @luthebeast]

For the fans who rode with us all season. One game at a time. @PlayersTribune

https://t.co/h3vP0hsXp8

[StatMuse @statmuse]

The only player in NBA history to win MVP and WCF MVP in the same season.

[Gur Singh @HoopFocusX]

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander this series (37 MPG)

29.7 PPG
6.6 APG
2.0 TPG
6.4 RPG
1.6 SPG
53 FG%
33 3PT%
+69
63 TS%

Nikola Jokic this series (40 MPG)

28.4 PPG
13.2 RPG
5.9 APG
1.7 SPG
4.4 TPG
47 FG%
32 3PT%
59 TS%
-40

[StatMuse @statmuse]

Lu Dort in his only Game 7:

30 PTS
6 3P

His playoff career-high.

[NBA on ESPN @ESPNNBA]

Consistency 😮‍💨

[rylee @thunderfanrylee]

PLAYOFF THUNDER BASKETBALL AT NOON!

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

THUNDER STRUCK IN GAME 1 😳

[OKC THUNDER @okcthunder]

Happy Birthday, Lu! 🎉

🎨 | @7A_mountain

[Kendrick Perkins @KendrickPerkins]

Defensive Player Of The Year

Lug Dort!!!!