The curtains closed on the 2024/25 National Basketball Association (NBA) season last Sunday following the culmination of a dream campaign for the Oklahoma City Thunder after their 103-91 Game 7 defeat over the Indiana Pacers. The Thunder are now authors of one of the greatest seasons in NBA history, alongside a prodigious season for their illustrious point guard, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Oklahoma City won 68 of their 82 regular-season games (tied for the fifth-most in NBA history), with 64 of those wins by 10 or more points, the most in a season (including playoffs) in NBA history, and set a league record for average margin of victory (12.9 points per game). They went 29-1 against the Eastern Conference in the regular season and topped the Western Conference by a record-tying 16 games, a feat only achieved in three previous seasons, the most recent being in 1975/76 (Golden State Warriors). And with 16 wins in the postseason, they now join the 1995/96 and 1996/97 Chicago Bulls as the only teams to reach or surpass 84 total victories in a single season.

It would be remiss not to mention Oklahoma City’s top-ranked defence that held opponents under 100 points in an NBA-best 19 games, led the league in steals, deflections, opponent turnovers, and points off turnovers. They displayed the complete package and expectedly entered the postseason as the favourite to go all the way. The Thunder are the second-youngest team to win a finals, with an average age per player of 25.56, and only the 1976/77 champion Portland Trail Blazers were younger, by an average age of about six months per player. Sunday saw the first NBA Finals’ Game 7 since 2016 — the Cleveland Cavaliers won 4-3 over the Golden State Warriors — and the 20th over the league’s 79 seasons of existence. The home team has dominated and is now 16-4 in these games.

Indiana proved to be a formidable foe, despite being overlooked by the bookmakers in every series except their opener, but came up one win shy of becoming one of the biggest underdogs ever to cop the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The JustBet odds, and that for every other top-line bookmaker, were so profoundly stacked against the Pacers that they were the least-favoured team entering a finals series since 2004. The loss of their talisman point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, early in the first quarter of Game 7, made the climb more difficult and played a significant factor in the heartbreaking outcome.

That said, it would be almost impossible to outshine the lustre of the season that the Thunder delivered, but they have in their ranks the one player that possesses that ability. Born in Toronto, Canada, the 26-year-old University of Kentucky alumnus, Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA for short), led the NBA with four games of 50 or more points and scored at least 20 points in each of his last 72 regular-season games — the first player to have that long of a 20-point streak since 1964.

In May, SGA was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) after earning All-NBA First Team honours for the second time in his career, taking the NBA scoring title (32.7 average points), along with five rebounds, and 6.4 assists in the regular season. The award made it seven straight seasons that a player born outside of the USA was so honoured. The MVP, oozing with unassuming confidence, orchestrated a playoff run in the West and emerged victorious in the Finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games. SGA registered 31.4 points, 8.2 assists, and 5.2 rebounds in the series and was named the Western Conference Finals MVP.

Across a gruelling 23-game postseason, where the Canadian averaged 29.9 points, 6.5 assists, 5.3 rebounds, and shot close to 88 per cent from the free-throw line, the Thunder responded to every challenge and found myriad ways to win. SGA finished the season-clincher with a game-high 29 points and a playoff career-high 12 assists on Sunday to lead Oklahoma City to its first-ever NBA title. And, after averaging 30.3 points on 44 per cent shooting, 5.6 assists, 1.9 steals, 4.6 rebounds, and 1.6 blocks in the Finals series, he was unanimously named Finals MVP, making him the first player in 25 years to win the scoring title, regular-season MVP, and Finals MVP in the same season, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1971), Michael Jordan (1991, 1992, 1996, 1998), and Shaquille O’Neal (2000) as the only players to achieve that mark.

The last player to earn both the regular season and Finals MVP awards was LeBron James (2013), but the accolades collected by SGA this season has been compared to Jordan in 1998 when he copped the scoring title, the league MVP, and Finals MVP, averaging 28.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 3.5 assists. The obvious difference here is that Jordan used that, his last championship season, to solidify his career, while SGA will be hoping to carve out his legacy with this stellar season as his foundation.

SGA is certainly not Jordan, who was sent by the basketball gods, cannot break ankles like Allen Iverson, doesn’t possess Kobe Bryant’s “Mamba Mentality”, is surely not a force like LeBron, and definitely not a three-point sharpshooter like Stephen Curry, but he always appears to be playing at his own pace, controlled, but with purpose. He scored 3,172 points this season, including playoffs, the ninth-most by any player in NBA history, but his 32.7 average points in the regular season is the most ever in a title-winning season and, when his Western Conference Finals MVP is included in the mix, he is the only player with three MVP trophies and a championship in any single NBA season.

The 26-year-old reached basketball’s mountaintop for the first time, and his collection of gold this season was expanded at the end of Game 7 when Converse executives presented the standout point guard with a unique version of his signature sneaker, the Converse Shai 001, in “trophy gold”. And just when he thought he had his full, Oklahoma City mayor, David Holt, during the celebration parade on Tuesday, with a shirtless SGA wrapped in a Canadian flag, officially declared July 30, 2025, as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Day. A significant (and deserving) achievement for any NBA player, but especially for a star that is still rising.

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