Updating the NBA All-Time Top 75ish: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | by Dr. Duncan Stein

Welcome to the club

Eric Apricot says: This is an original series that analyzes and ranks the Top 75ish NBA players of all time, written by a friend of DubNationHQ.com. Some of you will be angered, some will think you can do better, but hopefully everyone can find something to enjoy in this journey appreciating the great historical achievements by past and present players.

I’m back

Ah, NBA summer. We’ve reached that time of year where sweet (R)FA is happening and we are so devoid of basketball content we’re being fed a steady diet of the results of Luka Doncic’s diet.

While normal mortals roam the courts of their home towns, shooting hoops and soaking up rays, I have returned to my basketball dungeon. After all our BEAST (Basketball Excellence As Statistically Tested) system is also hungry.

For those of you new to this, or just in need of a reminder, this was a project conceived in the depths of the post-punch dynastic doldrums to try to apply some method to the madness of ranking the NBA’s Top 75 players. What resulted was clearly madness, but also generated some (hopefully) vaguely interesting content last summer. It was also so beastly it took until the All-Star Game in San Fransisco this year to polish off, attempting to settle the Steph vs Magic argument, and of course crown the all time BEAST GOAT (is that a thing??). The full article list is here, including the method to this madness (why dear god, why?), and all the individual articles detailing who is where and why.

This summer I’m at it again. Sort of, anyway. A mea culpa from me - this isn’t a full-on reboot of our BEAST rankings. This is in effect a pruning, some careful maintenance to keep it current. There are elements that are relatively easy to do - end of season awards, any major achievements etc. The belly of the beast involves all kinds of very fiddly and interlinked rankings of individual stats, per game averages, and advanced metrics which is frankly a total beast to update. It’s not worth doing with only one season’s data. But more importantly I was having too much damn fun watching the Jimmy Butler-era Warriors to have a proper go at trawling basketballreference.com and fiddle with a beastly spreadsheet.

At some suitable point in the future (post ring no5?) there will be full reboot, but for now this postseason’s update is more akin to trimming a toddler’s fingernails whilst asleep. You do your best, make sure you don’t wake them, and most importantly of all just don’t chop a finger off!

Over August (don’t ask Apricot if he’s heard that before) we’ll do a bit of a series. First I’ll look at new entrants. Then set out any material changes from awards. There are some questions on qualifying players I would like the wisdom of the community from. Then there’s the small matter of all those NBA 75 players who didn’t make this list - where are they now? Finally we’ll finish with a quick look at the next gens coming up.

He’s in

Let’s get cracking with our first material change - proof that a single outstanding season can take a young player from that next gen group slytherin (sic) into the rankings.

75 - Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (113 BEAST points)

Honors

• NBA Champion (30)

• MVP (25)

• MVP runner up points (5)

• Finals MVP (20)

• Conference Finals MVP (5)

• Scoring Champion (5)

• 3x All NBA (all First Team) (9)

• All Star (3)

• FIBA World Cup all-tournament team (1)

• Olympic second team (2)

Individual career stats

• Top 20 playoffs points per game (3)

• Regular season TS% (5)

Another summer, another NBA season of achievements notched in the record books. And if you take a quick look at all those achievements one player leaps out at you. NBA Champion, MVP, scoring leader, and leader of a team that won 68 games - yeah, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, that’ll do it.

SGA to me is a bit like what James Harden would be if his game wasn’t quite so egregiously obnoxious and he cared about winning more than stat padding. Too harsh? He’s got that same shiftiness and mastery of the dark arts, but he’s less polluted by Daryl Morey’s obsession with layups-or-threes-or-free-throws-or death. That means when the playoffs roll around you aren’t stopping him by wearing him down or pushing him off his spots. He’ll just mid-range you to death like a 2020s MJ or Kobe. Plus he plays defense, so you know our beast was always going to love him.

How high can he rise? Well don’t forget our beast loves multiple-time winners with extra points for repeat champions, stuffing the stat sheets in the playoffs and Finals - all within his reach. True, this is the era of parity and plenty have predicted multiple rings for the last few teams to break through and ended up empty. But OKC will be in the mix for a while. So it’s a safe bet to land Shai on this list. Whatever happens next, he’s really just getting started.

As it happens he cracks into the top 75 knocking former OKC legend Russell Westbrook down a peg. Feels fitting for the guy who actually won the Thunder their first ring, no?

One final note - 5 first-round picks and two first-round swaps. That’s what the Clippers sent to OKC along with Shai for Paul George. Appreciate it secured Kawhi’s signature but really that’s got to go down as one of the worst superstar moves of all time.